Put Your Head In Il Forno | It just sounds so much more romantic in Italian...
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Il Forno Ristorante
14891 Stony Plain Road. 455-0443
Leave it to me to completely miss the point of Il Forno, the comfy Italian eatery at Jasper Gate, Edmonton’s most central big box strip mall. “Il forno” means “the oven” and only after we ordered did I notice that almost every other table on this bustling Thursday night had at least one pizza on it. I then noticed a woman in white kitchen togs tending the brick-lined, crescent-shaped opening in the wall into which she slid pie after pie, crisping the thin crust instantly on the bottom and bubbling the dough with pockets of steam. Man, I love a good pizza...
Too late! We were having one of the specials, broiled snapper with avocado cream ($22) and a bowl of spaghetti puttanesca ($17) — I seem to have a twisted obsession with trying puttanesca whenever I see it on a menu — preceded by the insalata mista ($8).
As I say, practically every table in Il Forno’s adobe-and-gold confines was full, a few with big groups passing large platters of salad and sampling a vintage or two from the wine list. A real flesh-and-blood harpist plinked out Céline Dion and showtunes from his low perch by the entrance and black-clad servers traversed the dining room with the same specials board like they were shuttling a sole giant novelty cheque between tables. The tablecloths were, of course, checkered and bedecked with baskets of crusty rolls, the bane of the famished diner who ends up scarfing half a gutful of white bread and butter waiting for a starchy entrée. Better to just stick to the Chilean cabernet ($7) the server suggested, since they were out of malbec.
For lovers of the basic Italian salad, the insalata mista was the perfect way to start the meal, a vibrant, savoury mouth-freshener made of crisp mixed greens, tomato wedges, red onions, and feta in the ideal amount of tangy vinaigrette, suitably portioned for two to split (though, to be honest, I could have easily eaten my co-diner’s half).
After the salad, there was kind of a lull in the pace of the meal. I’ll happily admit that good food takes time — and Il Forno’s food probably never falls below the level of good — and that this was a pretty busy night for the restaurant, but it could have been half an hour between courses. So much for holding off on the crusty rolls and butter.
When the food did arrive, it certainly looked great. My co-diner beamed down on two fillets of snapper, densely moist, flecked with pepper and dolloped with rich purée of avocado. She also had some tender, crisp vegetables and a cloud of buttery mashed potatoes to look forward to.
Puttanesca, as we all know, comes to us from the legendary sex workers of old Napoli, who allegedly shored themselves up between customers with pasta tossed with a rustic but intense combination of extra virgin olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and black olives. Perhaps you remember the slogan of that ad campaign aiming to popularize the dish in North America: “Puttanesca — it’s not just for whores anymore.” Or maybe I dreamed that.
Anyhow, puttanesca is one of those dishes that can be a real synesthetic experience, where the components are so transcendently melded that the aroma, taste, mouthfeel, and finish become a pleasurable sensory smear that lingers in prickles of capsicum heat in the sinuses and on the tongue, and as a sheen of perspiration under the eyes. Il Forno’s puttanesca was marvelously unified in its marriage of sweet, smooth olive oil, salty, concentrated anchovy, and distinctive explosions of olive and caper between the teeth, with a warming undertone of garlic throughout, but I could have gone for a touch more cayenne or crushed chilis to enliven the richness. Shaking on the chilis afterward didn’t quite get me the same effect. The spaghetti itself was fresh and precisely al dente.
There was nothing at all missing from the snapper, a fish I hate cooking at home for the post-tidal reek it confers upon the place in which it’s prepared. No such odour attached itself to Il Forno’s snapper, the light flavour borne on a creamy skiff of whipped avocado. The buttery, garlic-infused cauliflower and broccoli gave some tender-crisp variety to the meal, and the velvety, buttery potatoes fit right in on the plate.
An enjoyable meal, to be sure, but being the kind of guy who always wants what he doesn’t have, I can’t help thinking back to how good everyone else’s pizza looked.
