Customer Comments:
Friday
February 09, '07
Hello, My son and I ate at
your restaurant last night. I like to use them to
find new places to dine. I have yet to be
disappointed and last night was no exception. The
food was OUTSTANDING and the service was TOP SHELF.
My college age son and myself could not have had a
better time. The two apps that we had were
outstanding. I have this thing where I like to have
fried calamari at every restaurant that has it on
the menu as a GUIDE as to how the rest of the meal
is going to go. After tasting yours, I had NO DOUBT
that the meals was going to be up there with my ALL
TIME GREAT DINING EXPERIENCES and I was right. We
also had pizza as an app. For our main courses my
son went with the Linguini and mixed seafood. He is
6'3" and about 200lbs and could not finish the HUGE
portion. I went with the fresh rigatoni and sausage
with ricotta. Boy what a night. I am sure
to return with my other son who is also a college
student in Boston and was reason I was in Boston in
the first place, as he was playing ball in a college
night last night. Again, thanks for a great dinner
and service.
Regards
Paul Campagna
Inauguration taps neighborhood
 Carla Gomes' cannolis, pictured next, were
part of the Governor's Ball last Thursday.
Gomes owns two restaurants in the North End: Antico Forno and
Teramia.
Photo by Justin A.
Rice
Justin A. Rice
Bulletin Staff
Carla Gomes couldn't make last week's inaugural
ball for Governor Deval Patrick, but she was glad
her cannolis could.
The owner of two North End restaurants,
Antico
Forno and
Teramia, was at home tending to her two
children instead of rubbing elbows with people from
all walks of life last Thursday, when the state
inaugurated its first black governor.
"It meant a lot," Gomes said of being asked to
supply 500 miniature canola for the bash at the
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South
Boston. "It's a historical event. I wish I could
have been there."
...
"Hopefully I'll see him at one of my restaurants one day," Gomes said. "Right
now he probably won't have time with all he has to do. They say most governors
eat dinner at their desk."
North End brick oven produces popular pizzas
Carla Gomes was a dental hygienist for years before becoming
a restaurateur. But over family supper one Sunday afternoon almost
15 years ago, Gomes volunteered to go into business with her
brother's partner, and has been running North End restaurants
Terramia and Antico Forno ever since. At Antico Forno,
pastas, meats, and pizzas are cooked or finished in the brick oven
the place is named for. Though dishes like roast chicken and seafood
linguine are popular, Antico is best known for its pizzas, like the
broccoli rabe and sausage ($14.50), dotted with cherry tomatoes and
buffalo mozzarella. Gomes, who grew up in the North End, still lives
there. The family's suppers continue, though Gomes hasn't
volunteered her way into another career yet. Antico Forno, 93
Salem St. 617-723-6733. -- LEIGH BELANGER
Picture by Jodi Hilton
for the Boston Globe
January 10, 2007
Most
Consistent, Antico
Forno by Stuff@night
magazine :
09.26.06
Antico Forno gets
the nod for
incorporating a
red-sauce joint's
most salient
features - cozy
vibe, hearty
portions - into an
otherwise upscale
big picture. The
piatti con rigatoni,
in particular, are
as good as you'll
find anywhere in
town, at any price.
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Reasonably priced gourmet Italian cuisine,
prepared in traditional brick-oven style.
The Scene
Owner Carla Gomes has
found a great balance
between down-home and
downtown southern
Italian food. The
result? A restaurant
serving top-notch food
at prices that even
students and families
can afford. Antico Forno
is loud, but still a
charmer--this country
mouse has all the right
moves.
The Food
Most
everything is cooked in a burning brick oven, as
the restaurant's name implies (antico forno
means "old oven"). The salsiccia e broccoletti
pizza is a marvel of fresh dough, bitter
broccoli rabe, homemade sausage and buffalo
mozzarella. And they're not kidding about the
brick-oven thing; lamb, chicken dishes, even the
mashed potatoes, have that caramelized, crispy
crust that comes from searing with intense heat.
Boston Globe:
A well-prepared
selection of rustic dishes: brick-oven pizzas,
roasted vegetables, entrees in terra cotta pots,
and good bread and olives. Good place for a date
and a bottle of red.
Falling for an Italian lunch at
Antico Forno:
Most people would rather stave off
the inevitable end of summer than
revel in it, but there are reasons
to look forward to fall. One of them
is lunch at Antico Forno.
