Al Forno–decent Italian food in an informal atmosphere

This Italian restaurant is located in the middle of town and the concept seems to be a success as there are now 4 Al Forno’s around Stavanger  - I guess everyone enjoys some Italian food. I guess it didn’t start that great as the local food critic Tore Bruland gave it a pretty bad score. I went there on a Friday night with my wife and a friend – we had no reservation but they seemed to have lots of tables available and we chose to sit upstairs to avoid draft from the entrance door. Their menu is extensive and it contains all sort of variations of pasta and pizza – but their wine list is very,very limited. We were starving when we came in and we decided to go straight for the main course and I went for the Pizza Al Forno, Nikki went for the Gnocchi con carne and our friend went for Pizza frutti de mare.
My pizza was quite good – it was topped with a spicy sausage, a bit of artichokes, lots of cheese and it had been fried in their wooden fired oven I guess as the crust was crispy and a bit black. I love my pizza together with red wine so I very much enjoyed it. The gnocchi was not that great but there was nothing wrong with it or anything – it just seemed a bit boring. And our friend did not complain about her seafood pizza either – it was served with various seafood like shrimp, mussels and calamari. I went a bit overboard and went for the tiramisu for dessert after the meal – and that was also quite good but the portion was quite huge and it was served with a splash of whipped cream from a can. I’m not sure why they had to add that – the tiramisu is great and there is no need for whipped cream on the side. To round it of I asked them if they had limoncello and they were like “of course”
Conclusion
If you like your Italian food and you just want an informal meal together with friends this could be a nice place to go. The food we had was pretty good and the service was OK. As we were about to leave a larger group came into have some food and that brought up the noise level considerably – with an open plan it can be a bit noisy there. It would have been great to see a proper wine list but I guess their main target group is not going to buy expensive wines anyway.  Most of the pizzas are from 150 to 200 kroner (25 to 35 USD) just to give you an idea about the price level. Check out http://pizzeria-alforno.no/ for more information and to read the entire menu. And here is the review from Tore Bruland: http://www.rogalandsavis.no/nyheter/article3129710.ece (NB Only in Norwegian).
Regards
Gard
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