Carluccio’s Fenwick Colchester: New Vegan Dishes Join Classics & Vegetarian
Aimed at shoppers needing a break from browsing the high-end goods in what was once Williams & Griffin before a £30 million re-development into a shiny new Fenwick store, Carluccio’s shows an investment in the rapidly developing commuter town’s high street.
On the store’s second floor, Carluccio’s is an appealing corner space lined with turquoise-hued walls and caramel leather seats backed by panoramic shots of Italian cities such as Florence. There are a delicatessen and food shop as you enter, which lure you in with displays of good looking jars of olive oils, and dessert wine, packets of buttery biscuits and pasta.
I’m not a very good shopper, shamefully ruined by the laziness of browsing online. So in the same way you end up eating lunch at 10 am when you know your packed lunch is in the fridge at work, I was all too easily sidetracked by the restaurant entrance and decided to settle in for lunch.
With 75 branches in the UK and Ireland, the original Carluccio’s opened in London in 1999 by the late Antonio Carlucci, known as the godfather of Italian cooking, and his then-wife Priscilla. Celebrating 20 years in business, the new autumn/winter menu has added some of the recipes original recipes Antonio used twenty years ago according to his motto of ‘minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour.’ The new seasonal menu also more than nods to the rise in vegan eating even reinventing the chicken Milanese with the plant-based Veganese version.
I do love vegan food but with a weakness for arancini, £6.75, I had no choice but to order the rice balls filled with spinach and smoked mozzarella, said to have been born 10th-century Sicily. They’re the perfect street food, hot and crunchy outside with a melting cheese-filled interior offset, as I wasn’t in the street but a restaurant, by a spicy-sweet tomato sauce.
Then came a warming risotto ai funghi, £13.75, which can often turn out to be a disappointment with too much salt and a bit slimy but this was just right, glistening with porcini, chestnut, oyster, shiitake and shimeji mushrooms. The restaurant space filled up quickly with well-heeled retirees enjoying the good service and a cappuccino or glass of wine. But some of us had work to do.
I left with a crumbly, buttery pear and almond tart from the deli counter to eat back at my desk. I don't think Antonio Carluccio would have approved but it certainly sweetened my afternoon.