Ciaooo Loaded Garlic Bread - yes it’s a long name - hasn’t been open long. Days, in fact. But such is the general universal love for garlic bread, as Peter Kay once (well, more than once) bellowed, it’s already gone a bit viral.
For background, Ciaooo already has an excellent pizzeria on Swan Street, known for its drool-inducing, heavily-topped Neapolitan style pies which regularly get plastered all over Instagram. They also owned the penis waffle place, Mr Dick, on Shudehill.
Mr Dick also went viral - for want of a better phrase - last year, thanks to its genitalia-shaped waffles, which were covered in icing and sprinkles and hoovered up by the hen and stag crowd. It sadly did not last, and so they’ve now shipped in some ovens and made the spot into a pizzeria instead.
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But it’s a pizzeria with a slight difference, in that it’s gone heavy on the garlic breads. If you’ve been to Ciaooo, you will have seen a few of these already - the cacio e pepe garlic bread, the nduja honey garlic bread, the truffle garlic bread among them.
All are replicated in this new space, plus a few more besides, and there are daily specials being devised too. On the day I stopped by this week, it was wild garlic, cheese and Hot Cheetos. They had me at wild garlic and then lost me again with Hot Cheetos.
But still, with a pair of teens on half term who’d already shot me a ‘that’s a stupid question’ look when asked if they wanted to go to a restaurant that specialises in garlic bread, lunch was still a pretty wild success.
OK, so the ‘garlic bread restaurant’ thing is a little bit of a stretch. These are pizzas really, mostly minus the tomato sauce, but frankly who’s counting?
They also do ‘pizzette’, small pizzas, but actually, they’re not particularly small and when you consider they’re coming in at between £5 and £7, these might just be some of the best value pizzas in the city.
But are they any good? In a word, yes. In four? Yes, very good indeed. You can take out, or eat in at the few booths at the back, but this is a half a kitchen roll job, so be warned. Faces were slathered in oozing garlic butter within seconds of the boxes being slid onto the table.
The nduja honey (£6.50) was a slick of sweet and sticky honey, stringy cheese and spicy sausage, though the garlic butter was a little lost among the other strong flavours, but who cares, really. It was fantastic.
You could smell ‘the truffle’ (£5.50), with marinara sauce, garlic butter and truffle oil, well before it arrived at the table. Let’s say they were not shy with the latter. It too was excellent, the dough airy, packed with bubbles and charred on top.
The pesto (£6.50), covered liberally - possibly too liberally - in garlic butter, bright green pesto, parmesan and a big blob of creamy burrata in the middle was a stunner, as was a salami and chorizo pizzette, again for £6.50.
Oh, and that’s forgetting about the thick slab of deep fried lasagne (£5), which was torn apart in a few seconds, though a little meat ragu in there wouldn’t have gone amiss. Happy to be corrected, but I can’t think of a better value pizza in the city right now, and certainly not for the quality going on here.
So while we do all miss the penis-shaped waffles, of course we do, I think we can all agree that everyone prefers garlic bread. Much better.
Ciaooo Loaded Garlic Bread, 93-95 Shudehill, Manchester M4 4AN
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