There is a particular kind of restaurant snobbery reserved for buildings. We are trained, whether we admit it or not, to expect that good food arrives behind good glass—that the promise of the meal should be legible in the frontage before a single poppadom has been ordered. It is nonsense, of course, and Lily's, located on a busy Manchester road, is the type of establishment that exists specifically to prove this point. Walk past it and you would have every excuse. Walk in, and you would need several new excuses for ever doubting it.

I should confess, before going any further, that I am not a man who eats out for an Indian with any regularity. The reason is domestic rather than critical. Years ago, my sister gave me a set of Mrs Balbir Singh's spices as a birthday present, and since then, our Saturdays at home have changed significantly; preparing a Balbir Singh curry has become a ritual in our house, and once you develop that habit, you lose the desire to seek other options. If you haven't tried her spices, you should; it is not an exaggeration to say you won't look back. This explains why it takes something truly exceptional to persuade me to enter a restaurant that serves this particular cuisine.

Lily's, as it turned out, was something like that.

I have my niece Emma to thank for the tip-off, as regular readers will recognise from these pages before – she who steered me towards Rudy's (A Slice Of Naples Lands In Harrogate — And The Hype, For Once, Is Justified) and who now appears to have appointed herself unofficial ambassador for anywhere in Greater Manchester serving food she considers underrated. She has been telling me for months that I needed to try what she calls one of the best vegetarian and vegan Indian restaurants in the region, with the sort of persistence that eventually gets results. When your niece won't let a restaurant recommendation drop, you learn to listen.

I cannot say whether the man who is about to exchange the Bee Network for Downing Street has ever eaten here. If not, he's running out of time to make Lily's a Manchester habit – and if his diary allows, I'd happily join him for a plate and a conversation before he goes. There are worse places to conduct an exit interview for a mayoralty or an entrance interview for whatever comes next.

What she led us to has a history worth telling properly. Lily's takes its name and essence from Lilawati Sachdev, who founded the business in 1972 with her husband, PG—Lily to him—and now to everyone, a name that has now become known to everyone. She began making all the savoury goods by hand in a small shop on Cotton Street East in Ashton-under-Lyne, and by all accounts, she sold them there with a regularity that must have been both gratifying and exhausting. Her sons Harish and Rajesh joined the business in time, along with their wives Jayshree and Kundan, and the sweets, like the savouries before them, were made fresh by family rather than by formula. Lily herself died before the restaurant that bears her name was established, which lends the place a quiet sort of memorial quality — not solemn, but sincere. The kitchen now draws on chefs trained across North and South India and Rajasthan, and everything, they will tell you and the food will confirm, is prepared fresh.

The service was the sort you notice precisely because it does its job without demanding credit — attentive, precise, and timed so that the food arrived exactly when the appetite was ready for it, with plates warmed properly rather than as an afterthought.

Don't underestimate the vegetable Samosas

Pea kachori & Punjabi samosas

We began, as one should, with too many starters. The vegetable samosas were the ones we underestimated and shouldn't have—phyllo-thin pastry deep-fried into something closer to shatter than crunch, with a filling of potatoes, peas, and carrots, wherein the carrots, in particular, had kept their sweetness intact. They needed nothing else. The coriander sauce sitting alongside them went largely untouched in their case, which is itself a compliment. The pea kachori, round parcels of crushed green pea spiced and encased in pastry, were milder and did better for the chutney's company, and the Punjabi samosas – thicker, drier pastry, mashed potato and peas within – leant on that same vibrant green sauce to do the work the pastry couldn't quite manage alone. Three interpretations of the same idea exist; only one required no help.

Mushroom and spinach with mushroom pilau

Paneer sizzler

Vegetable kolhapuri

The mains held their own without ever shouting about it. A vegetable kolhapuri arrived thick with gravy, green pepper, onion, carrot, cabbage and cashew; aromatic and layered with spice, the nuts offered a textural aside that mattered more than it should have – I did miss the cheese I'd have liked scattered over it, but that is a quibble, not a complaint. The signature sizzler, shared, brought paneer and a vegetable Manchurian built from cabbage, carrot, spring onion and cassava, which those unfamiliar with it will know better as 'yuca'. It had flavour to spare, though the potato element disappointed Emma, who treats this dish as something of a personal benchmark and found it drier than she remembers. The paneer butter masala did what a delicious butter masala should be—creamy and tomato-forward, with a spice level that announces itself gently rather than insists—while the mushroom palak curry undersold itself entirely, tasting considerably better than its appearance suggested, with spinach and mushrooms allowed to speak plainly with an unexpected lift of coriander at the end.

The sides did their job without fuss: mushroom pilau, paratha, and tandoori roti, all competent companions for the curries rather than competing with them.

Irresistible Ras malai

Vegan cheesecake

I talked myself out of dessert and into regret almost immediately, having spotted a carrot halwa with vanilla ice cream and a beetroot variant made with ghee, sugar and cardamom, finished with almonds and pistachios – both will have to wait for a return visit. What I did get, by way of sharing Emma's choice, was Ras malai: two flat milk cakes soaked in cardamom-scented sweet cream, topped with saffron strands and pistachio. It was, without qualification, the standout of the meal — the cardamom doing exactly what cardamom should; the milkiness softening the sweetness rather than compounding it; and the texture fine enough to make the whole thing feel considered rather than default. There was a vegan cheesecake with passion fruit alongside it for those wanting something further from tradition.

We left past a shop counter still busy with people collecting takeaways, the air thick with spice and lentils in a way that made the walk to the car feel unreasonably long.

So, does Lily's beat Balbir Singh on Saturday? I honestly couldn't tell you, and I'm not sure it's a fair fight to referee. One is the comfort of your own kitchen, built over years, seasoned by habit as much as by spice. The other is a family's life's work served to you by people who still make the sweets fresh, in a room you'd never have picked out from the pavement. I went in expecting a good meal that would still leave me glad to be back in my kitchen the following Saturday.

Instead it became the first place in a long while that made me wonder whether the rule needs revisiting. Verdict withheld, pending further research — purely, you understand, in the interests of journalistic thoroughness.

The lesson, if there needs to be one, is the oldest one in this business and the one we keep forgetting: a plain face on a busy road tells you nothing about what's cooking behind it. Lily's unshowy from the pavement and thoroughly convincing from the first bite.

Appearance isn't everything. Here, it isn't even the half of it.

Thumbs Up. Emma and Andrew out and about

Lily's
85 Oldham Rd, Ashton-under-Lyne OL6 7DF
Phone: 0161 339 4774
https://lilysindianvegetarian.co.uk/
Reservations: resdiary.com