Bites Nearby: La Forno Pizza Offers Wood Burning Brick Oven Specialties

I find it interesting to see what people name their restaurants. Many times they are named for locales: Escape from New York is a pizza place in San Francisco, Paris Baguette is a chain of Korean coffee shops, Positano is the name of an Italian restaurant in Ardmore. Other times they are named for dining implements or flatware, Plate, Fork, Spoon, La Fourchette (fork in French). One name that comes up often is La Forno. In Italian, it means "oven" and as many wonderful pizzas, calzones, strombolis and baked pasta dishes come out of the oven, I can understand the allure of the name.in Upper Providence Township serves up all of those things.

The moment you walk past the cashier at La Forno you see the wood burning brick ovens. The food that comes out of a wood burning oven tastes differently than food that comes out of an electric or gas powered oven. Even the type of wood that is burned makes a difference in the flavor. While it is trickier to adjust and maintain temperature in a wood burning oven, it is worth the effort in my book. Some chefs take it even further and add all sorts of items to their fires to affect flavor even more.  

I ordered a "small" cheese pizza with pineapple and ham. As both of these are "gourmet toppings" they cost more than the regular toppings. How canned pineapple costs more than ground beef, spinach or ricotta cheese, I have no idea.

The pizza was quite large, at least 10 inches across. It would feed two comfortably for lunch. The dough was light and slightly chewy. It was not as crisp on the bottom as I had hoped it would be. The tomato sauce was simple and a bright red color. It tasted fine and was adequately seasoned. The mozzarella cheese was nicely melted. There was a good amount of pineapple and ham which was appreciated. There were actual chunks of pineapple instead of skinny little slivers. Love it or hate it, Hawaiian pizza has a place in my heart. It's a perfect sweet and savory pie.

For my dining companion, I ordered the spaghetti with tomato sauce, which came with a house salad and garlic bread. The portion of pasta was extremely large and the tomato sauce on the sweeter side. The tomato sauce here is not redolent of garlic and olive oil. The noodles were a bit overcooked for me but my companion thought they were fine. The salad was fresh and included some pepperoncini, croutons, sliced onions, cucumbers and iceberg lettuce. The French dressing that came on the side was tasty. The garlic bread was just OK. It didn't have as much garlic flavor as I had hoped. Not to say that it wasn't good, it just wasn't super garlicky. 

The service was erratic. Some of the folks I dealt with were kind and courteous and others threw my credit card and pen on the counter when it came time to sign. My questions were answered well and I was offered a drink while I waited. The food took some time to come out which just meant that they were actually cooking back there which I didn't mind. 

The space is quite clean and there is plenty of seating for groups and families. The place has a welcoming vibe to it and I can imagine it being quite lively when the dining room is filled. The decor is simple and the focus is on the food and not on expensive cloth napkins or random works of modern art. The coolest thing about the restaurant though are the brick ovens. Very few places want to bother with the hassle of maintaining a wood burning oven (wood is heavy, expensive and harder to control) but it makes sense that a place called La Forno embraces the challenge on a daily basis. Stop in when you're hungry, the portions are huge.