Italia Manchester

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin….

Once upon a time, there was a young lady, very much enamoured of a young man. This young couple went on a date, their second to be precise, at a little Italian restaurant, recommended by the young man as he’d been there many times as both child and teen, taken by his parents.

The restaurant was family run, with friendly staff, red checked table cloths and the ubiquitous rattan covered red wine bottle, candle sitting inside. The only thing, *mumble mumble* years on that this now not so young lady can recall was a seafood salad, pizza and gazing into her young man’s eyes.

Now this little restaurant is undergoing a little bit of a regeneration. Enough so that my, now not so young man and I wanted to visit and see how much it had changed. Our hope, not too much.

Greeted by a handsome young waiter on arrival, we were swiftly seated and able to survey the room. Clean and white, it still retains it’s late 1970s character and we were rather pleased. We even spent a lot of the evening trying to pick out where we were seated all those years ago (we think we were towards the front of the room, on a table for two, Mr GFB facing the kitchen, whilst I faced outside).

But enough reminiscing. The real test was going to be the food. Had it become too new? Too modern?

For starter, I went with something simple, Nduja bruschetta – similar to the Spanish Sobrasada, it’s spicy cured pork, soft and spreadable. Mr GFB chose Zuppa di cozze – Mussel soup, served in the Sardinian style, with a pizza base covering the dish to steam the mussels.

My bruschetta on homemade bread, was perfectly spicy, meaty with the bread losing none of it’s toasted texture, despite the nature of the topping. Mr GFB’s soup was a sight to behold, mussels in a tomato soup – the description of which does it no justice at all. It was tomatoes, capers and chilli mixing with the flavour of the mussels, the pizza base topping serving as bread to be dipped into the soup.

Onto our mains. I chose seafood, with the Linguine vongole, simply linguine with clams and Mr GFB choosing the much lauded (by twitter fans at least) Pappardelle ragu di cinghiale – 12 hour braised wild boar ragu with pappardelle pasta.

Both arrived swiftly and prettily. The linguine was perfect – the effect you get with good Italian pasta where there’s a creaminess to the dish when no cream has touched it. It’s what I aim for when cooking at home, but rarely achieve.

The ragu, seen here with a covering of Grano Padano, was exactly what you’d hope for; meaty, strong and so good Mr GFB overcame his usual British reserve and asked for a doggie bag when he couldn’t finish it (or at least not without compromising on room for dessert).

In deference to our first visit, we headed to ice cream for dessert –  to be honest, we can’t remember what we did have back in 2002 – but in all likelihood, it was either tiramisu or icecream. Given that it’s Cabrelli ice cream, it was a no-brainer.

With vanilla and mince pie ice cream for me (well it was Twelfth Night) and vanilla, chocolate and strawberry for Mr GFB (a nod to his childhood Neopolitan), it was a fantastic end to the evening. The mince pie ice cream was perfect not too heavy on the flavour, mixing with the vanilla in every creamy mouthful. Judging from the silence and happy grins from Mr GFB, he was remembering family dinners.

So overall? True it’s had a face lift, but like any ageing lady, a little nip here, tuck there, and like the work of any good Hollywood plastic surgeon, it’s been done with a delicate hand and the restaurant retains it’s charm. We were able to be happily nostalgic and not just feel relieved that it’s still the place we had our second date, but happy that it’s one we can revisited for our now old married couple dates.