Rich Carver is teaming up with Dan Hope for the new summer opening...
Ancoats is getting a new ‘modern pizza restaurant’ in the form of Proloco.
Behind it are Honest Crust mastermind Richard Carver and Rainy Heart co-founder Dan Hope, and it’s set to open at One Port Street this summer.
The restaurant will be built around seasonal food, generous hospitality and music, with a menu that changes weekly.
Carver’s 18-inch pizzas will sit alongside sharing plates made with produce from the North West and beyond, including flour grown and milled in the Lake District, vegetables from Cinderwood Market Garden and Organic North, British charcuterie and cheeses. The all-important tomatoes and olive oil will be sourced from Italy.
The approach is described as ‘local where possible, British by preference’, with dishes for the table breaking from the core pizza menu and set to include the likes of salt-baked beetroot with ricotta and dill, radicchio agrodolce with stracciatella, and a heap of grilled lamb chops with anchoïade.
The pizza menu will feature the likes of tomato butter pie with marjoram, charred seasonal greens with anchovy, and porchetta with whipped potato and fennel.
Gelato will also be made in-house daily, with flavours rotating regularly.
Carver founded Honest Crust in 2013, trading from Altrincham Market since it opened in 2014, and since firing up their ovens in Mackie Mayor and the Picturedrome in Macclesfield.
“Proloco is about cooking food I genuinely love with the best people and produce around me,” said Carver. “I want it to feel effortless – warm, a little bit fun, and always worth coming back to.”
With DJ and producer Ruf Dug, Dan Hope founded the nomadic club night Rainy Heart in 2024, using spaces including the bungalow at Kampus, a former chip shop, an abandoned branch of Boots, and more recently a residency in one of the empty units in the transforming Stretford Mall shopping centre.
He also founded Firebird Hope, the feted chicken pop-up which traded from YES and a number of other spaces in the city.
Drinks at Proloco will be kept simple, with wine, local beer, aperitivi and a £7 house Negroni.
Music will be a key element of the restaurant too, with a bespoke sound system from Turn End Audio – which also provided sound support at Rainy Heart – installed in the space.
Proloco opens this summer at One Port Street. Soft launch details will be available via proloco.uk, with updates at @proloco.mcr.
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