Les Routiers 2002
Winner Restaurant of the Year 2002
Palmiro is one of those special, small restaurant that are a well-kept secret, but have built up a loyal and enthusiastic following. Downtown Chorlton may not be the most glamorous of locations, but he menu and the cooking sing of the true Mediterranean, and the minimalist greige and red, small budget interior has now been balanced by the addition of external, pavement landscaping. Stefano Bagnoli and his wife Julie offer a monthly changing menu based on good ingredients cooked in authentic, regional styles. The July menu, for example, included Sarde in Saor from Stefano’s home city of Venice; roast beetroot and garlic lasagnette, grey mulllet salimbocca with cannellini beans; pear polenta cake with Torrone cream. They are uncompromising, unpretentious and refreshingly honest in their attentions. If further endorsements were needed, they are one of the few restaurants in the country to be endorsed by Esperya, the online, top-of-the-range Italian food and wine company. The wine list is short but interesting.
Manchester Food Guide 2001-2002
Palmiro was the talk of the town when it opened and following several awards and rave reviews, its reputation for delicious, new Italian cuisine has outstripped the wonder that it used to be a car parts shop. Now, with its discreet patio and friendly, intimate atmosphere, it has truly arrived. The menu changes every six weeks to reflect seasonal availability. The frittata with asparagus starter (£3.75) was simplistic, relying on freshness and a delicate hand for its remarkable flavour. Likewise the pesto trapanese (£5.50) was bright with basil and pine nuts, unique from the stodge that passes for pesto. Chef is always ready with a few creative choices and the marzolino cheese with aubergine and coucous formato (£8.95) proved a brilliant combo, along with some of the most flavourful and comforting frilled polenta I have ever had. Good food and good living are top priority in a restaurant that brings some sunny Italy into the heart of the city.
CITYlife food & Drink Guide 2002
Deservedly the winner of the CITYlife Newcomer of the Year award 2000, Venetian Stefano Bagnoli and his wife Julie continue to make Palmiro a required destination for anyone who plans a serious Mancunian culinary tour. The dining room manages to juggle a certain bareness - softened by flowers - with the drama of full on blood red panelling. Indeed it looks a little home-made, and as such, sums up the joy of a visit here. The whole place is invigoratingly original, particularly the very high quality food from chef Lisa Walker. The menu - which changes monthly - is delightful, avoiding the cheap and flabby food found on many Italian menus in town , instead combining good ingredients (organic, non-gm) in ways that work. A real customer favourite is Sarde in Saor - a Venetian dish of deep fired sardines with layered onions in agrodolce.
Manchester Life, Wednesday April 5, 2000, by Helen Duff
New Italian restaurant Palmiro is setting new style standards in Whalley Range by offering an irresistible menu of outstanding quality
Rome on the range
Heading off for an evening meal, you might reasonably expect to come home feeling sated and weighed but not, you’d think, energised to change your life. New Whalley Range restaurant Palmiro has existence-altering capacities, however – everything from its faultless food to its ergonomic-cool interior to its eminently-thievable cutlery to the (stop me if I’m gushing) cut of the host’s trousers is effortlessly, covetably stylish. You’ll either be so enamoured by modern Italian living that you’ll hop on the first plane to Milan, or so convinced of your own comparative boorishness that you’ll run out and throw yourself under an 86 bus. I’m exaggerating. But not much.
Arriving at the nine-table restaurant, we initially mistook the bowl of rock salt on our table for complimentary cocaine: Having put away our meal, we couldn’t have felt much smugger if it had been. Starters of mushroom bruschetta with melted taleggio (delicious thanks) and salt cod baked in milk (exquisite apparently) were polished off in no time. Our secondi of chicken with aubergine, zucchini and sun-dried tomato, and brick-sized wedges of tuna and polenta, went down just as well (and came with olives so juicy that this reviewer – who normally would die by fire than eat one – almost developed a taste for the oily critters). The panetonne bread and butter pudding was a marvel of dough-based cuisine, while the no-flour chocolate torte with vanilla sauce was met with such rapture, and scoffed with such speed, that its eater spent the next two hours in a state of post-euphoria desolation. A medium-sized selection of European wines were available, but we opted for Peroni, one of two Italian lagers on offer – bringing the tally to £50.
The decision to site the restaurant in that band of the city referred to by optimistic estate agents as ‘Chorlton border’ might seem an odd one – Whalley Range being the fish and chips to its fashionable neighbour’s turbot and crostini – but according to the restaurant’s owners (the Venetian – Mancunian partnership of husband and wife Julie and Stefano Bagnoli) the location is no mistake. Having recruited chef Gilles Nigaud (previously of Malmaison and Air) and spent five months converting the former car accessory shop before opening to the public ten days ago, Julie is confident that Palmiro (‘Its an Italian Christian name, like Stan or Albert’) will more than hold its own. ‘We’re bringing in a lot of stuff they’re doing in Italy – using new ingredients. In Britain, Italian cuisine seems to have stagnated into spaghetti Bolognese: Ours is a rustic menu with classic flourishes. We’ve had a couple of full houses already. I think the neighbourhood needed a restaurant.’
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