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Chef-founders (ex-Petersham Nurseries and Sager and Wilde) Chris Leach and Smokestak’s David Carter will be shutting up shop in Soho and moving their British-Italian restaurant Manteca to Shoreditch in November. Taking over the old Pizza Express site on Curtain Road, the focus will be on nose-to-tail cooking, in-house freshly made bread, hand-rolled pasta and fire-cooked cuts to share.
Following a series of successful pop-ups in central London, Manteca’s first bricks-and-mortar site will have a glass-panelled hanging room to showcase their in-house whole animal butchery, and serve an evolved menu of dishes inspired by Chris’s travels throughout Italy.
Eat your way through its mighty impressive launch menu. We’ve got our eye on what looks to be the best charcuterie selection in London, the signature salumi plate features freshly sliced meats such as fennel-pollen salame, black pepper, lambrusco salami, coppa, ’nduja and more from the hanging room. Starters will include favourite dishes such as pig-head fritti, apple mostarda, ’nduja steamed mussels, cream, parsley and sourdough, and pickled-chilli-and-duck sausage. Bigger eats include the thick-cut Oxford Sandy and Black pork chop, and whole wood-roasted sea bream. The pasta is what most punters rave about, with good reason because with a line-up like tonnarelli, brown-crab cacio e pepe, fazzoletti duck ragù, and seaweed tagliatelle with smoked seaweed butter it’s no wonder. To wash everything down, there’s a concise and carefully considered selection of aperitivi and amaro cocktails, with a house amaro made using artichoke leaves and camomile, so nothing goes to waste.
Manteca will officially open its doors on November 16 and bookings go live from midday on October 27. Book here.
49-51 Curtain Rd, EC2A 3PT.
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