Sometimes it’s OK to believe the hype. Noi Quattro is the perfect example of when high expectations are exceeded by the kind of reality that doesn’t actually feel real.
If you live in or around Manchester, you’ll have heard about the new pizza place opening in the Northern Quarter. You’ll have heard how it’s Manchester’s first independent pizzeria. You’ll know it’s run by four actual Italians (The name translates to ‘The Four Of Us). You’ll have heard all about its authentic pizza ovens.
It’s all fabulous stuff, but have you heard how good the pizzas actually are? Most of us claim to be Italian at least in part. So I implore you to think of your ancestors next time you sit down to the kind of doughy deep dish, mass topping, mozzarella/cheddar overload monster that we Mancunians have been forced to accept over the years.
Don’t get me wrong…sometimes, you need to do it American style. (We love you Crazy Pedros)
But don’t fool yourself into thinking that this is the true pizza experience in the glory with which it was intended by the Neapolitans all those years ago. Only when you bite into that first slice of Spinata and experience the bite of the spicy salami and fresh chilli, somewhat evened out by the crispness of the base and sweetness of the tomato, will you experience pizza how it was intended to be.
Gone are the days of the pizza belly. Noi Quattro specifically mix their dough so that it is easy to digest. In their words, it’s ‘Good ingredients on good dough.’
Read More: One Manchester
Noi Quattro is a traditional Italian pizzeria, opened by four friends, hence its name which means ‘The Four Of Us’. The Northern Quarter, my favourite part of Manchester, known locally as the NQ is home to Noi Quattro, so they really were made for each other. Noi Quattro’s sister restaurant is The Pasta Factory at Shudehill which I reviewed here, so I knew there would be plenty vegan options and I was not wrong.
They have spent a long time getting Noi Quattro up and running, importing everything from Italy, including the two magnificent pizza ovens, handmade in Napoli.
The menu is concise, with the main event obviously being pizza and it is fabulous to see so many options for vegans and also vegetarians.
I love wine especially from Sicily, so I ordered a bottle of Zisola, made by the Mazzei family, in a vineyard dating back to 1435. I emailed to say how wonderful the wine was and received this detailed reply and their thoughts on producing vegan friendly wines.
I ordered olives to share, with starters of Verde salad for me and Cuoppo for Steven and what fabulous dishes they proved to be, so colourful, fresh and tasty.
Then onto my favourite food of pizza, an Avezzanese and Tris di Funghi, so we could have half and half. Noi Quattro are passionate about their pizza, the base is simply just flour, yeast, salt and passion, with the dough taking two days of slow fermentation to make, so easy to digest and cooked in ninety seconds, in those awesome pizza ovens.
There is no need to say anything really, that last photo says it all, the pizzas were scrumptious, just the right amount of toppings, a top notch base, slightly stretchy with a wonderful sourdough smell. The base had risen around the edges, like soft pillows of dough, that melted in the mouth, with its characteristic leopard spot markings. I was in pizza heaven literally, I could not fault it.
I finished with a Caffe Doppio, a double espresso, even though I do not drink caffeinated coffee normally, but the temptation was too much, it was gorgeous and powerful.
If it’s a taste of Italy you’re after, head to the Northern Quarter, where the team behind The Pasta Factory are also delivering pizza at Noi Quattro. With properly trained pizzaioli, traditional Neapolitan techniques, authentic Italian ovens and ingredients, and delicious new-to-you genuine street food dishes like Calzoncello, Cuoppi, Zeppoline and Scugnizzielli, there really is no substitute. We popped in to find out more…
ManCon:The Pasta Factory is all about handmade pasta – was it a natural step to focus on pizza for your second restaurant?
Noi Quattro:Yes, actually it was. Obviously the most important and traditional dishes in Italy are pasta and pizza. We focused in the last three years on providing an authentic and fresh handmade pasta, and our customers really appreciated it and a lot frequently asked us why we wouldn’t add pizza to our menu. We always answered that we wanted to focus on one type of food and try to do our best to offer the best pasta. We’ve never been big fan of large menus with hundreds of dishes. We believe in the concept of a small menu with fresh dishes. Anyway, taking into account the requests of our customers and considering we love pizza, we decided to open a traditional Italian pizzeria following the same principles of The Pasta Factory: high-quality fresh ingredients, small and authentic menu, and good service!
