Saturday, February 06, 2016

Dinner at Forno

Thursday 4 February
Another step on the road to recovery: we managed to go out to dinner with a job candidate after a long day.  On Russel and Kathy's recommendation, we chose a new place, Forno, far in the reaches of Hyde Park.

It's an informal, noisy room, with rustic wooden furniture and a terrace and fire-pits out front.  But the service is attentive, and we were soon supplied with menus, water, an account of the specials, and red wine.
The specials supplied one of our openers, an excellent swordfish crudo with pickled red onions and a couple of slices of broiled eggplant.  The other was a bowl of honeycomb tripe Florentine-style, which is much like Roman-style: braised in red wine and crushed tomatoes, and dusted with Parmigiano Reggiano; it only needed some Blue Oven bread to sop up the sauce.

Again, we chose a special as one of our mains: "porchetta" of salty brined pork loin wrapped in pork belly, on a bed of green beans with tomato; while the menu offered an even tastier option, two loin lambchops on a bed of spicy cannellini beans and rapini pesto.

In sum, Forno is pretty good, but would be more pleasant if they had comfy chairs and didn't play bad rock muzak too loud.

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