46 Blossom Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 6BF.
VEGAN OPTIONS: Not listed on menu, check with server.
CUISINE: Pasta, Italian, Southern Italian.
ATMOSPHERE: Date night, Dinner with Friends, Casual.
PRICE: ££
The greatest test of an Italian restaurant comes with the recommendation of a friend in the day after a visit. It is the singular occasion in life where the sincerity of words can be smelled. If the endorsement doesn’t arrive with a pungent redolence of sour garlic and olive oil, you know a chef somewhere has failed at serving them up a truly great Italian meal. There is something primordial about pasta: in never feeling phased by an intimidatingly large portion, in relishing in the sharp and sour smells your skin is macerating in, in the unadulterated joy of eating it. That draw is stronger than pheromones.
This is how I came across Sugo Pasta Kitchen in 2015, when it’s teeth were being cut on Altrincham’s Shaws Road with the opening of their first restaurant, stuck in a car with a colleague who was labouring all of their consonants to fill the air with garlic to show just how good the fledgling restaurant was. A new branch opened in Ancoats last year, and with a larger site closer to the city center Sugo Pasta Kitchen’s bite became harder and hungrier.
Both restaurants feature the same big, wooden, sharing tables along with a few smaller places set for a slightly more intimate dining experience. The open plan concepts are each kept warm with golden lighting and feel decorous but pleasant. The acoustics of the Ancoats site can get a little loud as the service busies, but it’s the only obvious downside of the seating concept.
The seasonally changing menus at Sugo never seem to feature a devoted vegan option, although the vast majority of ovo-lacto vegetarian dishes can be adapted to suit an animal-free diet upon request. Our particularly knowledgeable server on this visit knows the ingredients like that Streets song: what’s their name, where they’re from, what they’re [grown] on. The staff are clearly passionate about the food and drink they make and serve, and are without pretension as recommendations are made and our dumb questions answered. The wine lists are well matched to the menu, the beers on offer are specifically made for the restaurant by Brightside Brewery and the soft drinks list features all of the Italian essentials (like Chinotto san pelly).
I order Bruschetta and Strasciante from the vegan options which are listed to us for the season as follows:
Bruschetta ‘Pugliese’ with wild broccoli and fava puree (£6.50)
Strascinate with broad beans, wild fennel, Pugliese ex virgin oil (£12)
Orecchiette ‘pomodoro’ with san Marzano toms (£11)
Sicilian fennel, olive, orange and chicory salad (£5.50)
Broccolini with garlic, chilli and pangrattato (£5.50)
In the primo course the flavours of Southern Italy are raucous. Out are the bouldery chunks usually named as bruschetta and in is this oil doused allotment on toast. The textures are al dente and woven into each other while the flavours interleave to create a uniform taste of spring. The fava puree, olive oil and bread are warming and acidic, while the freshly sprung green mess on top of the dish lays on a calming, nutrient-filled poultice to smooth everything over and add a pleasing, meaty, denseness to the antipasto. Everything on the plate is ripe and pungent, the Apulia olive oil surprisingly so.
Next comes the main event: Strascinate with broad beans as big as gnocchi and wild fennel doused in more of the Pugliese olive oil from the first course. The chalky, drying quality of the beans could be compensated for a little better following the omission of the ricotta to make the dish Vegan. Yet as uncommon a meal as this is to see in a pasta restaurant, it is everything Italian food should be. The bowl is seasonal and fresh, garlicy and gargantuan, full of good fat and good salt. As I dig in the drastically high quality of the strascinate is apparent, the pasta is formed and prepared flawlessly. Scooping up every flavour in the little discs with each bite, I’m also struck by how subtle and well administered the anise flavors from the fennel are in contrast to the rest of the bowl. It offers the much-craved tang that green and white pasta dishes can often lack, but doesn’t interrupt any of that exceedingly good olive oil, or overpower the starchy pasta flavour which provides a balancing block to the fresher notes.
Too often as a vegan diner in Italian restaurants you’re left with a soggy plate of tomatoes and packet pasta while your friends feast on aged sausage, fine burrata and freshly made egg dough, but Sugo Pasta Kitchen tears through the dross as an excellent choice for groups of friends and as a smooth, casual, haunt for more intimate nights out. The drinks are excellent and the food is as good as you could hope to find in Manchester.
LINKS:
Web: https://www.sugopastakitchen.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sugopastakitchen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sugopastakitchenMCR/
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