ManCon:But all pizzas are not made equally. What is it that makes the pizza at Noi Quattro’s so special?
Noi Quattro:Our flour, our ingredients, our ovens and our pizzaioli! We use only a particular flour that nobody else in Manchester uses: Flour Petra from Molino Quaglia. Molino Quagliais a family business that from 1914 has milled only the finest grains. It is currently the only industrial-sided Italian mill to have developed a modern stone-grinding process that uses the most advanced technologies for cleaning the grain of foreign bodies, weeds and mycotoxins, in a production environment that protects the flour from external contamination, all the way from the millstone to the sack.Our topping ingredients are the best we’ve found in Italy, such as DOP Mozzarella fior di latte di Agerola and DOP San Marzano tomatoes, and 90% of our ingredients come from Italy. We have two artisan ovens made for us in Italy following the traditional Neapolitan techniques and using only the best materials available: handmade bricks from Santa Maria, old pressed bricks from Salerno, turf stones, “Biscotto” baking floor from Sorrento and Vesuvius volcanic sand. Finally, our pizzaioli from Naples add their experience of almost 20 years – and their secrets.
ManCon:Why is the proving time so important?
Noi Quattro:Our dough contains the right amount of yeast and is slowly proved, which makes it really easy to digest. Our pizza cooks in less than 90 seconds but starts life at least 24 hours before. Time is the secret ingredient. Following the Neapolitan tradition, with the dough left at the end of the day, our pizzaioli make bread for the next day to use in the pizzeria, at The Pasta Factory, and to sell to our customers.
ManCon:Can you cook pizza in any old oven?
Noi Quattro:No. In order to obtain this type of pizza, a combination of a particular dough and a particular oven is needed. The shape, the material and the temperature (about 450 degrees) makes it possible to create this kind of pizza that cooks in less than 90 seconds.
ManCon:So once you’ve perfected the dough – how do you start deciding what toppings to use?
Noi Quattro:With regards to the topping, we didn’t want to invent anything special, we just wanted to follow the Neapolitan tradition. For this reason, you won’t find any pizza with pineapple or chicken, or sauces like mayo or ketchup.
ManCon:Is your house tomato sauce an old family recipe?
Noi Quattro:This is another misunderstanding: we don’t cook any sauce to put on the top of our pizza. In Italy nobody does that. We don’t cook the tomatoes, we don’t dress it with garlic or herbs. Traditionally, Italian pizzaioli use high-quality fresh Italian peeled tomatoes and squeeze them with their hands.
ManCon:But you don’t just make pizza from your special dough, do you? How else do you use it at NQ?
Noi Quattro:That’s true. Like in Naples, we also use our dough for some of our starters and desserts by frying it. Cuoppo is a cone-shaped paper that holds a mixture of delicacies – potato croquettes, vegetables, courgette flowers, mozzarella bocconcini and fluffy balls of dough called zeppoline – all cut and fried in a light and easily digestible batter. Cuoppo is a masterpiece of Italian street food. It’s made to be enjoyed while walking through the alleys of the city, passing balconies festooned with washing, or simply while waiting to order a pizza. We also make calzuncielli, a deep-fried calzone filled with tomato and mozzarella (also known as pizza fritta), and scugnizzielli – bites of fried dough served with top-quality ingredients such as 18-month-old Parma ham, buffalo mozzarella, burrata, etc.
ManCon:What else can you tell us about NQ’s authentic taste of Italy?
Noi Quattro:Apart from these great ingredients, we also import our beers and wine directly from microbreweries and vineyards in Italy to offer to our customers the best ratio of quality and priceon our drinks as well.
Sounds perfetto! Find out more here.
