Ciaooo by the SLICE — Local services in Manchester

Highly Instagram able garlic bread and pizzette. If taking photos of your food is the primary concern, this place is presumably excellent because it looks great.

Looks can be deceiving though. The mac and cheese (in fairness calling it that instead of macaroni cheese should've been a hint) used on their Loaded Garlic Bread was cheap nasty stuff. Actually otherwise I think toppings were generally of high quality and pretty well thought out. Mixing nduja, salami, Burrata and honey is a really good idea and the quality of ingredients is good.

The staff were very friendly and the waiting was not at all overlong.

But the dough. This might pass unnoticed for a lot of people, and it's perfectly tasty/edible. But someone is going to get excited about having cannotto style pizze here and then get a sense of unease. The dough looks like 55% hydration stuff by how it was being manipulated, and the (electric) ovens go to 350°C. So unfortunately purely using yeast fermentation these crusts are impossible. Especially as the pizze cook over 4 or 5 minutes. Crust bounce back and structure confirmed my suspicions. There are raising agents in the dough. Not a problem per se, perdly safe, but you don't get the fermented dough flavour complexity and the digestibility is affected.

These are not bad pizze, the one I had was perfectly pleasant and the staff were lovely. But the expectation of a true modern cannotto pizza in Neapolitan style was built, and I suspect ciaooo were somewhat complicit in this deception, or at least we're happy to...

Went to this place after seeing some instagram posts identifying it as a place to try. Yes, their product is very photogenic, but it is food and so it is all about the taste. Unfortunately, this was lacking. As was the atmosphere in the place. It was a nice enough venue, the staff were pleasant and attentive, but the venue was somewhat downtrodden and could do with a lick of paint and a bit of TLC. The idea is that you buy a garlic bread pizza and it’s topped like a pizza, so you don’t have a tomato base. Anyway, the bread part of the pizza was excellent, it was soft and fluffy and well risen, and cooked though. Perfect. Unfortunately, this is where things started to go downhill. Cacio e pepe is cheese and pepper. It had plenty of cheese, but no apparent pepper. It was well cooked as I said, but the garlic butter base was too greasy and it meant that the whole dish was too garlicky (didn’t know this was a thing until I ate this bread) and too oily. The cheese was good, but the whole thing just didn’t work. Too greasy, too garlicky, and it repeated like an animal. I enjoyed the stringy cheese, but I wouldn’t come back. Video uploads don’t appear...

Ciaooo is my favourite pizza place in Manchester, so I was happy to see them open a little sub-brand nearby.

Ciaooo Loaded Garlic Bread is a great idea, and I love most of the choices on the menu (although I wish there was a selection of side sauces to choose on the in-store menu). Some of the reviews have complained about long waits, and I can see that happening with more than a couple of orders. I was the only person and it took around 10 minutes, which was fine by me.

In terms of the loaded garlic bread, it had the same lovely dough and crust as Ciaooo, which I was very happy with. I did think, though, that the toppings (I chose the pesto) much more moist than any pizza I've had at Ciaooo - when I picked up a slice, I literally lost half of it because it was so wet (you can see how wet from the photo). However, it was delicious and filling - and for the price, a bargain. I just think with a slightly thicker base in the middle or less wet topping would make it a better meal.

Anyway, really glad this has opened and...