Il Fornello

It’s been a number of years since I last visited this restaurant, so I didn’t really know what to be expecting. Had they changed their demographic? Has their menu changed? What do others think of the place now?
I came here with my mother (conversation every time pre-​meal «I’m okay with any kind of food Wincy, you decide!»; post-​meal «That was the worst, not my taste and definitely not worth the money!») and sisters. Their last visit was also years ago, but we were enticed by a more diverse pasta selection close to home.
We made a reservation just in case, and was promptly seated upon arrival. Looking around the restaurant was mostly full, so good thing we thought to plan ahead. The menu is now much shorter — just two facing pages to cover everything. An added print-​off showed dinner specials for the night — about one or two extra options per category. We went with two pastas and two pizzas.
Backtrack a bit to service — service was slow. We were kindly seated by the hostess but nobody came by or even said hi for at least 15 minutes. It got to a point I was worried that we were forgotten and didn’t have a server. And yet on the side of the restaurant where the food came out, multiple servers happily chattered away with each other. Finally we were greeted and asked what’d we like to drink, so we quickly put in our entire order at the same time.
We asked for bread too (free) — but that didn’t show up for another 10 minutes. The bread was not warmed, they were not thinly sliced, there was about 6 slices… what took so long? The bread was a variety — some whole wheat, some white… with butter, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. Nothing special… but we all had a piece since by now we’ve been waiting for close to half an hour. As if they heard our stomachs growling the food came out a minute or two after the bread — talk about poor timing. I’m guessing the waitress forgot our bread which resulted in this fiasco of too many plates on the table.
The pastas came out steaming hot which was nice, and the pizzas followed right after. Everything looked promising and there were no bad surprises. Everything smelled really good, and a little extra parm atop the pastas made things better. They do use a powder parm, which is disappointing, and is oddly brought over in a soup bowl that screams accident waiting to happen. Your waitress will slowly spoon and sprinkle the parm for you — I can see picky patrons getting very nervous… the garganelli special of the night was refreshing and the tarragon cream sauce was light despite being a cream sauce. The peppers and onions have enough veggie that made it feel like springtime. The penne Capri was a standard chicken penne pasta — but smelled really good thanks to the cheese inside

Been here many times and it never disappoints. We have had my daughter’s communion and recently confirmation party. The food was excellent and the service top notch. The atmosphere is classy and there are nice areas for special party’s. They will change the menu to your liking.

Came again a couple weeks ago and hated the service. There were items that we ordered, which never came and it was impossible to flag down our waitress, which meant that our waters were rarely topped. All in all terrible service which I never had when I came here before. That really put a damper on our dinner and was a continuous topic of discussion.
The food itself also dipped in quality, had the salmon pizza again and found the crust and dough to be overcooked — it was hard to bite into and just not good.

Service is great and the food is very good. Fine Italian dining experience. Great for a business meeting or date.

Today I was thinking to eat something like pasta primavera, they don’t have vegetables. This is the last time I’m going to this restaurant.

This place is pretty good– I’d do a 3.5 stars, It’s more than A-​Ok and less than Yay! I’m a fan. The food was pretty good– there wasn’t a lot of depth of flavours in the food which normally I’m all for but it was even a little more bland and so-​so than I usually opt for. They didn’t have a ton of options, they had all your typical American-​Italian options, we wanted to order a couple appetizers but they really had no options for decent apps. I had the Caesar salad and Fettuccine Alfredo, the fettuccine was a little bit drowning in the sauce and lacking in flavour. My bf had the lamb chops and found them very flavourful.
The drinks as well, very average. The wine selection wasn’t super great nor was the wine itself and I ordered a martini that also wasn’t fabulous but wasn’t awful. The prices are decent, a little overpriced for the taste of food but just where I would expect a restaurant of their category to be.
The portions were a really nice size and the service was good, we had two servers, the first wasn’t very attentive and kind of just chatting with the hostess majority of the time but the second who brought us our food was fabulous, she was cheerful and sweet and attentive. There was no wait and plenty of parking which was nice and we didn’t feel as if we were packed in. But I keep remembering that the food was just average and the menu was just overage. Overall it would’t be my first choice again in the future, it was just missing that something but would recommend to try it out.

Il Fornello is my favourite restaurant! I go there weekly, otherwise I crave the delicious food! The salads are always prepared fresh and are very nice. The pasta is amazing, and so are all the dishes with meats. The pizza is what I come back for each week– it is the best pizza I have ever had (I’ve had A LOT). This location offers ‘spelt crust’ and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to have a healthier, and more flavourful dough. The spelt crust makes the pizza!
Not sure why the reviews are so low — IL FORNELLO IS #1!!!

