Helen Bakery

Stockport Rd (opposite North Western Street/diagonal to the Nawaab monstrosity),
Levenshulme,
Manchester M19 3WN

Naan: four naans for £1
Keema Naan: £2

I finally get to scratch off a place on my I Want To Go There list.  Helen Bakery has to be the strangest place I have visited since beginning this blog.  The premise is that it serves only two things: Naan and Keema Naan.  The shop is divided in two by the counter top.  Behind the counter top is a tandoor oven and a man continuously making naans from little balls of dough.  Watch him, he's mesmerising.  In front of the counter are a couple of stools and a poster for a dodgy garage on an industrial estate.  This is not somewhere you will be hanging out for hours on end; this is somewhere you go to get delicious, pillowy, freshly baked naans hot from the oven, and then leave.

The keema naan is essentially a pizza.  It is a naan topped with a paste of keema (mince), tomato and spices, then heated and scattered with some green chillies and maybe some veg if there's some in the kitchen.  It is delicious and will make you fat.  But gloriously so.  And as it is only £2, it is a cheap lunch, dinner, or pre-meal snack, depending on the state of your impending obesity.

Should you be in Levenshulme (or, given how good it is, the entire A6 corridor) and in search of a bread-based snack, Helen Bakery is where you need to go.