This week, the team behind Gooey has launched its new pasta concept Onda inside Manchester’s newest bar and food hall Exhibition.
Onda pasta bar – translating to ‘wave’ from the Italian – sees the team collaborate with Michelin-trained chef Sam Astley Dean to cook up some gorgeous fresh pasta dishes over on Peter Street, taking over what was formerly Caroline Martin’s Sao Paulo Bistro unit.
Serving up a core menu of pasta small plates from £6 alongside starters of arancini, mixed vegetable fritti, and proper crunchy garlic bread with parsley butter, you’ll also find some giant family-style sharers on the menu here – not least, a huge plate of lumache alla vodka.
Putting a spin on the viral TikTok pasta trend (and the classic Italian recipe that precedes it), the dish combines organic tomato with ‘nduja and parmesan to create the ultimate cheesy crowd-pleaser.
Elsewhere, you’ll find a second giant sharer dish of gnocchi gratinati combining spinach, mozzarella and pangrattato, plus some seriously plump raviolo stuffed with scallop, crab and fennel atop a rich seafood bisque.
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Spaghetti Carbonara at Onda. / Image; The Manc Eats
Raviolo with scallop, crab and fennel at Onda. / Image: The Manc Eats
Pasta small plate must-tries include the spaghetti casrbonara with pecorino, pancetta and a whole egg yolk that you mixed into your pasta at the table yourself, the aforementioned ravioli, and a pici cacio e pepe that nods to one of chef Sam Astley-Dean’s earliest Rise pizza creations.
Starters of note, meanwhile, include a mouthwatering saffron risotto short rib arancini atop lemon aioli, and the most indulgent Caesar salad we’ve encountered in some time – we’re talking whole leaves of baby gem drenched in sauce and wearing a veritable wig of parmesan on top.
Add to that dreamy slices of tiramisu and a plan to make their own gelato in house very soon (a fior di latte mainstay will always be on, so we’re told, plus blood orange and rhubarb flavours to start with), and it’s fair to say that – between the big flavours and the affordability – Onda is well worth a look in.
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Speaking on the new menu, chef Sam Astley-Dean told The Manc as we watched him hand-roll his pasta: “Our whole menu rests on flour and water, like our focaccia, our bread and all our pastas, and the only way to get good at it is to just do it over and over and get the feel.
“It’s very therapeutic, it’s good, like, it’s the only way to get to know something. “
Asked what his favourite dish is, he jokes: “I don’t actually like pasta” before going on to enthusiastically list almost every pasta plate on Onda’s menu.
He gushed: “It’s probably the lumache, but the vongole is like, that’s a bit of me that, like shellfish, chilli, garlic.
“I genuinely love it all, every single dish, it’s all our favourite pastas. The cacio e pepe, pesto with anything, the cavatelli’s great, erm, the vongole, the shellfish raviolo, the pappardelle, oh no the carbonara, I love the carbonara.”
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Mixed vegetable fritti at Onda. / Image: The Manc Eats
Garlic bread with parsley butter. / Image: The Manc Eats
“Honestly all of them, every single one of them, like, we want it to be super approachable, that’s why we’ve not banged on about ingredients too much. It’s for everyone, if you’re in with your mates or a date or your family.
“I want to bring my daughter and my dog, but I’d also like to come on a date night with my wife, so it’s got that vibe of it’s affordable. Yes, it’s got good ingredients but we’re not being preachy about it, it’s just good food.”
The menu features classic pasta dishes alongside innovative specials. Onda will also serve a ten layered fresh pasta lasagne on Sundays, available in two flavours: classic ragu and bianca.
Open now inside Exhibition, food at Onda is served seven days a week until 9pm in the evening with the bar open later for more drinks.
Featured image – The Manc Eats
Eats
Manchester champagne bar launches new £155 menu of ‘exceptional’ single-bite dishes
Daisy Jackson
The UK’s first dedicated champagne boutique, Portfolio, is finally ready to launch its restaurant experience – and it’s like nothing Manchester has seen before.
The luxury champagne bar on Bridge Street has unveiled a new restaurant concept built entirely around ‘the perfect bite’, with diners able to enjoy up to 18 single-mouthful dishes for £155 per person (or 14 dishes for £135pp).
At lunchtimes, Portfolio will offer a 10 course menu for £75pp, with an optional wine pairing.
The intimate nine-table restaurant is the latest venture from acclaimed chef Julian Pizer, formerly of Another Hand and Edinburgh Castle, who says he wanted to focus on the one bite guests remember long after a meal has finished.
