Two very special Manchester banquets will take place next month at Manchester’s Italian food festival Festa Italiana.
Running from 27-29 August, the free-to-attend festival will bring a host of street food traders and fine Italian produce, as well as a brand new movie screen showing Italian film classics to Manchester’s Cathedral Gardens.
It’s now been revealed the festival will also welcome some of the UK’s top Italian TV chefs to host two ultra-indulgent, ticketed dining events designed to showcase the very best of Italian cooking.
This year’s Festa will incorporate a brand new movie screen showing Italian film classics / Image: Festa Italiana
Taking place on 28 and 29 August, three top Italian TV chefs will be coming down across two evenings to prepare and serve three courses of authentic Italian cuisine from the Festa’s open dining space.
The first banquet, which kicks off at 7.30pm on the Saturday, will be hosted by Gennaro Contaldo (of Saturday Kitchen, Two Greedy Italians, Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast fame) and Giancarlo Caldesi (Return to Tuscany, Saturday Kitchen, Sunday Brunch).
These legendary Italian chefs and authors will join Salvi’s owner and festival founder Maurizio Cecco in the kitchen for an evening of live cooking and feasting, talking their guests through the evening’s menu and answering questions as they go.
Gennaro Contaldo, of Saturday Kitchen, Two Greedy Italians, Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast fame, will be cooking at one of the dinners alongside Giancarlo Caldesi / Image: Festa Italiana
On the following evening (Sunday 29 August) Maurizio will be joined by another Italian foodie icon – San Carlo’s executive chef Aldo Zilli.
An award-winning restaurateur in his own right, Zilli has appeared on numerous UK TV shows such as The One Show, This Morning and Celebrity Masterchef – not to mention having created some absolute star dishes for glitzy Italian restaurant favourite San Carlo in recent years.
The view from the banqueting area at the last Festa Italiana / Image: Festa Italiana
On both nights the renowned chefs will prepare and serve three courses of authentic Italian cuisine for their guests from inside the Festa’s open dining space.
Menus are being kept strictly under wraps for now, but we are expecting big things from these top-class foodies.
Tickets are on sale now for £65 which includes a welcome drink on arrival. We don’t expect they’ll be around for long, given the star-studded line-up that Festa has pulled in this year.
If you want to get your hands on one, you can do so here.
Food & Drink
Lively Irish pub Nancy Spains set to open in Manchester for the first time
Daisy Jackson
An Irish bar famed for its live music is heading up to Manchester for the first time, and is promising £2.50 pints to lure us in.
Nancy Spains will be venturing out of London for the first time promising to bring the ‘ultimate traditional Irish pub experience’ to the Northern Quarter.
If you were to ask what the hottest trend in hospitality is right now the answer would, apparently, be Guinness. We’re drowning in the stuff.
This latest opening is more about Murphy’s, another Irish stout, than Guinness (they actually won’t serve Guinness at all) but the craic will be much the same.
Nancy Spains is actually set to open almost directly opposite the aforementioned Salmon of Knowledge, taking over the former Corner Boy unit on Stevenson Square in the heart of Manchester.
To celebrate its opening, the pub will be serving its first 5000 pints of Murphy’s for just £2.50, so that it can show off the atmosphere that’s established it as ‘one of London’s favourite pubs’.
They’re promising an array of Irish whiskeys behind the bar, live music performances, and a lively late-night setting.
Nancy Spains was set up by three brothers who travelled all over their home county of rural Kerry researching Irish pubs, before launching two venues down in London.
They want it to balance a traditional pub with the vibrancy of the city.
Peter O’Halloran, co-founder of Nancy Spains commented, “We’re so excited to be launching in Manchester, bringing Nancy Spains to the heart of the Northern Quarter.
“After the success of our two venues in London, it was only right to bring Nancy Spains’ infectious spirit and Irish pride to Manchester. Slainte!”
Nancy Spains will open its first Manchester pub on Saturday 15 March at 21 Hilton Street.
Lucky Mama’s – The Italian restaurant serving pasta in a dough bowl and ‘pregnant’ pizzas
Daisy Jackson
Lucky Mama’s is a local sensation, thanks to its slightly whacky but delicious Italian creations like pasta served in a bowl made of pizza dough and its latest offering, a ‘pregnant’ pizza.
What on Earth is a pregnant pizza, you ask? Firstly we should stress this is a nickname we’ve bestowed upon the dish, rather than Lucky Mama’s chosen branding.
But essentially it’s a helping of fresh pasta that’s folded into the bubble crust of the pizza, like a half-calzone.
Lucky Mama’s started life when founders Mamadou Dhiam and Gaby Santos set up a trailer in their backyard in Eccles in the depths of lockdown.
But thanks to a formidably loyal following that’s spread the word of Lucky Mama’s far and wide, it now has two pretty pink restaurants in Greater Manchester.
Back in 2022, they threw open the doors to their Chorlton restaurant, before returning back to home turf for spot number two in Monton in 2024.
The recipes are fresh and pretty authentically Italian up until the last step, when they throw a curveball by loading their pasta into unconventional vessels.
‘Pregnant’ pizzas at Lucky Mama’sTraditional Roman pizzasLucky Mama’s pink restaurant in Chorlton
Their pasta pizza bowls are what they’re best known for and they fly out of the kitchen – this is where pizza dough is placed around a metal bowl before being baked in an oven.
Then it’s piled high with freshly made pasta, with popular flavours like cacio e pepe, mushroom alfredo, and rasta pasta.
Pasta is available in a regular ceramic bowl too.
You’ll find Lucky Mama’s at 565 Barlow Moor Road in Chorlton; and 217 Monton Road in Eccles.
Georgina Pellant -
30th July 2021 
