Franco Manca

Russell Square | Franco Manca

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Franco Manca | London | Restaurant Review | The Arbuturian

Despite being named as one of London’s best Cheap Eats by Time Out back in 2008, Franco Manca (meaning “Frank’s not here” in Italian, in reference to the pizzeria, Frankie’s, which previously occupied the Brixton site) has retained an underground edge.

I opt for a pizza with courgettes, basil, buffalo ricotta and Frano Lloyd organic pecorino while my friend has Gloucester old spot ham, mozzarella, buffalo ricotta and wild mushrooms on hers (priced at £6.50 and £6.85 respectively).

The approach at Franco Manca is to do a handful of things – typically just half a dozen pizzas plus a couple of options for antipasti and dessert on each day’s menu – but do them really well.

It may have sounded foolish to risk the riots and venture to the end of the District Line for what’s essentially a disc of dough covered in tomato and cheese; however, Franco Manca has elevated straightforward, rustic cuisine into something for which I was prepared to battle past a few plasma TV wielding hoodies.

Franco Manca is a no-frills, wine in tumblers, paper menu sort of venue, but it’s all about those two huge ovens and the delicious, feel good ingredients flipped into them.

Food review: Franco Manca, Upper Street | Eating Out | Islington ...

Franco Manca, which specialises in sourdough pizzas, opened its first restaurant in Brixton in 2008 and now has 39 across the south.

Two chorizo pizzas and two glasses of organic red wine, for example, will set you back just £23.60.

Part of that is down to its brutally simple menu: a choice of seven pizzas with a few starters and desserts shunted to the side, almost in small print.

For the main pizza course, my friend is in no mood to betray the vegan movement.

Her basic tomato, garlic and oregano pizza (£4.95) – with added veggie toppings (ranging from 50p to £1.75) – satisfies as much as my chorizo pizza (£7.55).

New Restaurant Review: Franco Manca in Chiswick | Londonist

No longer simply a South London institution, Brixton's foodie favoured pizzeria - Franco Manca - has opened a second branch in villagey Chiswick.

And if our experience at last night's launch party (the restaurant's actually been open for about a month) is at all representative of what diners can expect, W4 residents and those inclined to travel a bit for quality nosh should rejoice!

We sampled so many gorgeous pizze last night, quaffed some quality organic red wine and had more than a few sips of some particularly tart and tasty home made lemonade.

Service is (or at least was at last night's do) especially friendly, exuding with southern Italian charm.

Franco Manca (number two) is located at 144 Chiswick High Road, W4 IPU.

Franco Manca W4 restaurant review 2013 June London | Pizza ...

Franco Manca in Brixton Market is something of a legend amongst foodies; open only for lunch, people queue around the block to eat its pizzas.

The lovely tiled floor uses tiles (some dating back to the 16th century) from a villa in Naples that was damaged in the earthquake in 1980; piece of damaged tiles are used to decorate the pizza oven.

The pizza oven is a wood-burning “Tufae” oven constructed on the site by builders from Naples, and weighs eight tons, getting to 550C.

Sad foodie that I am, I was there early to ensure that I ate the very first pizza produced from the oven on the restaurant’s first service when it opened.

However, no one wants to eat elaborate food every day, and it is a delight to see someone with such passion trying to produce the very finest pizza that can be made.

Franco Manca North Laine | Brighton Restaurant Reviews ...

Founded in Brixton Market in 2008, Franca Manca's Brighton plot assumes the rustic and gourmet stance of this humble pizzeria with a restaurant plot in North Laine.

A 130 seater restaurant primed for those with a love of all things savoury and doughy, Franco Manca doses the town on only the finest in sourdough pizzas alongside a roster of craft beers and wines in a pastoral, rustic and re-purposed inspired setting.

Expect to gorge on pizzas the likes of their wild broccoli with Gloucester old spot hand sliced sausage and their traditional tomato and mozzarella.

Zia Lucia, restaurant review: Holloway gets a slice of the action ...

According to Pevsner, “the indifferent S. end of Holloway Road has a scatter of decayed minor C19 ribbon development...” It now has boutique coffee and snacky places (La Muse with a butternut squash and halloumi petit dejeuner “vegetariene”) amid the surviving marble masons and autoparts, secondhand furniture shops, a “couture latex” specialist, porn merchants (webuyanyporn.com), and pizza takeaways (City Pizza, featuring the Hawaiian and the Meat Feast).

Simple shelves high on the walls are stocked with bottles and supplies (big cans of Polpapizza and Carciofi Alla Romana) and each table has its bottle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar plus a flask of water filled with a stalk of mint, just enough to give it a little tang.

Yet the pizzas are classy, made from 48-hour slow-fermented sourdoughs, twirled by a showy pizzaiolo and cooked in a fierce wood-fired oven imported from Naples, starting with a Margherita at £6.90 and running up to a lavish Arianna at £10.80 (mozzarella, fresh sausage, taleggio goat cheese, pecorino, truffle honey).

Quite why, if you suffered from it, you would head for pizza nonetheless, when, as Daniel Young points out in his global bible, Where to Eat Pizza, published by Phaidon earlier this year, it is the sticky gluten, often 12 per cent or so, developing in the dough, that gives it its strength and elasticity, seems a question too sad to insist on.

Young, incidentally, also points out that the assumption that buffalo mozzarella is always best for pizza (as it certainly is for salads) is no longer true (“fresh, high-quality cow’s milk mozzarella, with its supreme melting qualities, might now be the more appropriate cheese to cook”).