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.
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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.
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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.
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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?'”
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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.
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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
Acclaimed restaurant staffed by prison inmates announces sad closure
Daisy Jackson
The Clink, an acclaimed restaurant where the food is prepared and served by prison inmates, has announced its devastating closure.
The charity behind the restaurant, which is attached to HMP Styal, has confirmed that it will close for good on 31 July 2025.
The Clink is famed for the training and experience it provides inmates, helping them to get a head start into the hospitality industry when their sentence ends.
It’s also achieved plenty of acclaim as a restaurant in its own right, consistently being rated as the best restaurant in Wilmslow and voted Cheshire Restaurant of the Year in 2024.
Over the years, hundreds of students have earned qualifications including City & Guilds NVQs in Food and Beverage Service, Professional Cookery and Food Hygiene.
The Clink restaurant in Styal is closing
But The Clink has now announced that it will be closing this summer due to ‘a number of factors’, including costs and participant numbers.
Donna-Marie Edmonds, Chief Executive of The Clink Charity, said: “The decision not to renew our contract at HMP Styal has been made with an incredibly heavy heart.
“The Clink Charity’s mission is to reduce re-offending and we have been doing this at Styal, producing outstanding results for over a decade.
“Although the restaurant will officially close this summer, our partnership at Styal will be remembered not only for its landmark training outcomes, but as a beacon of hope, where women have sought refuge and rehabilitation.”
As one of those students put it: “If it wasn’t for my journey at The Clink, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”
Deansgate’s new mini brunch triangle attracting big queues – and rightly so
Danny Jones
Manchester is absolutely bursting at the seams with brilliant brunch spots, and don’t even get just started on trying to pick from all 10 boroughs as a whole, it’s impossible.
However, over the past year or so, we suddenly realised that somewhat of a city centre trio of brunch spots serving unreal breakfasts, midday delights and early afternoon scran has emerged.
While some have been there longer than others, all three of these places within aren’t just within spitting distance of each other but are enjoying a real wave of success at the moment – and it’s no surprise why: they’re all utterly incredible.
Three brilliant city centre brunch spots for you to try
1. Bruncho
First up on the list is the aptly named Bruncho, which opened just last summer, and despite announcing itself to the Manchester hospitality scene rather quietly at the time, it’s starting to pick up some serious pace now.
Specialising in unreal breakfasts and Mediterranean exports like menemen, Turkish eggs, their own spins of spicy favourite shakshuka, as well as plenty of dessert-forward plates with colour palettes as full as the plates themselves.
It goes without saying that you can obviously get a proper good ‘Bruncho Full English‘, but we’d encourage you to branch out and, who knows, maybe have a brekkie that features ice cream? In fact, it’s sentences like that which make it our Thomas’ favourite way to start the day – albeit ideally a lie-in.
Now, another very strong candidate which has been around on the Manc brunch scene much longer than the other two on this list is local success story, Alex’s Bakery, though we’ll admit we’d mainly visited this place for the unreal brownies, cupcakes and other assorted sweet treats until recently.
However, in addition to the popularity of their lunch deal (a panini, cupcake and drink), they’ve really stepped up their wider brunch offerings of late, going from what was once just a Manchester Artisan Market back in 2014 to branching out into everything good you can put on toast and tonnes more.
It may not garner the often ridiculously long queues of other places, but that’s because this place has a steady flow of regulars all week long who’ve steadily fallen in love with it over many years. They’re tres leches cakes alone are well worth the visit.
3. Acai And The Tribe
Last but not least, the acai craze is undoubtedly one of the biggest foodie trends around right now, as proven by the lines that gather outside this Great Northern venue at least once virtually every weekend – but Acai And The Tribe has actually been on the hype for ages.
That being said, after moving from Arndale Market to Deansgate Mews back in 2022 and now along the main strip in recent months, their popularity has skyrocketed. If you’re looking for a health brunch open packed with vibrance, vitamins and plenty of other very nice toppings, this is the one for you.
We’ll warn you, finding the right window to visit is essentially if you don’t want to wait around for ages these days, but both Clem and Daphne still greatly approve, so it’s it gets the seal of approval from us.
So, while we could recommend you a whole load of fantastic places in around Manchester city centre, we’ve been particularly charmed by this mini Manc brunch triangle around Deansgate.
Best of all, it’s just always great to see local businesses thriving, isn’t it? Especially when it comes to people lining the streets and sending it viral just for a chance to taste their offerings.
Modern breakfast and brunch are things that can be either perfect in their simplicity or surprising in their creativity; either way, we’re glad there are plenty of examples of that here in Manchester.
Georgina Pellant -
28th June 2023 
