Full marks to Pranzo
Amanda Wragg has a lot on her plate as she visits an Ilkley restaurant that supplies richly satisfying Italian cooking with generous portions and excellent service
IDON’T know about you but now and again I see someone doing a job I’d like to have. Not often – I love what I do – but there are one or two. I wouldn’t mind being Emily Eavis, booking bands for Glastonbury then hanging out with them after. For years I envied and admired Annie Nightingale, introducing us to great music on the radio for decades – and how brilliant that she was still working as a DJ and broadcaster at 83, and curious to the end. I reckon I’d have been pretty slick on the decks but don’t worry, you can turn on your wireless with confidence.
The job I would walk over fire for is food writer Vicky Bennison’s, the woman behind Pasta Grannies.
She started filming elderly Italian women in their kitchens ten years ago when she was researching traditional pasta making for a travel guide she was working on and noticed that young women didn’t have time or inclination to make pasta anymore, and an age-old tradition was dying out.
She met a number of older women – nonnas – who were still making it the traditional way, and decided to make a record of this – and who could have imagined they’d become an internet sensation.
Today, these remarkable women – some of them 100 years old, many of them over 90 – are a YouTube hit with eight million people tuning in each week to watch them and learn how to make thousands of dishes. It’s a joy to see them in their kitchens making and rolling dough, chatting and laughing as they work – and they’re inspiring the next generation of home cooks.
What’s triggered this is an image on Pranzo’s website of a little boy at his grandmother’s side in her kitchen in Calabria, and a story about Marco learning to make pasta with her. Marco is all grown up now and making his own along with half a dozen chefs in his expansive, elegant, airy restaurant in Ilkley, and we’re going to eat as much of it today as is possible before we have to be carried out.
But first, arancini. It’s a beauty, stuffed with long-braised beef shin ragu, peas and Asiago
– a new cheese to me, nutty and creamy and melting beautifully. It sits in a vivid tomato sauce, the whole thing with massive depth of flavour and a shower of pecorino. Across the table as well as my chum Nick is a very goodlooking plate of pan fried chicken livers with a sinus-clearing amount of garlic (as it should be) and sage butter, Marsala and crushed walnuts all on toasted Pugliese bread; I’d like to see this classic, rustic dish on more menus please – it’s underrated and terrifically satisfying.
Amongst the ten starters there’s the likes of king scallops (pushing it a bit at an eye-watering £16), bruschetta, mushrooms, gorgonzola and basil pesto (£9.50, add Parma Ham for £3.95) and salmon tartare with beetroot and mascarpone, a whopping £14.50. There are a dozen mains, all homemade pasta dishes, all enticing.
There’s mafalde (‘little queens’ in Italy) which is the ribbon one with frilly edges (with mushrooms, smoked pancetta, wine and cream), lobster ravioli, lasagne, bigoli (the hollow spaghetti one) and the one that first caught my eye – pappardelle with four hour braised beef shin ragu – it’s one of my desert island dishes, but I’ve never had paccheri, and what arrives is fabulous: it’s a huge dish with homemade nduja sausage, cream, white wine, spinach and parmesan. For another fiver you can have burrata, which of course I do and it’s entirely unnecessary, as if it wasn’t rich enough. I’ll never learn. There’s welcome heat in the nduja which slightly takes the edge off the richness – but it’s supposed to be extravagant, and hell it’s good to push the dairy boat out from time to time - and this hits the spot. Nick has seafood bigoli; it’s a good-looking dish with mussels, tiger prawns, anchovies, calamari and pangrattato – it’s tasty enough but it could have done with a ladle more of fishy broth. There’s a very good Caesar salad with radicchio and baby gem and a large dollop of creamy dressing.
Portions are generous so predictably there’s no room for dessert, but we swooned over panettone bread & butter pudding and what sounds like a classic torte del nonna – lemon & pine nut custard tart with blood orange mascarpone. It’s an object lesson in ordering less and leaving room – my dad always told me I had eyes bigger than my tummy; nothing’s changed.
Elsewhere there’s a ‘seasonal specials’ menu with a starter of fillet carpaccio at £14.95 and a fish mains – halibut with roast cauliflower purée at £27, and a more wallet-friendly ‘light lunch’ menu, with two courses for £19 and three for £24. There’s a kid’s and vegan menu, with a surcharge of £1.50 pp for eating gluten free – something I haven’t seen before. The wine list is reassuringly all-Italian and there are many cocktails and a handful of mocktails, champagne and prosecco and their own Italian Pale Ale, made especially for them in Harrogate at Cold Bath Brewing Co.
Service is lovely, warm and efficient, I’m rarely happier than with a big bowl of pasta and a glass of gutsy Primitivo in front of me, and sitting in a velvet booth by the huge floor to ceiling window is a good place to watch smartly dressed retirees attempting to park huge SUVs in spaces designed for Golf Polos. Ah, Ilkley.
They’ve a branch in Harrogate too, and Paradise at Daleside’s Frances Atkins drops in on her day off – she’s reportedly a big fan of the tortellini. I think we can trust the word of the chef who held a Michelin Star for decades at the Yorke Arms.
Pranzo, 2-3 The Moors, Hawksworth Street, Ilkley LS29 9LB t: 01943 600084 www.pranzoitalian.co.uk