On restaurant-cluttered Salem
Street, Antico Forno is
distinguished from its neighbors by
the big brick oven that dominates
the back wall. Dishes are sent to
this oven to be "finished" --
gnocchi , for instance, is covered
with a basil-laden plum-tomato sauce
and topped with slabs of smoked
mozzarella, then relegated for its
final minutes to the high heat of
the oven. The mozzarella gets
slightly browned, and the red clay
pot the dish is served in radiates
enough heat to warm you from a foot
away. Another great entrée is the
ribollita , a hearty Tuscan bread
soup made with vegetables,
cannellini beans, and parmesan
cheese. The soup is too heavy for
sundress-and-sandals season, but
it's perfect for autumn and will
probably be even better come winter.
Naples,
Florence, and Milan, all in one North End
restaurant
: Antico Forno
Ribollita: it's a Tuscan soup that's "reboiled."
Can advertising your dish as leftovers hook
customers? Believe me, this concoction of
white beans, red cabbage, red onion, leeks,
garlic, celery or fennel, carrots, tomato,
and ham, all soaked up with generous slices
of unsalted bread, will gladden the heart of
any Florentine. Like most stews, it just
gets better with reheating.
When I walked into Antico Forno, I though
that it must be a Tuscan restaurant. It has
a homey, rustic atmosphere characteristic of
central Italy: brick-brown square-tiled
floor, terra-cotta walls, simple wooden
tables and chairs, hanging lights and
ceiling fans, dried flowers in vases on the
wall. On one side, a hutch with bottles of
the house red and loaves of country
bread; on the other, a wood-fired brick oven
with a statue of St. Rocco in its alcove,
and a huge standing vase in what looks from
a distance like one of the famous Deruta
patterns . You could be sitting in a
friend's kitchen in Cortona, or Castiglion
Fiorentino.
Antico Forno is a cozy, neighborhood kind of
place; many of the customers, you'll
observe, are well known to the serving
staff. This is not a restaurant for intimate
dinners or discreet conversations; when it's
crowded it can be quite noisy. It is a place
to enjoy hearty, honest food at fair prices.
That is, as
long as you don't fill up on the country
bread and olives in green oil that land on
your table when you sit down. The lunch menu
offers soups (that ribollita), salads
(buffalo mozzarella and tomato;), sandwiches
(oven-roasted lamb; grilled chicken breast
with fresh mozzarella), pastas (linguine
with clams and mussels; rigatoni ), and
pizzas baked in that wood oven. Dinner adds
some new appetizers and pastas, plus an
entree list: oven-roasted chicken with
garlic and herbs, wood-grilled swordfish
with a balsamic vinaigrette, rabbit baked in
agrodolce sauce. There are also specials,
usually seafood-oriented -- lobster ravioli,
for example, or blue marlin.
The ribollita arrives in a terra-cotta crock
and offers the same country goodness, even
without any cabbage: cannellini and
vegetables drizzled with parmesan and olive
oil, served with ample bread to soak it up.
Baby octopus and mussels in a spicy
plum-tomato sauce and rolled eggplant
stuffed with fresh mozzarella, ricotta, and
basil and baked in tomato sauce are
similarly excellent. The oven-roasted lamb
sandwich with Calabrian peppers and onions
is a delightfully messy affair, the thick
bread soaking up the juices. The mixed-green
salad -- actually red and green --
exemplifies what's right about this
restaurant: no pretension, just fresh
radicchio, mesclun, arugula, and romaine in
a balsamic vinaigrette.
The pastas,
all of which are served in some variety of
fresh plum-tomato sauce, reflect Antico
Forno's Neapolitan origins. Linguine with
calamari in a puttanesca sauce didn't
give much evidence of the promised capers,
and the pasta, al dente on arrival,
continued to cook in the dish. But the
tomato sauce was fresh and nicely balanced,
and the calamari rings and tentacles were
tender. Pizza with artichoke hearts,
porcini, cherry tomatoes, and buffalo
mozzarella was the best I have ever had.
The entrees move north, to Tuscany and
Lombardy. Roasted veal stuffed with spinach,
mushrooms, and fontina and served with a
three-cheese (mozzarella, ricotta, parmesan)
asparagus risotto seemed to have been
marinated in milk or cream and cooked with
black pepper and olive oil. It's a superb
example of Milanese cuisine, the softness
and creaminess of the veal complementing the
smoothness of the perfectly cooked risotto.
Antico Forno gives you the best of Italian
country cooking.
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