From Nantwich to Prestwich, Dokes is making local pizza for local people

“I saw a picture of myself before Elnecot opened the other day,” Dokes and Elnecot owner Michael Clay says as he brings over a bowl of steaming pasta, pizza flour all over his apron. He points to the greys now sprouting from his otherwise dark hair.

But the chef-proprietor, who owns the neighbourhood restaurant in Ancoats and now this smart pizzeria in Prestwich, really shouldn’t be losing any sleep or sprouting any more grey hairs over this latest project.

He has a Dokes Pizzeria already set up in the Society food hall tucked in by the Rochdale Canal ‘Lake’ (a bit of a grand title, given the size of it) off Barbirolli Square by Bridgewater Hall, where they’ve been knocking out pizza for just over a year, and clearly honing the craft.

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Their USP is their use of almost all British ingredients, from the flour via the cheese to the sausage. The flour is milled by Gilchester’s in Northumberland, and the cheese from Manchester’s The Crafty Cheese Man, who also works with the likes of Rudy’s and the 3 Hands Deli, sourcing the best British cheeses out there.

The tomatoes come from the Isle of Wight, they use rapeseed oil from Wharfe Valley near Leeds, and vegetables from Cinderwood’s market garden in Nantwich. Even the pasta - the pasta! - is made in Yorkshire. The food miles are in the hundreds rather than the hundreds of thousands, and it shows what can be achieved with a bit of lateral thinking.

And are the pizza’s any worse for not boasting single crop tomatoes from the foothills of Vesuvius? They are not. Sitting somewhere between a New York and a Neapolitan style, this is decent pizza, whichever way you slice it. Earlier this week, the MEN was invited to check out the