Onda, Ancoats: 'An enjoyable evening that will probably gather dust on my recommendations shelf'
A pasta pop-up that has taken the internet by storm - but is it really making waves up North?
Bookended by long stretches stuck in traffic on the M5, I spent the weekend in Manchester visiting the family and more importantly visiting the restaurants that I didn’t make it to last time I was up.
I had not been organised enough to book a table at Manchester’s hottest new pasta pop-up and was crestfallen to find it was fully booked for the entirety of October when I looked a week ago. A ray of hope lay in the line ‘we accept walk-ins’.
My family are committed to the cause, bless them, and they resigned themselves to the fact that my plan was to turn up early on Saturday evening and wait with an honourable amount of enthusiasm, fuelled by an honourable amount of wine drunk while we waited hungrily at the bar for an hour and a half.
Onda is confusing. We walked past it twice, all hunched over Google Maps with furrowed brows before realising it’s actually a pop-up in the New Cross and not a permanent spot. It seems that not only had I failed to book, I’d failed to even figure out where or what it was. I suspect, like most of their 105,000 followers on Instagram, I’d seen a video and thought ‘that looks good’, without much further research. More fool me.
That said, I did know that Onda had been receiving mixed reviews. Not quite a Marmite of a restaurant - no one seems to hate it - but some have been markedly less enthused than others. Intriguing. Manchester has some cracking pasta places; Sud and Ornella’s to name a couple. Onda sure know how to stir up a social media frenzy, but can they cook?
The New Cross is a Manchester venue if ever I saw one. Judging by the exposed brick and steel beams this was perhaps once some sort of warehouse or working building, now fitted out with coloured uplights and simple tables; half restaurant, half bar.
QR codes are simply one of the least inviting things one can find in a restaurant. Being handed a menu is exciting and sociable; scanning to look at a list of items on your phone is not. There’s no denying though that it removes a lot of the friction of running such a busy restaurant and once we’ve been given a table (a small miracle given the steady stream of people coming through the doors) we don’t have to wait for anything.
There’s no doubt the pasta at Onda is very good. I should bloody hope so too; I can see it being artfully made from where we are sat, long sheets of gold streaming from an electric pasta roller. Fancy. If they managed to fuck it up somewhere between the pasta maker and the table I would be most concerned. It’s all chew and bite and glorious starch.
The pasta carries the sauce, literally and metaphorically, in the same way that Florence Pugh carries the entire film Don’t Worry Darling. The pasta is reaching for upper echelons of taste and texture but under-seasoned sauces are dragging it down by its ankles. It is all Style (Harry) and no substance. The Onda team should, in fact, be slightly worried.
Guinciale, king of the cured cheeks, is lost to yolk and cheese in carbonara bucatini (£12). Beef shin campanelle (£13) is chunks of tender meat but someone has been too shy with the salt. Crab filled parcels (£14) are deliciously sweet but two dimensional; lemon, chilli, garlic and salt are wondering why they weren’t invited to the party.
Vodka pasta (£12), which I’ve never actually tried despite it being a TikTok sensation, is good. Spicy, burnt ends from the oven. Would I be chuffed if I achieved this at home? Yes. Is it a million miles away from a school canteen dinner? No. It’s a little too sweet to be truly endearing.
The two pizettas, garlic (£7) and ‘nduja (£9), again prove that the Onda team know how to navigate their carbs but unfortunately the trend continues. Searching for the kick of spicy sausage and garlic is an exceptionally unsatisfying treasure hunt.
My sister is so efficient with ordering the two portions of tiramisu (£8) that it turns up before we’ve finished eating the mains. I have trained her well. Famed on the internet for daring to come from a drawer, it is suitably boozy and a welcome full stop to a book that will probably gather dust on my recommendations shelf.
As I said, I’ve seen mixed reviews; some love it, some are not fussed. The answer lies somewhere in the middle. Onda means wave in Italian. I’d argue it’s barely more than a ripple. It seems there can only be one pasta king*, and this isn’t it.
*I should just like to point out that the daily dredge of Pasta King from the school canteen was one of the worst things I’ve ever put in my mouth. If you’re looking for the actual king of pasta, I would advise going anywhere but somewhere that declares itself royalty.
Onda Pasta Bar, The New Cross, 6 Cross Keys Street, Manchester, M4 5ET
All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour.