When something feels right, it is often hard to describe why. You can dissect the most beautiful relationships, trying to work out the reasons why it works, but it usually leads you nowhere. Like Lennon & McCartney, Fred & Ginger or Bremner & Giles, there’s an undefinable magic sometimes that might look unlikely on the outside, so you would be advised to just sit back and enjoy it.
There is something of that ‘stars aligning’ symbiosis about the partnership of Ossett Brewery and the Spiced Mango restaurant at Middlestown; a serendipitous ‘happy accident’ and a relationship that has grown naturally to bear wonderful fruit, rather than being a structured outcome from the minutes of an impersonal business meeting.
Mohammad Ali, or Mo for short, is the owner of the Spiced Mango and he has built the business up over the last five years, since taking a redundancy package from his IT job and deciding to take the plunge and realise his dream in the restaurant business. Jamie Lawson, MD of Ossett Brewery, was a regular customer at the restaurant and their relationship grew from a mutual love of good food and good company. Pretty soon it became clear that the two should work together, but this was no unit-shifting corporate strategy, just a desire to follow a path that felt right and could continue the wholesome and natural image that both organisations hold great value in.
“Jamie was a customer at the restaurant,” Mo begins “and we’ve been talking for about 18 months about doing something. We provided the food for a special Curry Night at the Flowerpot in Mirfield last August, and that went really well, so the conversations just went from there.”
The partnership with the Old Peacock, which begins on July 13thafter a three-week re-fit of the kitchens at the famous Elland Road pub, is the first venture of its kind for the Spiced Mango and they aren’t planning to stray too far from what has been a winning formula at their Middlestown restaurant.
Converted from the White Swan pub, the Spiced Mango has become one of the most successful Indian restaurants in the West Yorkshire area, winning a ‘Certificate of Excellence’ award from Trip Advisor for its consistently great reviews. And consistency is the key to the partnership with the Old Peacock, with Mo taking nine staff members and exactly the same menu with him to the Peacock’s kitchen, which is actually twice the size of the one at his Middlestown restaurant. So there’s really no excuse not to recreate the same magic down in LS11.
A major factor in the discussions that led to the Old Peacock’s exciting new partnership with the Spiced Mango, was the pub’s identity as a famous landmark in the matchday traditions for generations of Leeds United fans. Mo won’t profess to being a Leeds fan, but he has ‘Leeds United sympathies’ through his father. However, it was made very clear that matchdays are a huge part of the Peacock’s business model and Mo has built that into the project the Spiced Mango are delivering.
“I came to the pub for the recent England game,” Mo continues “so I know how busy it gets and how demanding the fans are. But in my opinion food delivered to football fans all over the country has traditionally been pretty standard with little imagination. They are a captive audience, and like motorway service stations, you have no choice but to buy what’s on offer and pay the prices. So we wanted to offer something completely different and with a bit more quality. We will be offering Chicken Tikka wraps, Seekh Kebab wraps and Biryani Rice boxes, which will be both chicken and vegetable.”
So Leeds fans flooding through the Peacock’s doors from August are in for a treat, and as if the pre-match build-up couldn’t get any better, they will now enjoy an Indian feast to go with their beer, live music and the amazing atmosphere that Leeds fans create.
The clock is now ticking towards the grand re-opening of the Spiced Mango at the Old Peacock on Friday July 13thand with minimal internal décor changes, the concentration is on getting the kitchen fitted. All the equipment has been delivered, including a traditional tandoori oven, and everything will be in place for the big day.
Naturally Mo is excited at the prospect of what will happen with the Peacock partnership, but he is not used to the big build-up: “At the Middlestown restaurant we didn’t do any marketing at all,” he explains “we just wanted to perfect what we were doing and then let the food speak for itself. I believe we serve good quality, honest food and our success has come from studying best practice and learning from others.”
Certainly the stage is set for Mo and the Spiced Mango to make an impact in LS11. With no Indian restaurant in the area, there is an opportunity for a culinary revolution to hit Elland Road and for the Old Peacock to lead the charge into a new era. And with consistency at the heart of the Spiced Mango’s success story, there is every reason to believe that this new partnership with the Old Peacock will have people flooding to Elland Road, not just to walk in the footsteps of Charles, Bremner, Strachan and Viduka, but to sample the finest Indian cuisine in Leeds.
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