REVIEW: What we thought of Manzo Steakeria in Bishop Auckland

The Auckland Project has poured in millions in the last 10 years to regenerate the town but that has been centred on the bishop’s palace, the Market Place and the Kynren nightshow, but this independent enterprise – the Manzo’s proprietor has three restaurants and bars in Stokesley - is one of the first signs that the regeneration is spreading beyond the centre.

The building Manzo occupies represents that tussle to find a future for what the past has left behind.

It is in area of traditional boozers – the karaoke at the King’s Head opposite was proving very popular as we left on Saturday night, with punters pumping out vocal lines about how at first it was afraid, even petrified, but it has learned to survive. Manzo is surrounded by takeaways buzzing with bikes and bags doing deliveries as well as boarded up buildings that seem not to have an immediate future.

Manzo’s building is itself clearly a mid-Victorian pub – it was the Station Hotel, built at a time when Bishop was a railway hub with lines converging on it from north, south and west – and yet now it is reborn as a pre-Second World War style Italo-American steakhouse, specialising in pizza, pasta and, of course, steak.

The gents’ toilets are a great example of the tussle. Reached by a dark passage, they still have the dimensions of an old boozer’s back room where the sudden bright lights sobered you up so you aimed straight at the steaming trough. Yet with subdued lighting, distracting floor tiles and modern decorative touches carried through from the dining area, it has become something new and rather fetching.

In our corner of the open plan dining area, beneath many dimmed lights, the gentle jazz soundtrack - the Chattanooga train choo-choo’d past before Fred Astaire crooned about dancing cheek to cheek – set a relaxed mood.

To start, the menu urges you to choose from six types of garlic bread and five small dishes. The four of us chose to share some olives (£3.50), a rosemary, thyme and garlic bread (£6.50) and a portion of Nonna Mo’s Meatballs (£8).

They arrived promptly, the 10-inch bread accompanied by a cutting wheel. The bread (above) had a lovely sprinkling of rosemary on top, and the meatballs were in a great, rich, red tomatoey Italian sauce (below). As Theo, our son, used the last of the bread to mop up the last of the tomato sauce, we commended ourselves by thinking we’d ordered really cleverly to get dishes that worked so well together.

For his main course, Theo chose from the eight pasta dishes, and had Penne Bolognese (£11) (below), a nice bowlful of pasta with what may have been the same sauce as the meatballs came in. He loved having parmesan shaved on top of it in front of him, and he thoroughly enjoyed the dish.

Genevieve, our daughter, chose the San Francisco Prawns (£16) (above), 12 plump fellows that came in a white wine and garlic sauce with a metal bowl of salad – from which she discarded all of the tomatoes - and a flowerpot of chips. My sample suggested the sauce might have done with a little more oomph, say a real blast of garlic, but it was a classic combination.

Petra also chose a classic: Caesar’s Salad (£11) (above). In the century since Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant chef working in Mexico, clagged together all the ingredients he had left in his kitchen to create his dressed salad of green lettuce, crutons and anchovies, it has gone around the world as being unimprovable, but my wife regards it as naked unless it is adorned with tomatoes and onions.

She asked for adornments to be added, and they duly were at no extra cost, along with a sprinkling of diced bacon.

On the menu, the Caesar’s Salad is marked with a V to indicate that it is a vegetarian option but after some discussion, we concluded that that cannot be the case because of the advertised presence of the anchovies and therefore the bacon, although unexpected, was acceptable.

(The steakeria is dominated by meat, but there are vegetarian pizzas, pastas and a risotto available, usually based around mushrooms, plus a vegan burger.)

And this new-look Caesar Salad worked. The saltiness of the anchovies and the bacon complimented the creaminess of the Caesar dressing; the tomatoes and onions lifted the lettuce and the crutons added a crunch. Perhaps in decades to come, diners will say how Caesar’s salad was unchanged since he created it in Tijuana in the 1920s until a lady in downtown Bishop Auckland in the 2020s had it raised it to a whole new level.

As Manzo’s is a steakeria, I felt honour-bound to sample a signature steak. They offered rump (£16), New York Strip (£25), rib eye (£26), fillet (£28), Porterhouse (£36) and Chateaubriand (£48, for two). A sauce is £3 extra; a side is a further £4.

Being a cheapskate, I chose the rump (above) and asked for it to be medium. It arrived on the rare side of medium – it didn’t ooze, as a rare steak would have done, but it still had that red sponginess to it.

It was a joy. An inch thick, it sliced beautifully, leaving a cliffedge of meat standing quivering on the plate.

It had exciting salt crystals on top, and so it might have worked on its own, but I think the sauce – I chose Diane – really added to it.

It came with a flowerpotful of great fries and a little rocket. To be properly balanced, I felt it did need a little more on the side, but, fortunately, Genevieve’s discarded tomatoes fitted the bill perfectly.

For dessert, Theo had a New York cheesecake (£6) (above) – another classic, with the vanilla cheesecake enriched by a vibrant raspberry coulis – while Genevieve and I each had the Chocolate Fondant (£6.50). It was a small chocolate sponge with a huge, goey chocolate centre. It came with ginger crumb (I couldn’t taste much gingeriness but the biscuit crispiness of the crumb was a nice touch amid the glorious goeyness) and black cherry ice cream (below). This Black Forest combination is redolent of the 1970s, but it worked superbly well in this 1930s-style steakhouse.

The food bill for the four of us came to £98, and we were provided with free bottles of chilled house water. As some of the party also had expensive tastes in blood orange gin and South African wines, our total bill was £128.

It was a lovely evening in a relaxed atmosphere with classic food and friendly staff who are giving this old Victorian pub back a completely fresh life. With the new tapas bar in the Market Place, plus Gabrielle’s family-feel Italian in Flintoff Street and the surprising shack in Railway Street which houses the Smokehouse burger bar, the addition of Manzo’s means Bishop Auckland now has at least four really restaurants which are worth travelling to try.

MORE REVIEWS:

THE TAPAS BAR IN THE MARKET PLACE: A SLICE OF SPAIN IN BISHOP AUCKLAND

THE SMOKEHOUSE IN RAILWAY STREET: AN AMAZING FIND IN A BACK STREET

GABRIELLE'S IN FLINTOFF STREET: POWERFUL SAUCES IN A BACK STREET

HISTORY: WHAT NEWGATE STREET USED TO BE LIKE IN ITS HEYDAY FO PUBS AND SHOPS

THE DETAILS

Manzo Steakeria
201, Newgate Street
Bishop Auckland
DL14 7EJ

Tel: 01388-417571

Web: manzosteakeria.co.uk

THE RATINGS

Food: 8
Surroundings: 8
Service: 8
Value for money: 8