Buonissimo! Gran Cafe is touch of class

MANCHESTER’S multi-award-winning independent restaurant group San Carlo is trumpeting the success of its recently-launched Gran Café, an exclusive lower ground floor dining concept at Selfridges on Exchange Square.

The outlet has been named Café of the Year in the prestigious Les Routiers Awards.

It is offering elegant European style café dining in a fresh, chic setting, serving a range of all-day brunch dishes, seasonal superfood salads, soups, smoothies, products from its own patisserie and its own ice cream.

Included in its offering is its full English breakfast offering of fried, scrambled or poached eggs with bacon, Lancashire farm sausages, sautéed mushrooms and onions, hash brown, grilled tomato and Bury black pudding served with toast and tea and coffee.

There is also Eggs Benedict – poached eggs with parma ham and hollandaise and Eggs Norwegian – poached eggs with smoked salmon, among many other options.

Then there is the highest grade speciality JING teas, including Jasmine Pearls, Silver Needle and Whole Rose Bud tea.

The afternoon tea features a range of hand crafted sweet and savoury treats, including smoked salmon and marscapone with red apple, cucumber, lime and dill and a mini melanzane parmigiana – layers of baked aubergine, mozzarella and Parmasan). The sweet section includes a mini fresh fruit panna cotta, a Mr Selfridge chocolate éclair, a scone with clotted cream and slice of Italian-style mille-feuille.

San Carlo Group Restaurants managing director Marcello Distefano told TheBusinessDesk: “It made sense for us to open a San Carlo style café because we produce all our own cakes, underneath San Carlo.
 
“A couple of years ago we created a patisserie kitchen and having a café here gives us a great opportunity to show case all that in a real cake environment and also our ice creams as well.
 
“We couldn’t find a proper Italian producer of Italian style ice creams in England. We kept trying but it was impossible We invested a lot of money in all the ice cream making equipment and we produce all our ice creams for the whole group and this is a great place to showcase that.

“It’s just gone from strength to strength. We changed the name before Christmas and it’s amazing how successful it’s been. We’re now talking about maybe opening a couple more in the country.”