I tried the giant £20 Manchester ‘mystery’ sandwich weighing over 1kg
Filled to the brim with quality imported Italian ingredients, Ad Maiora's giant three layer XXL schiacciata will set you back a pretty penny - but it's so worth it.
Over in the backstreets of Manchester’s Northern Quarter, there’s a couple slinging out some of the best sandwiches in the city from their tiny third-floor flat.
Sardinian couple Daniela Steri and Enrico Pinna have been at it for eight months now after quitting their jobs to become full-time sandwich dealers at the end of 2022.
Before long, they’ll be moving on to new beginnings as they take over a kitchen at the new Kargo food hall inside Salford’s Central Bay – and Daniella, for one, is very excited to be getting their home back.
Currently, it’s piled high with meat slicers and dough mixers, giant bags of flour, multiple ovens, and metal shelves stacked with all the Italian ingredients your heart could possibly desire, with a forgotten flat-screen TV sulking in the back corner.
As of 14 August, though, they’re expecting to be officially up and running on the Quayside – moving into the new development from Liverpool’s successful GPO and Sheffield’s award-winning Cutlery Works alongside the likes of Bab K, Tang Hot Pot, Rio Mex and Nila’s Burmese Kitchen.
Ahead of the move, the pair has just released a new, updated sandwich menu that sees all of their old favourites sit side by side with some new additions – not least, an epic three-layer giant XXL ‘Misteriosa’ schiacciata which I quickly nickname ‘the Beast.’
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
Weighing in at over 1kg, it takes more than ten minutes to prepare from scratch using giant slabs of schiacciata bread baked freshly by the couple that morning.
Excitedly, I watch Eric lovingly prepare it: toasting three layers of bread, layering basil pesto onto one, and melting scamorza on another. In case I don’t go on about it enough I bloody love a sandwich, and I’m yet to find a bigger one than this.
Onto “the first floor” (as he calls it) go a host of traditional Italian flavours: rocket, freshly cracked black pepper, thick slices of beef tomato, followed by fistfuls of prosciutto, an entire ball of buffalo mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and more black pepper.
Next comes the ‘spicy floor’, starting with a slice of toasted bread simply oozing with melted cheese that drips all down the front.
Image: The Manc Eats
Image: The Manc Eats
Stacked above is more rocket, several handfuls of fennel salami, salami Napoli (sliced freshly in front of us. no less), spicy nduja, more mozzarella, and then to finish more pesto on the top.
A beast it really is. Of course, it’s worth noting that you don’t get the same every time. Quite the opposite, really. It’s a sort of ‘pot luck’ sandwich, as the name ‘Misteriosa’ implies – with every order set to be different from the last.
Daniela explains: “Yes so it’s like chef’s idea, maybe two people are going to order the same but we cannot give the same. It’s a mystery so everybody gets something different.
“I never mention on the box because it’s a mystery, they’re going to open the box and say ‘oh, what is going on?'”
The inspiration, I’m told, comes purely from customer demand. “People ask can you put more salami, more … so, they want [it] bigger,” says Eric.
“They want you to mix everything from salami to parma ham, everything mixed,” agrees Daniella.
To me, this sounds like the order of an indecisive person who feels that everything looks so good, they want it all in one – and I say as much. Not that I’m complaining. If it wasn’t for those people, the XXL Misteriosa may never have come into being and I would not be fidgeting excitedly on their sofa preparing to eat it.
But whilst I spend the next half an hour running around town trying to cram a 1.1kg butty into my mouth, apparently there are others in Manchester who find even the regular-sized schiacciata too large for them.
Keen to cater to all stomach sizes (as well as those, like me, with eyes sometimes bigger than their bellies), Ad Maiora’s legendary sandwiches can now also be ordered to share with the option to choose two different flavours from the menu for £6.50.
Elsewhere, further new additions include the A Tutto Tonno – an ‘Italian twist’ on the English staple with mozzarella replacing our traditional melted cheddar – and the Selvatica with olive tapenade, grilled courgettes and artichoke.
For butty lovers in the Northern Quarter, there is little competition. Fat Pat’s, famed for their Philly Cheesesteaks and meatball subs, does a very strong trade on the other side of town but the two menus are absolute chalk and cheese.
These are classic Italian sandwiches served on crisp focaccia-style bread, built from scratch in a house where Amato – the incredibly Italian wholesaler behind Piccadilly – is king. Long live Ad Maiora.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
Eats
Lupo Caffe Italiano – a taste of sunny Rome on a Prestwich industrial estate
Daisy Jackson
The sun is beating down on you, there’s a couple of luminous orange Aperol Spritzes on the checked tablecloth, Italian pop music is trickling out over the speakers and you’ve got two heaping bowls of pasta on the way.
The setting could easily be a cobbled street in front of the Colosseum in Rome. But it’s not. It’s an industrial estate in Prestwich.
Lupo must be one of Greater Manchester’s most hidden gems in a very literal sense.
To get here, you have to drive or walk a strange looping circuit around industrial warehouses peddling everything from splashbacks to burglar alarms to grow tents.