With pride in being the only Manchester pizzeria run by Italians, despite the plethora of pizza places around the city, Noi Quattro opened its doors at the start of the month. Set in the heart of the Northern Quarter in between Mackie Mayor and Common, the restaurant has impressive heritage – as it is being owned by the same people who run The Pasta Factory on Shudehill.
Noi Quattro, 120 High Street, Manchester M4 1HQ, 0161 834 9032.
Read more: Manchester Wire
IT‘s a common misconception that to find the best pizza you must go to Italy. It’s a bit like eating sausages in Germany, or waffles in the Netherlands – never as good as you imagine it to be. The Italians might have invented pizza (though the Ancient Greeks have a fairly solid claim), but the best we’ve eaten has always been back here, in Manchester, in places like Rudy’s, Blend and Double Zero.
But then, we would say that, wouldn’t we?
So to Noi Quattro, Manchester’s newest pizzeria, located in Northern Quarter, which sees four young Italians – Elisa, Alberto, Paolo and Daniele – bring it to the Mancs with ‘real Italian pizza’ made by actual Italians with all Italian ingredients in Italian-made ovens on the border of Little Italy (that’s Ancoats). But in Manchester.
Now that’s autentico.
Having already carved out a reputation for hand making the city centre’s finest fresh pasta at the Pasta Factory, the four amici (Noi Quattro translates as ‘we four’) have turned their hands to Italy’s other main culinary export (not you Gino) in a new 100-cover restaurant space a short burrata throw from their original in Shudehill.
“Most of us actually live in the apartments above the pizzeria,” co-owner Elisa Cavigliasso tells us, “so we can never really leave work. We are the first people in and the last out. It’s exhausting but the only way to run a restaurant properly.”
Elisa hails from Turin in Northern Italy – as do Alberto and Paolo. She tells us that the idea for their second restaurant came about when Daniele, a Neapolitan, joined the team.
“He’s from Salerno, close to Naples, so obviously he loves pizza,” says Elisa. “Pizza in the south is very different to pizza in the north of Italy. Daniele started teaching us how to make real Neapolitan pizza: soft, light and chewy with a big crust. We were all missing the feel, the buzz of a true Italian pizzeria – so we thought ‘let’s just open our own’.
But with the likes of Rudy’s, Honest Crust, PLY, Dough and Slice all operating in the area, are they confident that they can pull in enough punters to get a healthy slice of that pizza pound?
“We’re not here to steal customers,” says Elisa, “there is a lot of competition, and some of it is very good, but I think there’s space for everybody. Manchester is exploding with people, it’s busy everywhere. We moved here five years ago and this corner of Northern Quarter has changed so much.”
And has Manchester’s most creative and idiosyncratic neighbourhood been kind to the four young Italians?
“It actually reminds us a lot of home, of an area in Turin called San Salvario, with its energy and cool bars and music. When our friends come to stay they go home and say we live in the San Salvario of Manchester – I think that’s why we are so comfortable here.”
I’m here to talk about my latest pizza mission.
If you’ve been following these foodventures, then you know I adore Proove, but it’s in West Didsbury and sometimes you just want a pizza without having to hop on a tram for 25 minutes.
When looking for alternatives in town, I went to the place everyone always recommends: Rudy’s pizza. Turns out that we had a fab experience, and one that was less than ideal, so you can imagine why I’m not completely sold on that one just yet.
Just recently, and thanks to Anna from It’s a Bloggers World, I was introduced to Noi Quattro, a new pizza place (from the same owners of the well-loved and highly recognised restaurant: Pasta Factory) and I’m here to tell you that this I’ve found a new favourite in town.
I’m incredibly happy to say that this is one of those places that make me want to come back instantly.
From the moment you enter the restaurant, you can feel a nice vibe and a welcoming staff, which makes the ideal first impression, if you ask me.
We’ve been two times already (and I only discovered the place last Thursday!), and being as obsessed with pizza as we are, I can already tell you we’ll be visiting Noi Quattro frequently in the future.
Left top: Burrata. Left bottom: Cuoppo di Mare. Right: Bufala e pomodorini pizza.