Rubbery calamari and frozen tasting shrimp– See food linguine, the good news, after they replaced my wife’s meal, the new dish– veal was good

In one word: average.
My friend and I went on a Friday night but the restaurant was fairly vacant (it didn’t get busy until about 6:30pm). We wanted a booth, however, and they had all been booked. I ordered the gnocchi, which was not spectacular nor terrible. Service was great in the beginning, but our server was very slow in the end when my friend and I asked for individual receipts after she had brought a combined one.
On the bright side, there’s free bread (baguettes, I believe) with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. But I’m not sure the bread alone is worth paying a second visit.

Maybe they should rename it Ill Fornello.
I got there on a Saturday night just before 7. They told me it would be a 30 minute wait. So I waited an hour until 8pm to be seated.
I ordered the grilled calamari appetizer and the penne capri as my main. My friend order the prosciutto and asparagus appetizer and the rigatoni funghi.
We were served the calamari and a salad we never ordered. It’s ok. I don’t base my reviews on minor mistakes. They promptly returned with the correct appetizer. I think my friend and I had a completely different idea of what our food would be. Or maybe we didn’t read the description clearly. The calamari was drowned in a marinara sauce which wasn’t bad but wasn’t what I expected. My he other appetizer consisted of asparagus, prosciutto, blocks of parmesan cheese, a medley of olives, and a couple crostini. It was a good appetizer.
Our mains came out and they were awesome. Especially the rigatoni funghi. That was delicious. The penne Capri was yummy as well but I much preferred the rigatoni. Neither my friend nor I finished our pastas and had them wrapped to go.
We ordered a tiramisu to share and a couple of decaf coffees. I have to say it was pretty good decaf coffee! The tiramisu came out in a stemless martini class. Again, it wasn’t what we expected. I found it ok, not great, but just ok.
Overall the food was good. The service could’ve been better. Our waitress seemed disinterested in serving us.
So why only 2 stars? Well shortly after I left I experienced some loud and wonderful gurgling and rumbling noises from my belly. I got home and it wasn’t good! I informed my friend of the same and she experienced the same thing!
So it may take me a while to want to come back here. And it would have to take a lot for this place to win me back. I hope no one else in the restaurant experienced this because it was one busy night!

My friend suggested this place… she always goes to the one by her house in Ajax.
We shared the Fried Calamari… very good.
1 friend ordered Linguini dI Mare (mixed seafood) and said it was really good.
My other friend ordered a Fichi pizza (her regular… called something else at the other restautant); figs, honey, arugula, prosciutto, marscapone… what kind of toppings is this for a pizza? AMAZING! Who ever thought of this is a genius!
I ordered Orrechiette pasta; shrimp, scallops, tomatoes, garlic, fennel on saffron sauce. It came out looking like a curry dish… but once you taste it… OMG! Amazing! This dish will definalty have me coming back for more.
Great service and great company.

Not the best Italian around, but they do have a few specials that hit the mark. The place could use a deep clean and a reprint on the menus. Beware of any holidays or prime time hours as the place can get overbooked.

Went for dinner with friends.
I got the lasagna. My friends got the gnocchi with white and with rose sauce with hot water and wine!
Started with bread. It was hard and cold. Seemed like it was leftovers from lunch that they just put in the fridge. The lasagne was delicious. I want to eat it every Monday night. «On Mondays we eat ll fornello lasagne».
Would have been a 4 or more but the bread, the waitress had two tables and spent most of the time chatting with the hostess.
Get the lasagne!

I really like the pizzas at this place, I never try anything else, so this review is just for pizzas, environment and service. The service is really friendly and helpful, the environment is nice and the pizzas amazing! :)

My first bad review…
Went there for dinner Saturday evening. Drinks were watered down (Vodka Soda) so I ordered both separately. I have been bartending for over 14 years and KNOW what a 1oz is. We got a quarter of an oz. Not good when the shot is supposed to be a 1oz OBVIOUSLY~!
No cutlery on the table when the food came. Had to wait for that. Then had to wait for hot sauce that we asked for twice. BUT overall, the waitress was a sweet girl. Friendly and sweet. I forgive ;)
Now onto the food, MY OSSO BUCCO dish was drowning. In cooking shows, they always teach the chefs to let the meat sit so it doesn’t soak the plate with its juices.
MY plate looked like it was drowning in meat juice or something… My mashed potatoes were wet and my greens were mushy too. Overall, osso bucco tasted good but that was it. The dish looked like a BIG NOT HOT MESS. Won’t be going there again as its my second bad experience with the food.

