Mahboob Hussain backs Channel 4 special on Stockport Pyramid
Mahboob Hussain has backed a Channel 4 one-off special about Royal Nawaab Pyramid, the stockport pyramid restaurant described as the world’s biggest curry house. The programme, The World’s Biggest Curry Restaurant, turns a single site into the story of a business that serves more than 500,000 diners a year.
Royal Nawaab Pyramid
Royal Nawaab Pyramid sits inside a restored 37-metre-high pyramid beside a Stockport highway, a site that had been abandoned for the best part of a decade before the restaurant revived it. Hussain created the business and oversees its operation, and the restaurant now serves up to 6,000 customers a day.
The scale is measured in supplies as much as covers. The weekly produce bill reaches £100,000, while the kitchen uses 520kg of rice, 5,000 poppadoms and 220kg of spices each week. It also employs more than 150 staff and hosts as many as nine weddings and events every weekend.
Mahboob Hussain
Hussain’s route to the business began far from Stockport. He emigrated from Pakistan at 15, worked in the mills of Bradford and opened his first restaurant at 28. By the 1980s, he had pioneered the luxury buffet concept and later expanded to the Canary Islands.
Bilal, the restaurant’s marketing director, said that during filming Hussain sent back food prepared for 200 people when he was not in the building. Bilal also said Hussain spotted mistakes on FaceTime and sent back 190 canapés. The special places Hussain’s standards at the centre of the programme, rather than just the scale of the site itself.
Channel 4 special
The documentary also points to the restaurant’s unusual position in the current market. Royal Nawaab Pyramid is presented as a business still growing during a cost-of-living crisis, with guests travelling from the US and across Europe to eat there. For viewers, the immediate question is not whether the building is large, but how a restaurant of this size keeps its service, events and supply chain moving day after day.
