Manteca

good quality, good value cooking

Frequent queues stretching out of the door are testament to the daily popularity of this trendy modern Italian, which is marked by an ornamental boar's head suspended above the entrance. Manteca is that sort of place, a Shoreditch resource named boldly after a variety of fat – lard, to be precise. Ground floor seats offers views into the open kitchen, while downstairs refrigerated cabinets of home-cured charcuterie whet the appetite (salumi and prosciutto are tip-top and not to be missed). An infectious buzz animates the whole restaurant, augmented by piped tunes that some may find passably funky. The kitchen is deadly serious about sourcing from the best suppliers, menus often change several times a day, and the chefs have the autonomy to put new dishes together on the fly. The result is a much less formulaic repertoire than is often the Italian case. A plate of line-caught sea bass crudo dressed with green strawberries was a seasonal treat on our most recent visit, while a dramatic swoop of rich, silky duck liver parfait was served with black date jam and a pile of craggy chargrilled bread. Hand-rolled pasta stars in fazzoletti with duck-fat pangrattato or tonnarelli with brown crab cacio e pepe, ahead of mains from the wood-fired oven – perhaps John Dory, plaice or a premium cut of longhorn beef. Finish with a doorstop helping of almond cake with stone-fruit and vanilla gelato. A minimal-waste approach sees some of the beef fat turning up in the fudge with coffee, while the copiously unusable bits of globe artichoke might eventually find their way into the house cynar liqueur. Service is temperamentally patchy – mostly hail-fellow, occasionally glum. However, eminently kind pricing earns the places bonus points, especially as Italian wines on tap start at £5.50 a glass. Adventurous imbibers, meanwhile, should home in the sections of the list entitled ‘down the rabbit hole’.

1 Forchetta