Fumo

Celebrated my friend’s birthday in Fumo. Very nice service, food and handsome waiters~

Headed back to Fumo for an evening meal with friends. Fumo does not disappoint, the service is exceptional with polite and friendly staff. Little perks such as aperitifs with your wine make this place feel like it’s not just another italian in Manchester. We ordered the lamb chops, pork belly, pappardelle and a few other sides — all were really tasty. Dessert was the killer! Cheesecake and the Nutella/​Ferrero icecream was to die for — shared between three it was just the right amount. Not the cheapest meal but we had a good few glasses of wine and its worth it!

What a fantastic restaurant, with great staff and a delicious menu! As soon as I walked through the doors I knew I was going to enjoy myself! We were greeted by a friendly & chatty waiter who escorted us to our seats and talked us through the concept of cicchetti — sharing size portions of all the Italian favourites. As someone who is very indecisive and often suffers from food envy this was my perfect restaurant; I ordered everything that took my fancy (well. almost everything!!) The starters, although amazingly presented, didn’t really feel like they were designed to be shared — particularly between four people. The mains, however, were great — the pizza and pasta in particular were really easy to spilt up and dive in to each dish! I think for future visits with big groups I’d order my own starter then share lots of mains. for a couple I reckon it would be much easier to share and have a bit of everything! The desserts were also fab — the tiramisu was a generous slab and the strudel tasted home made and authentic. The lemon meringue lacked the punch of lemon I’d have liked but I can forgive that on this occasion! People need to bookmark this and check it out :)

Atmosphere was amazing, service was great. Perfect portion sizes, and so well priced considering it’s the San Carlo chain. I much prefer here to San Carlo. I think the food is less rich and oily and more chic inside (not paper table cloths) I had the lobster risotto, beef ragu with parpadelle and a cheese mozzarella and Serrano ham flatbread with garlic and chilli (highly recommend all these dishes)

Services were ok, nice venue with good atmosphere. Staff asked me how’s food and I havent got chance to say anything yet, he just left. Made me feel like he didnt actually care about the food’s quality.
Anyway, highly recommend Wild Mushroom Bruschetta. Pizza was quite dry and plain this time, last time it was so good so Im very disappointed about this.
Same for lobster risotto, the lobster are way overcooked and I can tell its not fresh for sure! Such a waste of seafood if u cook it like this and serve it for your customer. Apart from this, the risotto was very well seasoned and flavourful.
I also tried Gnocchi with truffle from special menu, the texture was not like the typical soft and puffy gnocchi I ate at italian restaurant. It was quite powdery, but the truffle flavour was quite strong and I like that.
Roasted sweet potato were very good, they add anise to enhance the flavour which was a surprise.
Might go back to try some drinks which looked pretty good from some posts online.

Very poor for both service & food this time.
If I’d written this review after my first visit to Fumo it would have been a 5* without a doubt. However this time I felt like we were in an episode of Faulty Towers.
Last time I went the service at the bar was exceptional. This time were were ignored, served awful drinks, told by one member of staff who was behind the bar that he’d get someone else to serve us as he ‘wasn’t supposed to be working’ and had a barman try to pressure sell us the £25 Frank Sinatra version of the old fashioned. I was really shocked at the whole experience. We were given little nibble as we sat down but while last time these were fresh & tasty on this occasion they were just ok, obviously hadn’t been done fresh and had been sitting around waiting for a good while. The bread was hard and the nibbles were quite disappointing overall.
When we went to the table we were offered one backing on the till despite them having other tables available. This would have meant one of us constantly having a member of staff leaning over us to grab menus. Not ideal. They gave us another table but I was in a really cold draft and quite uncomfortable.
To be fair when I mentioned the issues at the bar they gave us free olives & garlic bread but this didn’t really make up for it. I’d rather just have had a good experience at the bar!
Last time the food was perfect. My favourite dish had been the Arancini on the specials menu so I couldn’t wait to order it again. This was a huge disappointment. Dry and fairly tasteless this time as oppose to fresh, hot & delicious last time.
Although I understand that for this style of dining dishes are brought out as they are ready the service was a shambles. Things came out in three rounds, completely separately as if it was starters, mains and another course. We had Arancini and deep fried mozzarella on their own to ‘start’. The mozzarella was good but comes with a very sharp tartar sauce style dip which doesn’t really work with the cheese. The steak with chilli (poorly cooked, really hard, dry crust along the edges & completely raw in the middle) and the chicken wrapped in proscutio (good, well cooked & very tasty) came on their own after a while but we had also ordered gnocchi and chips. This meant we had the meats together then were left with two potato dishes to eat together when they came. Surely the kitchen could have seen we wanted steak & chips rather then gnocchi and chips? Maybe I’m expecting too much here.
Without us asking a dessert platter was brought over. I appreciate the gesture but what if we’d wanted a different dessert? Anyway some of the items on here were good, some were not. The lemon meringue was dry, very hard and tasteless. The pistachio cake was delicious. The chocolate torte again was delicious and I’d highly recommend it. The ice cream/​gelato was perfect, very creamy & rich with a great vanilla flavour. The tiramisu tasted great but the presentation of it was really poor. We thought it was rice pudding before we tasted it.
The other issue seems to be that the staff struggle to understand the customers. Last time I was here we asked a question about a dish as we were deciding and then it arrived. The waitress had obviously not understood and put it through as an order. This time I asked for a glass of wine and the waiter tried to give us a bottle.
I was raving about this place to everyone but now I’ll be warning them off it. What a shame.
My photos are from the first visit not the second.

