It’s 5pm on a Monday. I’ve just finished work in Old Street, London.
I have a train back home in two hours. I’m hungry.
I’m from a city where nothing is open on a Monday, so I expect my options are limited.
But my office is just 5 minutes round from a restaurant I’ve read nothing but unfaltering praise for, so I try my hand. Not only are they open with a table for a walk in, it’s on a counter directly overlooking the kitchen.
The chefs are no further than a metre away from my seat. I am party to their every conversation, electric quips akimbo as they kick into gear at the start of service.
The elated chefs crush and crumple fingerling potatoes, before dousing in olive oil and sending them into the roaring inferno of the pizza oven. They later emerge as charred nuggets, with every cragged edge now a golden hue or even partially blackened.
Members of staff illicitly pass each other wisps of prosciutto underhand, as if to consummate the sanctity of the upcoming shift. Spirits are high — it’s clear everyone inside the kitchen is just as excited to be here as I am.
I order the pig head fritti, which is gently placed in front of me. Beyond the crack of its crust, lie the strands of tender meat, sandwiched between visible veins of softened fat that span the length of the mahogany fritter.
You could cut it with a spoon — in fact, I do cut it with a spoon.
The breaking of the shell saturates the nearby air with an aniseed aroma. All fritters are good, but are often missing a foundational flavour underneath the glorious, fatty meat they hold. This isn’t.
It’s paired perfectly with an appropriate dosage of the layered apple mostarda onto each bite, with its sweetness lifting the otherwise savoury bombshell.
I actually came here for the brown crab cacio e pepe, but it’s nowhere to be found. Now I’m stuck choosing between three pastas. I ask for the recommendation from the waiter, who promptly suggests the fazzoletti with duck ragu.
It arrives, with its fantastically wide pasta sheets gently interweaved, coated in a rich yet delicate ragu of the tiniest shreds of duck meat suspended in sauce.
It’s topped with pangrattato, or crispy breadcrumbs, and a sprinkling of Parmesan. For many pasta restaurants, this is an easy way to circumnavigate and shortcut dishes that otherwise otherwise descend into mush.
But the pasta is the definition of al dente, retaining a genuine bite as each fork movement tears chunks away from each slither.
It’s a salty, complex masterpiece. The tiniest dice of carrots adds layers of sweetness. I almost ordered a second one, but my innate Britishness prevents me from breaking the social mould of ordering another main.
I was eating decent pasta at Padella just 24 hours beforehand. This is otherworldly.
The apple, rhubarb, and almond cake is warm and juxtaposed by the almost chewy cold vanilla gelato. It’s positively soaked in amaretto, to the point where there isn’t even a traceable whiff of apple or rhubarb. I don’t care. It’s still fucking incredible.
I’m in and out in one hour. I leave the restaurant 42 shades happier than when I arrived, having spent less than £40, including a terrible choice of Portuguese red, 12.5% service charge, and proprietary “fuck putin” optional £2 extra.
My time in Manteca is short but intense, with all of the romance of those short summer flings that sweep you away, but never last long enough.
I think I fell in love, but it’s no use anyways.
It’s not you, it’s me.
I’m just not sure I’m ready for anything long distance right now.