Inspired by the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean was never really about the food.It was about the table.

The slow lunches. The shared plates. The bread that never stopped being passed around. The grandmothers who never wrote a recipe down because they never needed to. Olive oil pressed by the same family for four generations. A nonna's tomato sauce that tastes the same now as it did when she was eight years old.

That's the Mediterranean we wanted to bring home.

Mambos is a family business in South Shields, built around the flavours we fell in love with on holiday. The Spanish prawns sizzling in paprika and garlic on the Andalusian coast. The burrata bruschetta in a Roman wine bar. The pizza — properly charred — with nduja from Calabria and sobrasada from the Balearics. The slow afternoons that turned into slow evenings.

So we source where it should be sourced.

Calabrian nduja for the pizza. Sobrasada from the Balearic islands. Lemons from the cliffs above Amalfi for the limoncello. Olive oil from the Peloponnese for the bread basket.

The Mediterranean has been cooking this way for two thousand years, and we're not about to fix what isn't broken.

This is the Mediterranean's table in South Shields.

Bring your family. Bring your appetite. The afternoon's yours.