PIZZA Wars? Is the burger about to take a back seat as the cheap eat of choice for the hipster clan? Big question. We only ask because we are loaded with dough our toppings seem to be running over at the moment.
Ply, the delightful ‘bar/creative space’ that has finally opened its doors in Stevenson Square, has built its food offering firmly around a wood-fired oven imported from Naples. It’s called Ply because because everything appears to be made of plywood apart from that ‘disco ball’ oven.
I attended one of their soft launch nights and the pizzas were extraordinarily good – the base (very important) almost on a par with those at a Slow Food movement Italian place I visited in Nice recently. Ply pizza prices range from £8 to £11.50, the latter sum getting you a ‘Brunch Special, available on Sundays, featuring tomato, mozzarella, smoked pancetta, fennel sausage, portobello, egg or an intriguing sounding Artichoke and Pig's Cheek with tomato, mozzarella, smoked pig’s cheek, artichoke, chilli (£12).
The same day came news that street food stalwart Rudys Pizzas is settling down in Ancoats. Their permanent home is in the The Fairbairn Building on Cotton Street, previously home to Guerrilla Eats, and they expect to be in by July, along with fellow indie neighbours, Goose Fat & Wild Garlic.
Rudys duo Jim Morgan and Kate Wilson say they are planning an open kitchen with an Italian dome pizza oven, serving 30 covers. They also point out the appropriateness of the location – an emigrant area around St Peter’s Church once known as Little Italy. The operation is named after their dog, Rudy.
To get a taste of Rudys Pizzas, along with some other great pop-up grub, visit the Blackjack Brewery for their latest Brewtap Bash, on the weekend of March 27-29 at their site at 36 Gould Street, Manchester, M4 4RN.
This same weekend sees the Alt. Festival of Food and a good excuse to taste pizzas from another of the real contenders in the region. Honest Crust’s wood-burning pizza oven is a fixture in the iconic Altrincham Market House. My favourite pizza created by Crust’s Richard Carver (pictured below) is Atomica! (£9) with its simple topping of spicy ‘nduja sausage, tomato and mozzarella.
Their sourdough dough is fermented for a minimum of 36 hours. The only ingredients are flour, water and salt. Each pizza is stretched by hand and blasted at 450c for less than 90 seconds in the oven. Ingredients for the toppings are scrupulously sourced, too.
We’d expect the same attention to detail when Solita supremo Franco Sotgiu opens his ‘authentic’ Italian pizza parlour (he is of Sardinian origin, which helps) in late summer on a site not a million miles apparently from his original Northern Quarter Solita site.
"Think trestle tables, Italian beers, wood fired Neapolitan-style pizzas and a first for the North, pizza al metro – pizza by the metre," says Franco, never one to think small.
Meanwhile if you are in the NQ and a pizza urge overtakes you there’s always Dough on the corner of Thomas Street and High Street or the more basic Slice on Stevenson Square, but I’d definitely suggest Ply is now out-topping the opposition!
Let Taste of Manchester know your favourite pizza spot.