The food was absolutely amazing.
They have cuoppi, which are paper cones filled with delicious foods that you can share while you wait for your pizza to arrive. They have one with cheese and veggies, one with just veggies for those that are on a plant-based diet, and our favourite: one with seafood.
We also tried their burrata (if you’ve seen my ‘blogger fails’ highlight on Instagram, then you know about this!) and loved the combination with cherry tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. You can’t go wrong with a simple dish as long as the ingredients are fresh.
For pizza, I’ve had the Bufala e pomodorini, a white based pizza topped with fresh buffalo mozzarella and cherry tomatoes (a.k.a. a cheese lover’s dream) and Gabs tried the Napoli, which is a cheese-less pizza topped with some of his favourite Italian ingredients: capers, olives and anchovies.
Both pizzas were absolutely amazing, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were massive, compared to the other ones we’ve had in town in the past. Next time, if we go with some starters, we might end up sharing a pizza for the two of us.
Unfortunately, I’ve never had room for dessert, but maybe next time I’ll try one (and share everything with you, of course!). I’m sure anything we get will be just as good as all the other things we’ve tried so far.
I can’t recommend this place enough. If you, just like us, love pizza, then you need to pay Noi Quattro a visit ASAP. And please, if you do, make sure to send me a picture! I’d love to know your thoughts and see what you guys get 🙂
Thanks for reading me and please make sure to come on Thursday for a fun post, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!
x,
M.
Read more: michellelovestoeat.com
Noi Quattro opens today on High Street, from the team behind The Pasta Factory.
The Italian pals behind Shudehill pastificio The Pasta Factory know their dough – and now they’re proving it with their new pizzeria, Noi Quattro.
Translating to ‘the four of us’ – namely Paolo Gaudino, Elisa Cavigliasso, Alberto Umoret and Daniele Bianculli – the new Smithfield Square restaurant serves a simple menu of Neapolitan pizza and cuoppi – cones full of fried street snacks found in the south of Italy.
Two giant, dual wood and gas fired ovens take pride of place in the open kitchen, blasting the slow-proved dough at 400°C for 60 to 90 seconds to give a chewy, charred crust.
Diners can sit at the ceramic-tiled counter to watch the pizzaioli at work or test their balance after a glass of wine on the swing-seat table at the centre of the restaurant – bound to be the most sought-after spot in the house.
The menu features a range of rosse (tomato-based) and bianche (white) pizzas, with toppings ranging from simple marinara and margherita to tris di funghi (San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, porcini, chestnut and portobello mushrooms) and montanara (mozzarella fior di latte, Italian sausage, wild broccoli and smoked scamorza cheese).
Like at The Pasta Factory, vegans are well catered for with options including the avezzanese (roasted potatoes, onions and rosemary) and dall’orto bio (San Marzano tomatoes, grilled courgettes, aubergines and peppers).
The friends have recruited three chefs from Naples, who have also worked at Ancoats’ acclaimed Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza, and hope their pizza will compete with the best in the city.
“We saw that here were already a couple of good pizzerias in Manchester – none of them run by Italian people but really good – and the demand for this type of pizza was quite high,” said Paolo.
“In the two or three other places where the pizza is good there were long queues, you had to wait a long time, so we thought there was a possibility to increase the offering.
“We wanted to present a really good, simple pizza and we also have the cuoppi, which is more like a street food, but is typical of the restaurants in the south of Italy, and you cannot find really easily here in England.”
The fried snacks include whitebait, calamari, salted cod, zeppoline (dough balls) and courgette flowers, and a selection of nibbles and salads completes the concise menu.
“We want to keep the same positive things from The Pasta Factory – being Italian, fresh, not a posh place, and the simplicity of it,” said Paolo.
“There, we just do the fresh pasta and we try to do the best fresh pasta. In this place we just want to do pizza in this style, but we’re not going to do pasta or rice or meat or other stuff.
“That was the old style, maybe the Italian restaurants that opened here a few decades ago, they used to do everything, or the chains you see now do a bit of everything. But we think to do one thing really good, you’ve got to do one thing and do it well.”
