Of the many world famous things Manchester is known for - industrialisation, graphene, Clint Boon - prawns surely feature low down the list. If they’re on the list at all. I wouldn’t even like to hazard a guess as to where or how far the nearest living prawn is to the city centre.
Nonetheless, Jimmy’s Killer Prawns is a thing. Increasingly a thing, in fact. After opening a couple of years ago on Liverpool Road, queues endure. Every day, queues. Queues and expensive cars. Queues, and expensive cars and prawns, all day long.
There are only so many times you can see this unfolding in front of you before you think ‘I might need to go to Jimmy’s Killer Prawns’. Some background first.
Indulge in more of Ben Arnold's food writing covering Greater Manchester...
The new restaurant with one of Greater Manchester's best views
The Rolls-Royce of pies and the warmest welcome at the UK's best pub, just an hour from Manchester
Jimmy Christelis started his first prawn business in 1991 from an old mining hut in Johannesburg, with little more than ‘a dream’ (per the website) and a cool box stuffed with prawns.
He’s now got 27 across South Africa, a few in the Middle East, one in Leicester, one in Manchester, and a voracious appetite for both shellfish and franchising, details of which are just one rung down from the menu on the website.
So yes, it’s not some homely, spit and sawdust mining shack anymore. If you come out without having signed a legally binding contract to take on a branch of Jimmy’s, you’ve probably done well.
So hopes of not being treated like a walking wallet are, frankly, depressingly low as we shuffled in last Saturday afternoon, around 2pm, seemingly during a brief lull. By the time we leave much less than an hour later, it’s packed full.
The menu is sharing-heavy in language. There are platters, there are ‘combos’. Things are grilled, baked or fried ‘to perfection’ and served ‘on beds’ of things. Sauces are ‘special’ or ‘secret’, sometimes both. Several things are ‘world famous’, despite demonstrably not being. It’s dated and a bit embarrassing.
And it’s not particularly cheap, but then cheap seafood is best avoided for reasons it’s not pleasant to discuss. But nonetheless, there’s a sour taste to the bottled water you’re forced to order, because they ‘don’t do tap’. There’s no way around how mean-spirited it is to make your customers buy bottled water, and things have started badly.
I ask if the Jimmy’s Sizzler (£32), under the ‘Killer Combos’ heading, might do for two of us, me and the teenage lad. On paper, it sounds like it might; it’s a piece of beef tenderloin, nine medium butterflied prawns and a few sides. “No,” comes the blunt reply with more than a hint of ‘of course not’ in the shake of the head that accompanies it.
That’s annoyed me too, and now convinced this is going to be the worst meal of the year already, it’s the ‘world famous’ (IS IT THOUGH) Killer Platter for two (£34) for me and the boy, and some deep fried ‘dynamite’ prawns (£8.50) and fries (£2.95) for the girl child.
It arrives in pretty short order, and inside I’m grumbling that something that’s likely to cost about 70 notes is going to be done and dusted in half an hour. Annoyingly - and I’m still a bit annoyed about this - the prawns are delicious.
And soon enough, we’re covered in prawn juice, running down wrists, spattering onto sweatshirts, dripping into laps. Shells are being clawed off, legs and heads are being crunched, fingers licked - gloves are provided but left untouched - and spicy, garlicky, lemony prawn juice is being mopped up with those fat, flat, frozen, flavourless food service chips.
Each prawn, and annoyingly again there are loads of them, is degloved and dragged through the ‘trio of sauces’, a lemon butter, a garlic butter and a peri peri. The rice is annoyingly delicious too. In perhaps 25 minutes from walking through the door, the plate is almost spotless, and the menu at large is left largely unexplored.
Would I order the chicken burger? Would I have the lobster thermidor at £53? Would I order the millionaire’s platter for £107? Probably not, no, and good god, no. Would I come again? God help me, I think I probably would.
Read more:
- New food market set to open on Bury New Road
- Manchester cocktail bar named in the top five in the UK
- Plans for 'deep south style dive bar' in the NQ
-
Withington pub The Libertine closes temporarily over rocketing energy costs just months after opening
'I tried the Michelin-recommended restaurant hidden in a Manchester railway arch'
