The ‘secret’ cash-and-carry near Piccadilly that’s selling amazing Italian food for less than the supermarkets

We all know the pain of finally settling on what you want to eat for dinner, only to Google a recipe and discover a list of ingredients that your local Tesco definitely won’t have in stock. 

‘Where the f*** am I going to get guanciale from at this hour?’, you think. 

Well, just a stone’s throw from Manchester Piccadilly, you’ll find a cash-and-carry that’s an Aladdin’s cave of Italian food – and a damn sight cheaper than a supermarket, too. 

Amato is a name you might recognise, with their grey vans regularly trundling around Greater Manchester delivering top Italian produce to all your favourite restaurants. 

But you don’t need a wholesale membership to take advantage of their massive range of pastas, sauces, drinks, meat, cheese, and just about everything else you can think of – or to make the most of the prices either. 

Amato has given up a small section of its 20,000 sq ft warehouse to be a retail space, where you can pick up everything from fresh filled pasta to truffle oil. 

There’s also a selection of produce from beyond Italy, like Kewpie mayonnaise and gochujang. 

And they’ve honoured the prices given to wholesale clients too, with smaller retail sizing, meaning you can pick up affordable produce without needing to bulk-buy (or lug home a 25kg bag of flour).

The business was launched by Bob and Deloras Amato more than 30 years ago, getting top Italian ingredients to chefs across the North West. 

But the retail side has really taken off since the Covid pandemic, Bob explains.

“It’s a bit of a secret place,” he says, “As we don’t tend to advertise it too much.”

It all began (as so many local businesses did) back in 2020.

He says: “During the pandemic, as we’re a wholesaler, we realised there was a big demand for flour, which we had plenty of. People were crying out for flour and we had absolutely tonnes of it in 25kg sacks.

“So we got some of our staff to come in and to repackage it in smaller packages that we could sell to retail customers.

“From that, people weren’t allowed to go out and they wanted to make pizzas and pasta, so they wanted tomatoes and mozzarella and pepperoni and other products.”

As a customer now, you can pick up things like tinned San Marzano tomatoes, harvested in the foothills of Mount Vesuvius; fresh burrata from Puglia (or frozen, if you want it to have a slightly longer shelf life); and traditionally-cured meats like guanciale, speck, and prosciutto. 

Essentially, there’s everything you need to make a hearty Italian feast from scratch, or you can grab a bag of homemade pesto and pasta, made fresh on site, from the fridges for an easier dinner. 

Bob and his team are encyclopaedias of information about the food produced all the way across Italy, knowing the back story of every one of their 1,500+ products. 

He tells us about why pasta shapes get their name, like Schiaffoni, which loosely translates as ‘slaps’ because of the sound they make when they plop onto the plate.  

Bob also explains the reason that Scamorza comes in a snowman-like shape, with the cheese being strung up by its ‘neck’ to dry and age. 

He chats us through all the different flours, and why you would use which in your pizzas; why good tinned tomatoes are worth seeking out (cheap ones are like ‘bullets’); and that you should always bring your burrata up to room temperature.

Even as we’re checking out with our armfuls of pasta, the staff member serving us is passing on tips for a perfect amatriciana sauce.

Amato is open from 7am daily (except Sundays), and if you’re stuck on what to make for dinner, pay Bob and his team a visit.

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Featured image: The Manc Group