To wash it down there’s a range of Italian craft beers from breweries including Menabrea, Baladin, Brewfist, Amarcord and San Paolo, along with wines by the glass, carafe or bottle and a classic cocktail list.
Prices start from £4 for the cuoppi while pizzas are priced from £6.50 to £12.
“We try to keep the prices affordable for everyone; we didn’t want to make a posh place,” said Paolo.
“A pizzeria in Italy is something affordable for everyone, it shouldn’t be something expensive.”
Noi Quattro opens today at 120 High Street. Bookings are available at noiquattro.co.uk .
Read more: Manchester Evening News
A group behind a popular city centre eatery are branching out with a pizza restaurant.
The Pasta Factory’s been a hit since it opened in Shudehill in 2015, and now the four Italian directors are set to expand with an authentic Italian pizzeria in the Northern Quarter.
https://twitter.com/noiquattrouk/status/892450965965680640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Flovinmanchester.com%2Ffood%2Ffirst-independent-wood-oven-pizzeria-from-italians-opening-in-manchester
Noi Quattro – meaning ‘us four’ – declares itself the ‘first independent Italian wood oven pizzeria in Manchester owned and run by Italians’.
The venue, at One Smithfield Square, is entering a market that boasts some incredible competition, including Double Zero, Rudy’s – set to open a second branch – and Honest Crust, to name a few.
But The Pasta Factory – the first Italian pastificio in Manchester – has a lot of fans.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVsAfS4AoTo/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BT3iC7cAPMk
Venue set, it’s said to be opening in October.
Read more: Lovin Manchester
People queue for hours almost any night of the week for Rudy’s Neapolitan Pizza , while Honest Crust regularly sells out due to huge demand.
These two – together with Proove , Ply and Double Zero, depending on who you ask – are regarded as some of the best pizzerias in the city, but there’s a new restaurant set to launch in Manchester.
Noi Quattro will open in the Northern Quarter, and not content with just getting a slice of the action, manager Davide Rinaldi hopes it will be among the best in the city.
“Considering we are Italian… we strive for perfection, even though it’s not of this world” he says. “We will try to give a panorama of what a pizza should be like and is like in Italy.”
“It’s proper pizza, with proper products, cooked the right way.”
They have one simple rule for making the perfect pizza – and are planning on sticking to a tried an tested formula.
“Generally the rightful pizza is the Neapolitan way – that is cooked between 70 and 90 seconds, in high temperature wood fired pizza oven.
“The idea is to make proper Neapolitan pizza. We know better the pizza from the south and we’ll start with that and see where it goes.”
The team have already earned a reputation for great Italian food with their first venue The Pasta Factory – a small, homely restaurant which opened on Shudehill in 2015, and has received high praise from local critics.
Noi Quattro – which means ‘the four of us’ – will be run by the same directors of Pasta Factory; Daniele Bianculli; Elisa Cavigliasso; Paolo Gaudino; and Alberto Umoret.
Based in One Smithfield Square Building, 120 High Street, in the Northern Quarter, the pizzeria will have a modern interior, with the focus on on a dual wood and gas fired oven – although gas will only be used in real emergencies, Davide assures.
The full menu is still being finalised, but visitors can expect mostly Italian ingredients, and pizzas pitched at the same price point as Rudy’s and Ply, explains Davide.
And Pasta Factory fans can expect a similarly well curated wine list, if a little smaller.
“It’s all Italian beers – to help smaller and bigger Italian brewers to be known. There are some very good brewers in Manchester, it’s just that we want to be like Italian oriented, so we have Italian drinks as well.
He adds: “If people like pizza, they should give us a shot. As with pasta, there were places that served pasta but no one was doing what we wanted to do.
“We’re going to be doing something that no one is doing yet, and so as people who love pasta have appreciated us, we think people who love pizza with appreciate us too.”
Noi Quattro should be open by the end of October. www.noiquattro.co.uk
Read more: Manchester Evening News
