The Mango Tree, Hanley - History
The Ivy House public house was rescued from the gutter of almost disrepair in May 2006. It was a big challenge to change The Ivy House into a stylish contemporary restaurant because it had been left empty and desolate for over a year, vandals had taken there toll on the public house!!
It was the intention to give Staffordshire something new, fresh and different. We wanted to go away from the traditional curry house, with the mosaic carpet and stained glass windows to match making you feel so dizzy it put you off your meal and if that wasn’t bad enough the candles in the old wine bottles that are so dusty you can write your name in them!! Most people that go to a curry house never try anything new; curries are scary things when you are paying for something you might not like. So that’s where we decided to be different……buffet style, genius!! You can eat what you like and try the different curries, if you don’t like it get it taken away and get something else. With this genius idea and a contemporary restaurant we knew we had what the customer wanted!
We aimed high and achieved our goal after over a year of hard graft. We cannot thank the building team, electricians, kitchen fitters, joiners, plumbers and plasterers enough. Without their hard work we would not have made it what it is.
The hardest part was still to come……what could be harder than what we had put ourselves through renovating the place I hear you ask!! Well we had the building, the old Ivy House, now our new stylish, unbelievably amazing restaurant and the poor thing had no name!!! Here are some of the names we thought of….please don’t laugh!!
‘Rubby Murry’ (we know you like your curry)
‘Sagaar’ (Don’t ask what it means…even we don’t know!! It was the name of a Bollywood film we liked)
‘Raaj Ville’ (After our family name Raja)
‘Shaan’ (Shaan means Pride in Urdu)
‘The Mango Tree’ (Was chosen because we knew nobody would ask what it meant!!!)
So now we had the name we had to open, the date was set and the grand opening took place. 2 years on and we haven’t looked back, The Mango Tree continues to go from strength to strength with fantastic feedback from customers and the authorities. We were recently awarded an Environmental Health Authority Certificate and we are proud to say we are the only restaurant in Hanley to have one!!! The Mango Tree has proved to be so popular we decided to extend and open another Mango Tree in Draycott, but that’s another story!!