In Manchester, just a glimpse of Richard Carver, reassuring in scale and often lightly floured, is enough to cause a Pavlovian reaction. See him near an oven? You’ll want a pizza.
The association is born of the justifiable popularity of his sourdough pizza business Honest Crust. A favourite at Altrincham’s Market House since it opened in 2013, it now has five North West spots and a case to answer for the dominance of the foldable, floppy Neapolitan style in Manchester’s abundantly blessed pizza scene.
But Proloco, Carver’s new venture with serial founder Dan Hope, is different business. With head chef Ruby Tuesday Ward working on sharing plates, Carver is on the sharing pies: vast 18-inch pizzas with crisp bases and crusts you know you’ve eaten, emanating from an electric deck oven rather than the familiar wood-burning alien craft.
On pulsating Great Ancoats Street (as dual carriageways go, it’s Manchester’s most fashionable), Proloco occupies an open, comfortable space. It’s dominated by a communal table, big speakers and long run of bar and kitchen where all the dishes are an expression of Carver and team’s much-nurtured relationships with producers. Flour is grown and milled in the north by single-minded bakers Lovingly Artisan, veg suppliers include local market garden Cinderwood, and organic milk comes from Strickley Farm in the Lake District.
A bit like the road outside, the menu has two tracks: go all in for a gigantic pizza (from £17 for a marinara to around £30 for more evolved ’seasonal’ pies like smoked eel with courgettes and pine nuts) or festoon the table with small plates. Reader, we did both.
Going half-and-half on toppings (for an extra £2.50) works well; we split the base between fennel salami, dotted with little piles of capery dressing and slivers of Spenwood, and boldly simple tomato butter pie, with golden stretchmarks where cultured butter had melted into an utterly tomatoey sauce. The plate tectonics of a thin, crisp base moving under richly oozy toppings are something to both conjure and grapple with. To dip the crusts (well-structured, with a roundly wheaty flavour), there’s green goddess dressing, aioli or the fermented punch of chilli vinegar.
With the pizza elevated on a metal stand, there’s room on the table for small plates, all of them sensationally appealing. Anchovy gonfietti, little balls of fried anchovy dough, are moreishly dense and chewy and lifted by a vinegar note; similarly, a salad of Kuri squash with cobnut and Durrus (they really know how to pick their cheeses) is mined with saucy, sour red fruit – pickled damsons, perhaps. There’s a contrasting elegance in little squares of panelle topped with crab and cucumber, a restrained canapé before slice fever sets in.
Service is simultaneously cool – welcome to Ancoats, baby – and gorgeously warm, and the drinks list is neat. As well as £7 negronis and easy house wines by the glass, there are full-booze and AF versions of Sonoma’s Pale Ale and Arosa Helles, removing the need to compromise. The same confidence is evident in the dessert menu, which extends to two gelatos (fudgy, slightly granular fig leaf or bright, sweet plum and ricotta) and a fruit sorbet. Despite being newly minted, it’s already running like clockwork, and despite Manchester already being riddled with pizza, we’ve definitely got room for Proloco.
Emma Sturgess is a Manchester-based food and travel writer and journalist, whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Grocer and Metro.
WHERE 74 Great Ancoats Street, Manchester M4 5GU
FOLLOW @proloco.mcr
BOOK proloco.uk
