New southern Italian restaurant serving specialities from Campania opens in Altrincham

Altrincham has added another string to its bow with the opening of Tre Ciccio, a new southern Italian restaurant in the town centre.

The name – it means Three Chubby Friends – is a nod to its owners, head chef Francesco Scafuri and his two partners, who are long-standing friends from industry days gone by.

Inspired by their travels together and warm summer evenings in the hills near Salerno, Campania, the three friends have come together to bring the authentic flavours of the region to Altrincham.

The charming trattoria is set over two floors and lovingly furnished and decorated with exposed brick walls, leather booths and warm hanging lights.

Tre Ciccio boasts a warm upstairs seating area, a 50 cover dining room downstairs and promises an outside terrace with retractable roof in March.

Apart from some beautiful antipasto and insalata options, Tre Ciccio’s menu focuses on two staple dishes of Campania – roast chicken and Pizza Napoletana.

The humble pizza, one of Italy’s best known and most popular foods, hails originally from the city of Naples in Campania.

At Tre Ciccio, the slow-rising pizza dough is made with the finest double zero flour, water, salt & fresh yeast before sitting to ferment at an ambient temperature for a minimum 24 hours.

Once the natural flavours in the yeast have been allowed to develop, it’s baked at around 500˚c in a purpose-built wood-fired oven, creating the beautiful, bubbly Neapolitan crust we’ve grown to admire so much. This is Altrincham’s answer to Rudy’s.

In authentic Italian style, head chef Francesco has put a strong emphasis on sourcing the finest ingredients possible for his menu.

Campania boasts one of Italy’s most elegant and refined cuisines and also happens to be singularly blessed in terms of its produce as a result of the rich volcanic soil of Mount Vesuvius.

The restaurant sources an abundance of quality ingredients from the area including rich San Marzano plum tomatoes, to give their red sauces an unrivalled richness, Amalfi lemons and buffalo mozzarella.

Everything they marinate is done in-house, from mouth-watering lemon & olive nocerella olives – the best we’ve had this side of the Atlantic – to the pollo arrosto e patate.

The chicken is coated in their own secret rub before being slow-roasted to enhance the flavour, whilst still retaining its tenderness and moisture. The dish is then served sharing-style between two, as it would be back home in Campania.

To add to the long list of quality ingredients, they only use Goosnargh chicken. In case you haven’t heard of it, Goosnargh chicken is a speciality range of chicken raised and sold by Johnson & Swarbrick at Swainson House Farm in Goosnargh, near Preston.

The chickens are favoured by top chefs such as Gordon Ramsey for their superior, moist flavour. As it says on the menu, and in the words of the legendary Rej Johnson, “A happy chicken is a tasty bird”. Who are we to argue?

Raised in uncrowded conditions with lots of natural ventilation and fresh straw bedding every day. the birds are fed with a special, top-secret corn recipe that has been specially developed with the aid of a nutritionist but is completely free of additives. antibiotics. hormones and medication.

As the you-are-what-you-eat mantra gains momentum and we take more and more interest in what we are putting into our bodies, Tre Ciccio has popped up at just the right time.

Whilst we are undoubtedly spoilt for choice in Manchester already, Tre Ciccio is yet another reason to make the 30-minute tram journey to Alty in search of new mouth-watering foodie treats.

4A Moss Lane, Altrincham WA14 1BA