Gr8 food and staff were helpful and friendly spoilt by over the top drink prices £25 pound for 2 gin& tonics is steep even for town.
We will be going again in the future but will steer clear of the g & t

Love this new Italian at number 1, St Peters Square. This lovely Italian is over 2 floors and boasts a trendy interior. The food is tapas style and is top notch! Very impressed. I recommend getting 3 tapas as they were decent sized portions.
I had Sicilian prawns which were amazing, tempura style. I also had Chicken skewers and bruschetta.
At around £9 per tapas, it’s not exactly cheap but the food is high end. Very impressed! This place has some fab cocktails too. Staff were cute too :)
I will defiantly be returning! 5 stars! :)

Looking for somewhere new — and a little bit different — for dinner recently, it occured to me that the new San Carlo Fumo was only around the corner. After a look on the (very nicely designed) website, we thought it looked like a great, slimmed down, menu compared to the places we usually frequent.
We were warmly welcomed by front of house and given the choice of basically all the tables in the room; aside from a few families and couples, it was empty — after all, it was a Sunday! When the menu was presented to us, I was surprised and, if I’m honest, a little bit disappointed to find that it was a large and sprawling menu. Bye bye the previously admired, assumed to be carefully selected menu, and hello to a vast selection of Italian meals.
Oh, and hello to the strange ‘display’ of a lemon and tomato on the table.
Advised that it was almost like Italian tapas, we ended up with a table overflowing with food. Ravioli with spinach & cream cheese and a sweet tomato sauce, fried mozzarella, a special of gnocchi with parmesan ‘fondue’, ham & cheese calzone, pork belly, and courgette fries.
I won’t bore with the intimate details of each plate, but I will say that the gnocchi and calzone were the least exciting dishes, the gnocchi needing a healthy addition of pepper to get any real flavour and the calzone (although being tasty enough) needing more time in the oven for some crisp.
The ravioli was a stand out favourite, and the courgette fries were a delicious ‘alternative’ side, especially as there was no need for any more carbs on our table at this point.
As if we hadn’t eaten enough, we decided to indulge in the cicchetti of desserts, which is basically a massive board with a miniature selection of their puds. It was impressive enough, but felt fairly old school, with a huge covering of chocolate powder/​icing sugar. We managed to polish off the majority, but I can actually imagine this being best sat at the bar after a bottle of wine, as opposed to after a huge meal.
I’d give it another go as Manchester always needs more Italian options, but I can’t help but feel the look of the website is no where reflected in the actual restaurant. At least at the moment.

First time in this place and initial impression was good… this changed when we bought our first drink at the bar. I’m used to town prices but £25.00 for two G&T’s is taking the Mickey. Once we got over the shock we took our table. One thing to remember when checking out the menu is that the dishes are tapas style so do seem quite reasonable but they are smaller than a usual plate of food.
The food was nice without being spectacular and three dishes each filled a spot.
I will probably return but am in no real rush, after all there are plenty of other places and with any luck… cheaper G&Ts!