As soon as you land, you’re hit with a red and white-dominated colour scheme sporting eclectic décor. The star attraction, the wood-fired pizza oven, sits in the middle of the space. It won’t ever be a contender at any interior design awards, but it’s a cozy, fun place with bags of personality and feels matched to the product. 

Sure, it's personality-laden, but also a bit DIY in vibe. It’s not super polished, but then again, we are a small indie here, so it’s a bit unreasonable to expect The Dorchester’s decor budget.

We paid £135 for 2 starters, 1 garlic bread, 3 pizzas, 1 Tiramisu, 2 Cokes, a bottle of decent Primitivo, and a bottle of sparkling water.   So £45 a head for enough drink and food to both fill us up, and also take some away.  It’s all just super reasonable.

Anywhere in town only charging a pizza of this volume and quality for £12 or so, has my heart in terms of food price points.  So you could get away with spending just £20 on a pizza and a glass of wine.  Very decent.

Our decent bottle of Primitivo was £33, but has a retail of £16.50, so a great 2x markup, which is almost unheard of these days at those accessible level prices.

I’m writing this more and more, to the point that I’m starting to question whether or not I’m the problem, aka I’m tight.   But the entry-level bottle of vino is getting up there a bit (£27), considering the venue’s general price point.  It’s fair to say that mains were better value than the starters, and for those who want a pint a Moretti will cost you a Mayfair comparable £7.90.

You’re in a pizzeria so it probably goes without saying, but the menu is centred around carbs.  And we were only happy to indulge. 

Starters were deep-fried ravioli (£9) which came in a portion of 5, sat simply atop some pleasant marinara sauce.  Inside awaited Nduja and mascarpone.

There was another deep-fried option on the starter menu, in the form of deep-fried gnocchi (£11).  Clearly, we ordered that too.  Balls of gnocchi, deep fried to give the great texture and a fritter-like mouth feel, came topped with a ball of Burrata, a dusting of Parm, and a token shaving of salami.  Simple but delicious. 

Cacio e Pepe Garlic Bread (£10) was our third and possibly unrequired starter in terms of sheer volume/similarity to the mains, as much as it was easily the best of three starters.  A really light and well-flavoured dough, topped with copious amounts of garlic-heavy cheese, which had seeped onto the plate to create a secondary garlic butter dip, infused with black pepper.  Some would say oily but I say delicious.  This was easily one of the plates of the night.

So, on to said mains. Now it’s clear to see from both social media and also pizzas that pass you by whilst on their way to other tables, that Ciaooo have a signature style of pizza. Whilst the window decal says ‘Neapolitan Pizzeria’, the style is a far cry from what you’d find anywhere in Naples in terms of toppings. Ciaooo’s shtick is super thick crusted pizzas crowned by untraditionally generous and quirky toppings, with half the menu featuring a whole Burrata in the middle of your chosen pizza. There was also a special pizza available, which came with hot dogs and chips. Imagine the uproar in Napoli. In Ancoats though, anything goes. 

Vesuvio Pizza (£12) was our first pick, which came with the obligatory San Marzano tomatoes, sourced from the foothills of Mount Vesuvio itself.  Then there was fior di latte Mozzarella, spicy Pecorino cheese, wild boar salami, Nduja, Parmesan, and a swoosh of extra virgin.  It sounds like a mouthful, and it was.  For the quality and size, £12 was a bargain.

Next up was the Partenopea Pizza (£12) had the same base as above, with the required tomato/Mozzarella, only it was donned with Scamorza smoked cheese, smoked chicken, broccoli and Nduja, with a mouthful of smoke and spice.  Delicious. 

And finally, we opted for one of Ciaoo’s ‘con Burrata’ options in the Mortacchio Pizza (£15.50).   A mountain of Mortadella, Nduja, sundried tomatoes and pistachios, along with a whole ball of Burrata completed the inventory of adornments.  Of all the 3, this was probably the best showcase of Ciaoo’s style.  There was so much topping that the base almost became insignificant to be honest, so if you like topping heavy pizzas, this is one for you.

We threw in an order of chilli honey too (£1.50), to work with those substantial crusts, a strategy in which all 3 of us got involved in.  

Once the pizzas disappeared we didn’t need any more food.  Truth be told, two of us had literally half our pizzas boxed up to be recycled into a sturdy next-day lunch.  But there’s a separate menu for all things tiramisu, with it being offered in a handful of flavour combos.  We went for pistachio to at least keep it semi traditionale, but for those wishing to push the boundaries there’s also Kinder Bueno and Espresso Martini options.  They are all made by Lory’s Tiramisu and come in cute little tins.  We’ve had a lot of Tiramisu in the city in recent months, and this is 100% up there, and trumped a viral drawer-based one on the other side of town, which we ate only 2 days prior.  

And just like that, we headed off, feeling no shame at all in carrying that takeaway box containing a full pizza compiled from our 3 person contribution.  There’s absolutely no way that you’ll leave Ciaooo feeling hungry.  

But; the ravioli were a bit dry and uninspiring, especially for £9/almost £2 per unit. There was no sign of any chicken on the Partenopea pizza, and the sundried tomatoes on the Mortacchio were way too big in size and would have eaten better/given better flavour distribution had they been cut into small slivers.

And I like it personally, but a lot of people may be deterred by the style of pizza, which is uber crust heavy as mentioned already. As light and fluffy as they were, we saw quite a few finished plates containing crusts, making their way back to the kitchen.

We were running late for our table.  Really late, to the tune of 30 minutes.  And I can’t even blame it on traffic or another typical excuse, but merely just us getting carried away with the cocktails, over at the rather excellent Stray, just over the road.  We rang Ciaooo to apologise in good time, and we were assured that it wasn’t an issue.  A great start to things, even though we’d clearly taken liberties. 

Once inside, things were similarly friendly and accommodating.  We were looked as if we’d walked into a friend’s dining room, all night. 

Some nerves/lack of confidence from one of our servers, which was more than compensated for in friendliness.

Manchester has a lot of pizza.  I’ll go one step further; we have way too much pizza.  Some of it is genuinely fantastic and interesting, but much of it is absolutely unremarkable.  It’s hard to stand out in such a saturated market, but Ciaooo’s style is like no other operator in the city and that can only ever be a welcome thing as it’s essentially a totally different product.  The substantial yet light crusts, I found to be enjoyable and just made to team up with those side dips which other places have town have also stared doing.  Their pizza toppings, in fact much of the menu, are far from what you’d call traditional in Napoli.  The now semi-comedic discussion over pineapple belonging on pizza hasn’t yet appeared at Ciaooo, but then hotdogs and chips have, so there’s still reasonable hope for pretty much anything else.

If we headed back to Ciaooo, which at some point I’d very gladly do, then skipping the starters will probably be the plan of attack.  The pizzas are why you should visit, so there’s no sense in using up precious tummy space on starters to only then not need to finish those pizzas.  They are huge, and well worth the circa £12 charged.

In a city which is bursting with pizza options, most of them being pretty samey and uninspiring, it’s great to see somebody doing their own thing/something a bit different.  We are fans.