Homely Italian is a real beauty for diners (From The Bolton News)

Homely Italian is a real beauty for diners

4:12pm Monday 9th November 2009 in

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Ciao Bella, Portland Street, Manchester

IT is often claimed that a mother’s cooking is best — not in my house, it wasn’t — and chef Donato Loi would agree.

He says his mum was an excellent cook and he learned all his recipes from her.

He was right to do so, too. We stumbled across this busy little downstairs restaurant in a serendipitous moment and will definitely be going back.

The place was buzzing, with tables catering for groups ranging from couples to a large birthday party.

While perusing the menu over a bottle of excellent house red, we spent time chatting with the friendly waiting staff and garnering recommendations from the folk on the table opposite, one of whom was a teacher of foreign language, recently returned from Italy and proclaiming Ciao Bella — one of the oldest Italian restaurants in Manchester — to be the most authentic Italian in the North. Wonderful praise indeed.

The homely feel of the place and the food certainly backs up this claim. To start we decided on garlic bread with cheese to share, garlic mushrooms for myself and a special of mussels in white wine for my partner, which seemed ridiculously cheap at £4.95 considering the size of it.

The hunks of bread were delicious, the mushrooms had enough of a zing to get the tastebuds tingling before the main course and my partner declared her mussels to be “absolutely divine — some of the best I’ve ever had”. Coming, as she does, from a seaside town in Devon, where you pick them off the rocks for free, this was a serious compliment.

Other starters included chicken liver pate in wine port brandy and herbs with toasted bread; melted mozzerella wrapped in parma ham; fried golden squid with garlic mayonaisse; and king prawns.

For mains a wide range of lamb, beef, duck, chicken and fish dishes sat alongside the usual pizzas and pastas.

I went for the stagioni pizza — packed with artichokes, peppers, asparagus and mushrooms, while my fellow diner plumped for the seafood crespelle, both of which, again, were excellent, especially her pancake, stuffed to the gills — as it were — with assorted fishy things in a cream sauce.

Too full for dessert, but with thoughts of “When in Rome” and all that, we decided to sample that famous Italian liqueur limoncello, which was served customarily straight out of the freezer and certainly perked us up. On seeing our glasses quickly emptied, Donato himself appeared to administer a quick refill — and then another. It made Ciao Bella very difficult to leave!

The bill, including the wine — and plenty of limoncello — came to just below £60.