A superbly grand space, miles away from the humble Naples dining room which made the Michele name a global icon.  There’s subtle nods to the original throughout in the form of framed photos.

The buildings on King Street are largely old banks with enormous ceilings, fabricated during a time when people had an appreciation and budget for such granite-laden splendour. It’s an epic room, as you expect from any of the old King St joints.

The walls are now embellished with pink neon signage proclaiming; ‘I want somebody to look at me the same way I look at pizza’.  The ceilings are illuminated in a cycle of colours from blue to pink via everything else.  All very IG and influencer friendly.

However, grand and opulent doesn’t necessarily mean classy.  For my tastes at least.

Pizza is usually top-tier cheap eats.  That’s the whole point of it really, apart from being legit delicious.

So, we paid a few pennies over £80 for a starter, a dessert, 2 pizzas, and 2 large bottles of San Pellegrino water; plus 12.5% service was added.  Steep. Very steep.  My favourite Margherita in the city is £9, which pretty much sums it up here really.  As ever, you pay for more than your food; it’s the whole package.

But objectively; 15 quid for a Margherita is Dubai price points, not King St. Being savvy with flight prices, you could jet to Naples and eat at the original for the same cost as dinner with booze here.

So whilst things are still very affordable on the grand scale, it’s heavily marked up to pay for that King St rent and flashy dining room.

I’ve said it before; one thing that we do genuinely well in Manchester is pizza. In fact, it's probably what we do better than anything else. No matter where you are in Mcr city centre, you’re only a 2-minute stroll from decent pizza of some incarnation. We have too much of it if we are being honest, so anywhere which pops up either needs to be genuinely great or have a USP. So, what better USP than being labelled as ‘The best pizza in the world’, but I’ll come to that later.

Just like its decor, the original Michele’s menu is uber-simple; Marinara or Margherita, large or small. No truffles, no oysters, no Prosecco. That’s your lot, for 4 quid a pop. But here on King St the menu is fleshed out to offer something for all tastes/budgets, not just those who simply want to eat the most famous Neapolitan pizza on the planet.

The Salumi plate (£15.90) was acceptable in size and variety, and the cooked ham was superbly enjoyable. Decent, albeit unremarkable.

But we didn’t come here for anything other than pizza in truth, so onto the Margherita (£14.50). Now I must be honest; ahead of arriving our expectations were pretty low. I’ve barely seen a positive word written about this place in either the local food media or online review forums, hence the curios need to see for ourselves.

But, this was genuinely very good pizza. A well baked crust carrying loads of flavour and had good structure; all suggesting a long slow prove and a bit of love. Toppings were high quality, in the correct volumes. Generally, it was a very decent pizza indeed, pretty true to the original and those low expectations quickly turned into a sobering dose of guilt-trip. Forgetting the price tags, which of course sets people’s expectation barometer; there’s no question that the actual main product stands up here

The Diavola (£17.95) was similarly well crafted, only with the addition of nduja for a spicy punch to the palate. The salami was cut to avoid dragging off a whole slice via a solo bite as so often happens, so some clever engineering and thought. Another really enjoyable pizza which trumped our pre-arrival barometer.

Zucchini Friti (£5.50) were well seasoned in a decent portion size, and did what they did all in all.

Rum Baba (£8.50) seems to be on every menu in Manchester at the moment. But hand on heart, this was better than the baba at a Michelin Assiette contender which we visited recently. Well baked, a perfect crumb, properly doused and soaked in rum syrup, with a few kitsch dots of cream to garnish. We sliced the baba ourselves to make the photo look proper though, admittedly.

The Salumi lacked general quality, the olives were unbrined and tasted straight off the tree, plus the forest of rocket which garnished the board was a bit wasteful and not that enjoyable as undressed/unseasoned.

The Zucchini Friti were more than a touch over-fried, and ultimately very flat.  With some hindsight, we’d have ordered nothing but the pizzas for our savouries.

A very mixed bag, sadly.  Our first server was superbly cheery, prompt at taking our order, and also dealt with our payment and departure as splendidly as the intro.  A suave young gent who ticked all the boxes.

Sadly, said gent quickly disappeared behind the bar after sitting us down, at which point service was left to another gent who appeared to be the manager.  He was pleasant enough but attentiveness didn’t follow suit. He spent most of our service stood around, gazing into space with us willing him to get busy, especially since only around 20 covers were in.  Empty water bottles were left on our table for the duration of our meal, then when ordering dessert he took our order, eventually, only to then ask a server to come and take our order, again! 

Very odd and just a serious lack of oomph.

I’ll never forget a four hour round drive from Amalfi to Naples to bag a legendary Da Michele pizza.  Then there was a further hour long wait in torrential rain whilst holding a soggy raffle ticket in anticipation of being called inside.  I was even honoured by being allowed to fire a pizza there.  But my first-hand experience means that you can rely on my also first-hand opinions, unlike most of the local reviews where the writers’ expertise was evidently delivered via Wikipedia and Google ‘research’.

Now I should’nt really compare venues and generally dislike food writers doing so/name-dropping.  However, this venue’s whole selling point is its association with the original, so comparison is a given.

But for me, comparing this place to the Naples OG is like comparing a 2006 Ferrari California to a 1960 Ferrari 250GT.  The newbie is technically better in almost every way, and is also the one that most people would prefer to be spotted driving down King Street in.  But ultimately in a decade, people won’t look back at the fledgeling with any real admiration.  However, the oldie reeks of class and is a total icon which defined what Neapolitan style pizza is.

So, is this very good Neapolitan style pizza? Absolutely it is, yes. But…

Let’s be totally clear; the best pizza in the world it is not. And even if the pizza was exactly the same as in Naples, it still wouldn’t be as good, if that makes sense? You just can’t replicate the experience of the original, and a grand yet slightly garish dining room doesn’t justify a 50% price bump on other local pizza slingers, not for me anyway. And yes, the pizza is good, but in reality it’s not even the ‘best’ pizza in Manchester, unless you like the subjective notion of being noticed in ‘the best pizzeria in the world’?

It’s all personal and whatever sells, of course. But in contrast to the neon signage; I have no desire for people to look at me at all, especially not whilst I’m eating pizza.