One of these warehouses, located in the very furthest yard, looks a little different to the others, festooned with bunches of garlic and dried herbs strung up from the ceiling.
There are shelves full of pasta, sauces and even crisps, a fridge packed with delicious Italian wines and beers, and retro football shirt-inspired merch hanging from the walls.
Its awkward location does nothing to hold back its loyal customers, who repeatedly return for the authentic taste of Rome on offer here.
Lupo is operated by Nico Pasquali, who first ran it as a tiny Italian cafe on Chapel Street in Salford (before all the high-rises appeared), then shifted it over to the odd shiny-commercial-office-land that is Exchange Quay, then took it almost entirely remote to trudge through the pandemic.
Lupo’s charming interiorsNico has added outside seating to LupoThe pasticceria selection at Lupo
At one point, Caffè Lupo existed mostly on WhatsApp, with customers texting in their orders ready for a doorstep drop on a Friday night.
But now the large-ish commercial unit is its main business, and it’s a special one.
You are greeted, always, with a friendly wave, then given the sort of service where you’re very gently guided to order all the best things on the menu that day, feeling like you’ll personally offend Nico if you order differently and stray from his recommendations. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to trust this man.
It’s extremely hard for me to see amatriciana on a menu and not order it – so I don’t try. One bowl of rigatoni amatriciana for me, and make it cheesy.
This is a textbook example of the deceptively simple pasta dish. Fatty guanciale cooked right down so that all that delicious pork fat melts into the tomatoes, then it’s seasoned with, I presume, several generations of secrets and love from Italian nonnas.
Rigatoni amatriciana, and fennel sausage orecchietteA spread of Lupo’s Italian foodPepernata – Nico’s mum’s recipeThe Pizza Lupo
The sweet, salty, meaty sauce is available on a pizza too, which will be top of my list next time I visit.
Across the table it’s a special (but it’s been on the menu for a while now) of orecchiette with fennel sausage and romanesco broccoli.
Nico tells us a customer once refused to pay for this dish because it wasn’t ‘saucy’ enough. Heathen.
That’s the running theme with Lupo – don’t come here expecting Neapolitan pizzas, or flat whites, or hot honey dips for your pizza crusts. It isn’t the Roman way, and Nico isn’t about to veer away from his proud roots to mould into any passing fads or trends.
If you’re after authenticity and tradition though, this is comfortably the top Italian in Greater Manchester.
If you can come to Lupo and walk away without ordering something sweet from the counter, you’re a stronger person than me.
PasticceriaOwner NicoLupo’s famous millefoglie
They’re famed for their doughnuts (rightly), with bouncy dough filled with flavours including pistachio cream, lemon, and homemade jams.
Also displayed in neat rows are fruit tarts with a glossy glaze, towering cream cakes in neat layers, and puff pastry cannoncini.
But Nico is adamant, absolutely adamant, that we order a slice of his millefoglie. It’s a sell-out, he says. We’re lucky he even has some in stock, he tells us. Who are we to argue?
And if you’ve made it this far, just stop reading right now, get in the damn car and go get yourself a slice before it sells out again.
Layers of lighter-than-air homemade pastry are sandwiched together with delicately sweet cream, hints of almond throughout, and it’s good enough to bring a tear to your eye.
We leave with a doughnut in a box too, so that we at least have a snack if we get completely lost finding our way back out of the industrial estate.
A bottomless brunch with unlimited lager is launching in Manchester
Daisy Jackson
A bottomless brunch with unlimited pints of lager will be launching in Manchester this month.
Forget the mimosas and warm prosecco and lacklustre portions of French toast – this new bottomless offering is all about proper pints and hefty focaccia sandwiches.
The Lager, Lager, Lager bottomless brunch is the newest fixture in the Trading Route’s roster, taking place in the lagerhouse at St John’s every Saturday.
It’s designed to be Manchester’s first bottomless tailored to those who love, tall, foamy pints of the good stuff.
Every punter will get 60 minutes of unlimited, freshly-poured foamy pints, as well as a choice of the restaurant’s focaccia sandwiches, made in-house every single day.
DJs will be spinning classic house and disco tunes as you tuck into your pints and butties.
Jamie Scahill, Trading Route Co-Founder said: “Lager, Lager, Lager isn’t an underworld event, it’s for everyone who loves a freshly poured foamy pint to come down and enjoy.
“Whether you were born slippy or not, the fun is to leave slippy, having revelled in great beer, food and company.”
A bottomless brunch with unlimited lager is launching in Manchester
Trading Route opened last year, specialising in perfectly-poured pints of Manchester Union, as well as rotisserie chicken and huge sandwiches.
As well as Lager, Lager, Lager’s launch, over the bank holiday weekend there’ll be a happy hour which will include £4.80 pints, cocktails at £8.50 and a carafe of wine for £12.50 on Thursday 21 August.
Funkademia will then take over the venue from 5pm on Friday 22 August.
Lager, Lager, Lager will begin on Saturday 23 August and will run every Saturday from 12pm until 5pm.
The Trading Route bottomless lager brunch costs £28, and you can book your spot HERE.
Georgina Pellant -
28th June 2023 
