Carlisle's Milano: good food and wealth of corner shop sweet treats

On Botchergate, the pizza, kebab, chips, parmo, and fried chicken eatery allows sit-ins and takeaway options, and a stock of sweet and savoury packaged treats and soft drinks that rival corner shops – making excellent use of its large space.

Milano interior (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

The service you’ll receive is friendly and quick, and the quality of the food matches.

The business appears to focus on pizza, so options are plentiful – from standard toppings like pepperoni, ham and pineapple, and meat feast, to more adventurous combinations, like chicken kiev and Bolognese.

In fact, there are as many as 43 base pizza options, with customisations possible, rivalling chains like Pizza Hut and Domino’s.

That’s where Milano excels, and does so further in its pricing, as a 12-inch pizza, easily shareable between two hungry or three peckish people, costs around £7, depending on which one you get.

The most expensive pizza option, without additional toppings, is the ‘Sylvester style’, which contains all toppings, and costs £8.50.

The largest donner kebab will set you back £6.50, and burgers are priced at around £4.50.

It’s not the cheapest in the city, but it certainly competes and has higher quality.

Our order:

• 12-inch Hawaiian pizza, with additional garlic and jalapenos - £8.55
• Four pieces of fried chicken - £6.90
• Cheesy chips - £3.50
• 10 cheese straws - £5.50
• Garlic sauce - £0.80
  • Total - £25.25

The pizza was excellent, using thick cubes of ham rather than thin slices, and was served piping hot even once I got home, but I would have appreciated a more robustly flavoured sauce and more of it.

Hawaiian pizza (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

This was the same for each item received, so hot it was almost too hot to hold for a while – not a fault by any means, but a compliment, as there’s nothing worse than your takeaway getting cold by the time you’ve sat down at the table.

Cheese straws resemble higher-priced mozzarella sticks at McDonald’s and likely weren’t homemade, not that they’re an item that would benefit from it, so there’s not much to say other than they were, as well, hotter than the sun.

Cheese straws (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

Cheesy chips came in a massive quantity; we were expecting a box half the size with a light sprinkling of cheddar, but received thick-cut chips under an ocean of melted cheese.

Cheesy chips (Image: Ollie Rawlinson)

The fried chicken came in large portions, whole pieces, generously coated and well seasoned, while the meat was moist, unlike some takeaways which provide dry, unappetising chicken.

It was quite bizarre to see the shop counter stocked so heavily with boxes of cakes and biscuits, as well as varieties of chocolate bars, gummy sweets, cigarette filters and rolling papers, but I’d strongly recommend that any takeaway that isn’t following suit does so, because there isn’t anywhere in the city quite like it – you’ll always find what you need at Milano.