Made in Italy sits on Faulkner Street in Hoole, a bustling little road of independents on the outskirts of Chester.
Hoole is a bit of a hub. People in the area are fiercely proud of it, and with good reason. For such a small area, it has a big concentration of excellent bars and eateries.
Despite the competition, Made in Italy is ALWAYS busy. It’s a proper family run Italian restaurant that just draws the crowds and you can see why. The food is consistently excellent – superb, authentic (and crowd pleasing) Italian dishes – the service is fantastic and the atmosphere is thrumming.
It’s extremely child friendly, a massive benefit for all of the Hoole families. Although they don’t have a children’s menu, children can order a smaller version of most of the mains – much better in my opinion, especially for adventurous little kids who don’t necessarily want chicken nuggets (not that there’s anything wrong with chicken nuggets).
The music volume and table spacing are perfect in that you are confident that your excited children won’t be disturbing anyone’s date.
To the food. I’ve been to Made in Italy about ten times now, and the food is always, always delicious. I order pasta every time, Michael normally orders pizza, and we’ve never had a bad dish between us.
I like to order something different each time, but on this particular visit I ordered a dish I’d had before- the Rigatoni Made in Italy. My (hardly groundbreaking) theory is that a dish must be pretty darn good for you to put your name to it, and this one is. Perfectly cooked rigatoni tossed in a dolcelatte sauce with pancetta, sun dried tomatoes and onion. It’s the most delicious dish and I know I’ll order it many more times. I’ve actually made my own dupe here.
Michael, as I said, loves the Made in Italy pizzas (they are all excellent) but this time he went for penne salsiccia e broccoli – penne with sausage and broccoli. Unsurprisingly, it hit all of the marks. We also shared a cheese garlic bread- fluffy, fresh and gorgeous.
We didn’t order anything for our one year old, thinking that she could share our meals as normal, but I wish we had, because she WOLFED IT DOWN. She loved it as much as we did.
We didn’t do desserts but I can attest that the tiramisu is superb (and I have my eye on that tiramisu martini for next time).
In all, a fabulous, authentic, affordable Italian. Just make sure you book, because it is popular!
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