Carla Agrippino-Gomes Like many Italian-Americans, North-End native Carla Agrippino Gomes, owner and general manager of Terramia and Antico Forno, grew up on her mother’s Italian cooking. Then in 1993, she opened Terramia and her perception of authentic Italian cuisine was changed forever.
Prior to becoming involved in the restaurant business, Carla was a graduate of The Forsyth Dental Hygiene School at Northeastern University. Upon graduation she moved to California to work and expand her studies in Dental Hygiene. She worked as a dental hygienist for 10 years before her children were born. Although, extremely busy at the time raising her two young boys, Carla was interested in getting into the restaurant business and opened Terramia with former partner Mario Nocera in August of 1993.
“I was intrigued by the food Mario was preparing,” Carla remembers. “The presentation was exquisite and the cuisine wasn’t like any Italian food I had ever tasted.”
The first few months after Terramia opened, she remembers were the toughest. “I didn’t realize how much work went into opening a restaurant; however, it didn’t take long for the Terramia concept to catch on.” People either read the menu and came in wanting to try something different or read the menu and walked away hoping to find a restaurant that served chicken parmigiana Still, Agrippino-Gomes remained confident that Terramia would succeed. She evokes the movie “Field of Dreams” when saying “I knew that if we built a restaurant serving authentic Italian cuisine, people would come.” And indeed they did.
In August 1996, three years after the opening of Terramia, Carla opened her second restaurant, Antico Forno, Cucina a Legna, across the street. The meaning, “Old Oven, Kitchen of Wood, was used to describe the wood burning authentic Southern Italian cuisine and pizza, which was completely different from Terramia. Antico Forno was the first and only wood burning brick oven pizza in the neighborhood. Like Terramia, people flocked to Antico Forno to try the pizza and Italian rustic country fare. Carla credits Nocera and happily boasts, "Mario Nocera has single-handedly changed the face of Italian cuisine in the North End".
In 2008, Antico Forno was expanded from 45 seats to 80 seats and also added a bar which serves beer, wine and cordials. Agrippino Gomes made sure that if Antico Forno expanded it had to retain the same warmth and coziness that it had originally. And that she did!
Carla participates in numerous benefits and charities in the North End and the surrounding Boston area. Over the last 10 years she has been committed to fundraising for The Joslin Diabetes Center and The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). She began CityFeast: Dining Out To Conquer Diabetes to benefit The High Hopes Fund at Joslin Diabetes Center, which takes place every year on the last Sunday in January. This cause is very near and dear to Carla's heart! She has been committed to both these organizations since her son David was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes on his 1st birthday. It is her way of "thanking" the institution for taking incredible care of her son over the last 20 years.

CitySearch Review:

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.