High Road pizzeria delivering an interesting menu at good value

Anyone ever unfortunate enough to have eaten at Jamie’s Italian would have wondered how he ever expected to get away with it.

I’m sure some consultant convinced the cheeky cockney that his name mean that a premium could be charged and £15 was just about right for a basic pizza. They seem to have missed how the general public have got wise to the celebrity TV chef scam particularly here in Chiswick where many will remember Gordon Ramsay’s ill-fated venture and the ‘Coq-au-Van’ headlines in the tabloids.

Franco Manca has no such pretensions and all mains are comfortably under a tenner. And yet they manage to do this with ingredients which are every bit as intriguing as anything Jamie’s ill-fated chain served up. If he had ever visited a branch he would have seen that this sort of cuisine is for people who want an informal, convivial meal with friends and family that is relatively inexpensive.

The proposition is ‘slow fast food’ and the back of the short but quirky menu goes into detail of exactly where each ingredient is sourced. It reads very impressively but perhaps some of it is lifted from wholesaler’s bumpf rather than personal experience. For instance, I’d never heard of Ventiricina salami before having it on my pizza there. The menu says that it comes from Veneto, Wikipedia says it is from Abruzzo and ‘traditionally made using relatively low grade, very fatty pig meat cuts and encasing them in the animal's intestines or stomach while they cure’. Either way it was tasty and I’m not that bothered whether Franco Manca has a genuine commitment to supporting small farms or is just getting a good discount.

There are just seven pizzas on the menu starting with a tomato, garlic and herb option for a fiver which doesn’t taste like the cheap option. Number seven contains the aforementioned Ventricina salami along with Vesuvio green peppers. They say it is the creation of Michelin starred Colombian chef, Roy Caceres who runs Metamorfosi in Rome. The cynic would say that he has just been paid for the use of his name but the number seven is genuinely delicious so, at the very least he has ensured that he isn’t associated with an atrocity. You also aren’t paying a big premium for their most expensive option.

Proudly announcing all your wines are organic and/or biodynamic is usually a preamble to an expensive list but Franco Manca doesn’t ask you to pay over £20 for anything. My knowledge of wine is not sufficient to comment on the house wine we picked – a Nero d’Avola – although it seemed perfectly palatable to me. My knowledge of hangovers is much better and, even though I had a glass more than I normally should there were no ill-effects next morning.

The one caveat is that it is not necessarily a serene experience. I’ve been a few times now and the back end of the restaurant can end up being a bit like a Wacky Warehouse. If you don’t like children with your meal you need to avoid this place as it is popular with families even though there doesn’t appear to be a kids’ menu. A (Northern) Italian friend of mine says that the tradition of many Italian restaurants to be indulgently tolerant of children dates back to the days of vendettas in the south. The code that governed disputes would rule out any attack when children were present so people could dine in relative safety if all the family came. As far as I am aware there are no hits out on me but I do get why some might see the presence of other people’s children isn’t necessarily a cause for stress. Franco Manca generally is busy and with hard surfaces plus a low ceiling it is always going to be a bit noisy but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a place in which you can relax.

By sharing a bottle of wine with friends you can probably end the evening with a bill per person which about the same as what a pizza used to be at Jamie’s Italian. Although Pizza Express is much improved in recent years, you often have to mess around with vouchers to get an equivalent level of value. There are far better Italian restaurants in Chiswick including Tarantella and Casa Dino but you will end up paying more and they aren’t really aiming at the same market.

Admittedly Franco Manca is a chain which opened its first branch in Brixton over a decade ago and my firm belief is that you should always eat independent by default. However, since the departure of the much lamented Canta Napoli on Devonshire Road, there hasn’t really been a family-owned restaurant offering good value, high quality but basic Italian food in Chiswick. It used to be the case that you could assume that when one clone restaurant gave up on the High Road, another one would appear fairly soon afterwards. However the number of long term vacant units suggests the game has changed and a closed restaurant will mean one less restaurant. The good news that if the ‘use it or lose it’ principle is being applied to Franco Manca, it is busy enough to make it a comfortable assumption that it will survive for a while. It deserves to.

Edward Prescot

August 27, 2019