I went with a group of friends. One of my friends almost swallowed a screw that was in her food. The manger told us «these things happen all the time in the restaurant industry.». That is not what a customer wants to hear. She the proceeded to tell us it was not a screw but rather a peice of a cleaning utensil.
I have called head office and left 5 messages in the last 2 weeks and no one has returned my call. I think that the head office should know what happened and how we were treated in their restaurant.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with head office to ensure this doesn’t happen again. The owners’s son was very rude to us, threatened us and even called the police. I would not recommend this restaurant at all.

my review is only for the sunday brunch buffet. There is a good selection of cold apps to start (salad, cold pastas, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, artichokes, etc). There were 4 different thin crust pizzas to choose from — veggie, Hawaiian, cheese, pepperoni. There were scrambled eggs (meh), bacon, salmon, mussels, veggies, 2 types of pasta (both sauces were GREATTT and I wanted more but I had no room haha), chicken (dry), eggs Benedict (looked gross and dry). There’s also a bigg fruit platter that i really liked as well.
Hilights — butternut squash soup was SO buttery, creamy, so sweet, LOVEDD it. I would come back just to have the soup. They also had some sort of eggplant dip and I used it on my pizza crust, also AMAZING. It’s pretty salty though and left me thirsty but I don’t even care. I came here once before for the buffet and the french toast was really REALLY good, but this time it disappointed so i guess its hit or miss. I would definitely come back here again.

Yes, I understand that this is probably not what hardcore Italians think to be «authentic Italian food». And yes, I also concede that the fact that they tend to pass themselves off as authentic can irk some purists, but really I don’t give a crap about whether a place is the real thing as long as the food is good (as you can see in my rant here:
). And the food here is GOOD.
I’ve been here several times in the distant past, and was recently here a few weeks ago. The interior hasn’t changed much (or at least I can’t recognize the changes) and still exudes a hip-​yet-​family friendly feeling. The traditional dim lighting for dinnertime is present, something a bit cute for a chain restaurant, and I love that the whole ambience felt cool and upscale without being pretentious.
We ordered a whole bunch of stuff, and to be honest I can’t recall most of them other than the fact that they were YUMMY. But special mention HAS to go to their special pizza of the day (week? month?): The Pizza Pollo Asiago. Holy moley is this the best, and yes I mean BEST, pizza I’ve ever had. It’s not a tomato sauce-​based pizza, which I always prefer as I felt that there are way too many tomato-​y pies going around, and the base sauce is a creamy honey mustard-​like variety that is earth-​shatteringly good. The saltiness of the chicken and other ingredients meshes very well with the pronounced (but not overtly so) sweetness of the pizza itself, creating a flavour that is very complex but not overwhelming. Just what I like to see in my food. Add this to a rather fearsome size, and you got yourself a winner.
In fact, I like it so much I asked the waiter what happens when the inevitable happens and the specials are no longer available. He just told me that I could still ask for it, by name, the next time I come in. So the hell with it, anyone reading this PLEASE ORDER THIS PIZZA the next time you come in. Maybe if enough people ask for it, they’ll put it as part of their regular menu!
We also had Pizza Fichi, a pizza that had figs in it. This is unique, and though I didn’t like figs it did at least provide a unique take on the regular pizza pie, along with a hint of fruity sweetness that, once again, is wonderful without being overwhelming.
Just a good, solid restaurant all around. I’m not giving a full five stars as I found the dessert selections to be undersized and overpriced, but really it’s as solid as an Italian chain restaurant as I’ve ever been, edging Alice Fazooli’s by a smidge in my opinion.

I don’t really get it but after having entertained some business clients here a few times I really was disappointed on each occasion. It seems that they have almost given up in trying to be a real destination place and are just coasting along offering an indifference to their guests
The olive oil they serve is also cheap as it has a kind of medicinal smell to it which denotes lousy olive oil.
Milestones offers a excellent service experience that these folks can learn from but then they don’t do pizza
It is really all about the pizza (hence the name associated with an oven) and not having a real wood fired oven or pretending to have one isn’t right. I will give them credit for offering a gluten free pizza before anyone else
I find it hard to recommend them as they seem to take their customers for granted and really if I drop $ 200 on a meal for 4 – 5 people then I truly do expect better.
You can tell the pizza is from a gas oven as it takes 15 – 20 minutes to cook as opposed to 2 minutes if its truly a wood fired Neapolitan oven.
I am disappointed that somewhere along the way the owners just gave up and figure they can just milk the customers for whatever they are worth.

I’m starting to lose faith in chain restaurants, as most of them usually just churn out boring, generic and commercial-​tasting food. Despite this, I always feel compelled to give them a chance, and sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Il Fornello, however, falls into the category of chain restaurants that disappoint me.
For appetizer, our group shared a calamari fritti: Sardinian spiced deep fried calamari with lemon aioli. The calamari was really mediocre, and the sauce was just bland.
I sampled the pasta special of the day: Porcini mushroom filled ravioli with roasted red pepper with cream sauce. It was basically commercial ravioli slathered with a mount of heavy cream sauce. I was not impressed.
I usually love Lasagna, but I really felt that Stouffers microwavable lasagna taste a lot better than this one. The sauce tasted like canned tomato purée that I can get at any supermarket. It was also missing that browned cheesy crust on top that I love.
Needless to say, I will not be returning to Il Fornello. A lot of other chain restaurants offer much better «fake» Italian food.