FOOD REVIEWS can be too long, and invariably boring.
Wisdom tells you that anything deep pan is mostly just flabby bread with plastic fat splayed across the top for people that waddle around Iceland.
The bits about food can get bogged down. The minute intricacies of the basil granita worry me not, I don’t even know what a basil granita is – I’m guessing you don’t either – sounds like a shade of paving.
Sunday morning gone I attempted to read a 157,000 word restaurant review in a national paper and woke up Monday morning face-down in a breakfast burrito (Home Sweet Home, £7, top tucker).
But we've all fallen into wordiness. I'm no better. I recently knocked out over 1000 on a bar. It's enough to make your eyes picket their sockets.
So for that reason, and that for the most part I'm a tart with my food preferences (I’m currently eating a Greggs sausage roll that looks like molten grey play-doh poured into pastry bound by the soggy scales of Psoriasis... enjoying it too), we’re doing a collection of short and sharp, cheap and cheerful reviews. Best Of MCR Cheap Eats, around £5 and 500 words.
Of which I've spent a good part talking drivel. Prat. On we stride.
Slice, Stevenson Square
I’ve often thought Italian street food to be much like watching Alan Titchmarsh on TV. Passable, but mostly uninspiring and repeatedly bobbins.
So I’ve ignored Slice in the past, the pizza-by-the-slice joint on Stevenson Square. I've since flogged myself for it.
Slice, of course, is nothing new. Confidential reviewed it soon after opening in September 2012. But Slice demonstrates the most attractive facet of the Northern Quarter, its ability to throw you a new (even if it’s been there yonks) and stimulating NQ nugget every now and then to tide you over until you stumble across the next.
Slice is my latest squeeze.
The Stevenson Square Piazza
Pizza should be so easy to get right, but rarely is. Wisdom tells you that anything deep pan is mostly just flabby bread with plastic fat splayed across the top for people that waddle around Iceland, while most restaurant attempts are humdrum and worst, synthetic (there are exceptions, but not enough).
Real pizza, real Roman pizza at least (pizza from Naples differs slightly) should be graphene-thin and crisp, with the ingredients up top left to take the lead, without the mush and hubbub of heavy-set dough swamping the flavours below.
In which case, Slice have nailed it. You’d hope so too, the owners spent lengthy spells under a pizza master in Rome to get it just right.
Spicy arrabbiata pizza
My spicy arrabbiata with buffalo mozzarella, rocket and tomato sauce was a slice of Italian finesse, the ingredients sharp but subtle enough up top to allow you to actually taste the quality of the fresh, crispy base beneath.
I'd buoyed the lunch with a wedge of focaccia bread, which unlike the pizza, needs to be thick like an orthopaedic mattress for a Rhino with a dicky back. This slab with leek and pancetta, was light, chewy, fluffy and near faultless.
Topping that off (notch that one), this is cheap fare - under £3 a helping - with bob-on service, keen as mustard, my lunch was carried out as I basked on the Stevenson piazza.
Hum O Sole Mio and squint hard enough at the graffitied bohème in the centre of the square and you could almost be sat outside San Lorenzo's Formula Uno pizzeria in Rome. Until the no.118 roars past coughing like Dot Cotton. By taste and pocket then, perhaps.
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ALL OUR SCORED FOOD REVIEWS ARE IMPARTIAL AND PAID FOR BY MANCHESTER CONFIDENTIAL. REVIEW VISITS ARE UNANNOUNCED AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT OF ANY COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIP.
Rating: 16/20 (Remember venues are rated against the best examples of their kind; fine dining against the best fine dining, cafes against the best cafes)
Food: 8/10
Service: 4/5
Ambience: 4/5
Slice
Slice
