RISE AND SHINE FOR CARLUCCIO’S NEW BREAKFAST MENU
| 16th April 2018
It’s not often that you’ll found me awake before 12pm. If I am, you wouldn’t be too mad to think it was for a special occasion. Today’s special occasion? Trying Carluccio’s new breakfast and brunch menu at their Spinningfields branch.
The first Carluccio’s was a humble Italian food shop founded by the late Antonio Carluccio in 1991, but it expanded as a full restaurant at the start of the new millennial. The premise was simple, authentic Italian food at sensible prices. His motto was “Mof mof”, minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour, and he once wrote in his best-selling cookbooks that “If it doesn’t need to be decorated, don’t decorate it”.
Antonio had no working connection with the firm at the later stages of his life, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell. The identity is still there, not just as definitively Italian but as the embodiment of the values of its celebrity creator.
This appears to be the main use of the deli counter we spot when we enter the restaurant: to brand the experience and make you feel that you’re eating something that the loveable Antonio would have made.
The staff are lovely and respectable when we arrive at 11am on the Monday morning. They pass us the new breakfast menu, an A4 sheet full of traditional and contemporary dishes. There’s a surplus of new veggie and vegan options to suit the food trend which is sweeping the nation right now.
The Vegan Magnifica offers Baked borlotti beans with grilled yellow courgette, tomato, spinach and toasted ciabatta for £8.95. The Vegetarian Magnifica is much the same but with an added portion of eggs, and if it’s meat that’s calling you, you can stick to the staple Tradizionale with grilled smokey pancetta which all comes to the same price.
Other than that, the menu is fairly straightforward and basic. Nutella and almond croissants on the pastry section. Beans, eggs and sausage for extras. How very continental.
We tried the new Italian French toast which fuses soft panettone with fresh ricotta-yoghurt, honey and cinnamon. (£7.75). It’s a pretty small dish and owes a lot to the raspberries and blueberries which bring in all the flavour with their conflicting sweet and sourness.
Granola and Yoghurt (£5.25) and Porridge (£4.75) are also new items on the menu, but seem a bit costly for coffee shop items you could net at the Starbucks two minutes away for half the price.
We also ordered the Eggs Royale – the most pricey single dish on the menu at £8.75. A large plate with smoked salmon, poached eggs, hollandaise and ciabatta arrived 10 minutes later. It’s a perfect indulgent breakfast and it’s easy to understand the price when you taste it. The eggs were perfectly poached and served on a thick and beautifully toasted slice of artisan bread. The smoked salmon was clearly of high quality but it still felt like there was not enough to fill me up unfortunately.
We ended our brunch the only way you should, with cocktails! The Bellini’s are relatively cheap at only £6.95 and the liqueur and Prosecco mix made us feel giddy even that early in the morning.
I’ll tell you what, I’d definitely start getting up before 12pm if Carluccio’s Bellini’s were involved more often…
Carluccio’s
Hardman Square, 1 Hardman St, Manchester M3 3EB