What is a parmo?

A parmo is a chicken breast butterflied and beaten flat, breadcrumbed, fried, then covered in a white béchamel sauce, buried in cheese and finished under a hot grill. It comes out as a wide golden slab with a browned, bubbling top, usually served with chips and salad. Most people eat one with a fork and give up halfway through, which is the correct response.

If you grew up in Bradford you probably know it as a parmesan. Teesside calls it a parmo. Same dish, two names, and both are used on our menu because people ask for both.

Why is it called a parmesan when there's no parmesan in it?

Because it is a descendant of the American-Italian dish chicken parmesan, which does use parmesan. The British version swapped the tomato sauce and hard cheese for béchamel and a mild melting cheese, usually cheddar, and kept the name. The name travelled; the ingredients did not.

Where the parmo came from

The dish is credited to Nicos Harris, who opened a restaurant called The American Grill in Middlesbrough after the Second World War and adapted chicken parmesan for a British kitchen. The late 1950s is the date usually given. From there it became a Teesside institution, the thing you eat at the end of a night out, and over the following decades it worked its way across the north.

How it reached West Yorkshire

Parmos arrived in Bradford through takeaways rather than restaurants, which is why the local spelling drifted towards parmesan and why so many of the city's parmo shops are also pizza shops. By the 2020s Bradford had a dozen or more places doing them, and the dish had stopped being a northeastern curiosity and become ordinary Friday food.

What makes a Bradford parmo different

Teesside parmos are mostly variations on the original: plain, pepperoni, doner, hot shot. Bradford put its own kitchen behind the dish, and the result is a menu that would confuse someone in Middlesbrough:

• Lahori and Kashmiri. Desi spicing worked into the sauce, with the heat built in rather than drizzled on.
• Chicken balti. A mild curry base under the cheese, which sounds wrong and is not.
• Istanbul. Turkish doner across the top, a hand-me-down from the city's kebab shops.
• Inferno. Naga and scotch bonnet, for the people who order the hottest thing on every menu on principle.

That crossover is the genuinely Bradford part. The dish is northeastern, the flavours are local, and the combination only exists here.

Which parmo should you order first?

If you have never had one, order the Original. It is the honest version, and it tells you whether a kitchen can actually make a parmo or is hiding a thin chicken breast under toppings. Once you know what the baseline tastes like:

• Want heat? Hot Shot, our best seller, where the chilli runs through the sauce.
• Want desi? Lahori if you like it hot, Chicken Balti if you do not.
• Want comfort? Philadelphia or Creamy Garlic Supreme.
• Feeding a group? Meat Feast and a tub of parmo sauce for the chips.

How to tell a good parmo from a bad one

Four things:

• The chicken. One beaten-flat breast, not reformed, and not so thin it disappears.
• The crumb. Still crisp when it reaches you, which means it was fried to order and not sat waiting.
• The sauce. Béchamel should taste of something. Flour and water is the commonest shortcut.
• The grill. The cheese should be browned in patches, not merely melted.

Everything on our board is cooked when you order it, which is why we ask for a few minutes rather than handing you something from a hot shelf.

Eat one in Bradford

We are at 12 Mannville Terrace, BD7 1BA, open every day from 11:30am to 11pm, with seventeen parmos on the board. Dine in, call 01274 726218 to collect, or order on Uber Eats.