Rather than serving traditional tasting menu courses, every dish is designed to be eaten in a single mouthful, paired with some of the world’s finest and rarest champagnes and wines.
Diners are encouraged to tackle each course in one go – no matter how tempting it might be to savour it a little longer.
As co-founder Pizer explains: “I’ve always been drawn to the most memorable part of any meal – that single perfect bite, the one you remember long after the meal.
Beef fat hash, beef tartare, horseradish and Bloody Mary gel, served on top of champagne corks Carrot tart, gooseberry, fresh curds in thin crispy pastryhiso leaf taco with spring shoots, citrus vinaigrette, blackcurrant wood
“This menu is built around that idea: big flavour, perfect balance, all in one mouthful, designed to sit seamlessly alongside great Champagne.”
Highlights include a chicken and oyster tempura skewer topped with sour cream and chives, a carrot tart packed with gooseberries and fresh curds, and a beef-fat hash crowned with beef tartare and Bloody Mary gel, dramatically served on champagne corks.
One standout dish is a decadent lobster roll enriched with pork fat, where crispy brioche provides the perfect contrast to sweet Cornish lobster, cucumber, celery and apple.
Elsewhere, a refreshing shiso leaf taco with spring shoots and citrus vinaigrette offers a palate-cleansing break before richer dishes including Chinese-style pork belly with white kimchi, and a duck course featuring breast, confit meatball and duck neck sausage.
Some of the paired wines with the Portfolio lunch menu in ManchesterInside Portfolio ManchesterSome of the paired wines with the Portfolio lunch menu in Manchester
Dessert arrives in the form of a kiwi marshmallow-style treat with blackberry, mint and a dusting of icing sugar.
The drinks are no afterthought either. Portfolio houses more than 250 champagnes from over 70 producers, and diners can add carefully matched champagne pairings to either the 14-course (£135) or 18-course (£155) menu.
With only 24 covers available at any one time, the experience is intentionally relaxed. There’s just a single sitting each service, meaning guests can linger over their food and fizz for as long as they like.
For those not ready to commit to 18 bites in one sitting, Portfolio’s bar remains open six days a week, offering a more casual snack menu alongside its extensive champagne list.
Pizer describes the concept as his chance to experiment freely and, above all, ‘make food fun again’.
You can now get Deep South-inspired BBQ dishes on Manchester’s Deansgate
Daisy Jackson
There’s a brand-new menu of smokehouse-style BBQ dishes being served up on a sunny terrace on Deansgate.
Motley, the neighbourhood bar and restaurant on the corner of John Dalton Street, has added an authentic smoker to its kitchen.
That means they’ve got a whole load of new dishes, slow-cooked over hickory wood, that are bringing a taste of a Deep South BBQ to Manchester city centre.
The smokehouse-style meats are all seasoned in-house and cooked for hours, for a perfect fall-off-the-bone experience.
It might be an authentic American smokehouse menu, but it’s firmly British too, with most products locally sourced.
You can now get Deep South-inspired BBQ dishes on Deansgate / Credit: The Manc Group
Motley are calling on local suppliers like Althams Butchers (established since 1856) for their meat, plus greengrocers R Noone and Son, and Cheshire Farm for their real dairy ice cream.
Signature dishes on the new menu at Motley include slow smoked brisket, seasoned in Motley’s signature rub before being slow-smoked for more than eight hours.
There’s also a beef short rib with a chimichurri sauce, and a pork belly strip that’s seasoned with sage and onion and finished with a panko breadcrumb crust.
And for the veggies, there’s a vegan smoked veg kebab with courgette, mushrooms, bell pepper, sweet corn and red onion drizzled with homemade BBQ sauce.
Motley has added an authentic smoker to its kitchen / Credit: The Manc Group
Prices across the board start from just £16, served with beef dripping fries, rainbow slaw, pickles and homemade beef gravy.
As for small plates, you can expect short rib bonbons, homemade corn bread, spicy chicken wings, bang bang cauliflower, mac and cheese, and frickles.
House favourites like steak, vegetable hash, salads, and burgers will remain on the Motley menu.
Victor Gonzalez, food and beverage manager at Motley, said: “Our new signature smoked dishes are all crafted and seasoned in-house then slow cooked for hours over hickory wood to create rich and smoky melt-in-your mouth flavours.
“From our slow-smoked brisket to our home-made sides, everything has been carefully crafted to bring an authentic taste of the deep south to Manchester and we can’t wait for guests to try it.”
Motley can be found at 2 John Dalton Street on the corner of Deansgate in the city centre.
Georgina Pellant -
30th March 2023 
