Reviews of Trattoria al forno – Dinner
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Reviewed by mickeyflex Review Date: 12/21/2014
Rating: (8) Recommended
We ate here tonight. It was good, but I'm sure will improve. The bread and olive oil were super. My wife ordered the lamb shank, which was spectacular and the polenta made a perfect pairing. I had the Braised Beef "Bolognese." I was disappointed in this as it was on the dry side and the sauce was more a barbeque sauce than a traditional red gravy I was expecting. The house made cavatelli was the highlight of the dish. Our kids both had the Campanelli Pasta Marinara with Turkey Meatballs and it was superb. The pasta was perfectly al dente and tasty, the meatball juicy and flavorful, and the gravy had a deep tomato taste with perfect seasoning. For desert, my daughter had the vanilla gelato while my son had the strawberry basil. Both were exceptional, but my son's choice was incredibly tasty, with the basil adding just the right amount of peppery herbaceousness to counter the sweetness of the strawberries. My wife had the Bomboloni, which my kids both said were okay donuts. I had the tiramisu, which was the best I've ever had.
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kids' spaghettiCons:
beef BologneseReviewed by sschroeder Review Date: 01/19/2015
Rating: (9) Recommended
My girlfriend and I had dinner at Trattoria al Forno on Saturday January 17, 2015. We were able to secure reservations for 7:15 pm two weeks prior to our visit. We arrive early and waited until our designated time and were promptly seated. We observed a few walk-in parties being told that there we no more reservations for the rest of the evening. The décor is wonderful, atmosphere crowded, busy, and moderately loud. Kids all over the place. Service was very good, considering the restaurant was packed, we only had to remind our waitress a few times for water, the bill, etc. We tried the Caprese Salad, Romaine Lettuce, and the Smoked Prosciutto, Potato, Rosemary and Mozzarella pizza. Excellent quality and freshness. To our surprise the potato on the pizza really worked! Almost like a pizza with potato chips on it. Extensive wine collection, great cocktail and beer selection. Hey, you can’t have pizza without a beer! Overall our impression was positive and we look forward to returning.
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fresh, quality Itailian foodCons:
crowded restaurantReviewed by Disney_Barbie Review Date: 01/26/2015
Rating: (2) Not Recommended
All and all, we were very disappointed by our experience at Trattoria al forno.
Our experience was enjoyable for the first 5 minutes or so. We hoped to try this new restaurant even though we did not have reservations & we were thrilled when a pleasant hostess got us a table with only a short wait. When being escorted to our table we admired the decorative changes made to the renovated dining room & really liked what we saw (Kouzzina used to be one of our favorite Disney restaurants & we had been almost 10 times) so far we were enjoying our experience.
Unfortunately the dining experience only went downhill from there. Our server had less knowledge / enthusiasm about the menu than a typical fast-food worker does. She informed us that “everything on the drink menu was bad, except for the Molto Bello†(which as you can imagine was very discouraging to hear from your server) My husband decided to try the Molto Bello, but I ordered a Bellini (which was actually quite good). Our server proceeded to make a nasty comment about being “better than her†for not accepting your drink recommendation, I was a little startled by this, far from typical Disney service.
We went on to order an entrée & wine flight each. Judging by her reaction, it seemed like wine flights were a major inconvenience and for the first time in my life I felt like I was “bothering†a server by ordering something on the menu. When our wine flights arrived they were actually not the ones we ordered, but since she disappeared before we realized this and didn’t re-surface for quite a while we decided just to accept these ones. One of the wine glasses served in our flight was absolutely filthy, covered in fingerprints / smudges and was so nauseating to look at that the wine was entirely undrinkable.
It was around this time that we began to think it was odd that an Italian restaurant didn’t bring us any sort of bread or something. There even seemed to be olive oil on the table, so we thought it was odd & we wondered if perhaps it was something we needed to have ordered from the appetizer menu (which we would have happily done if we had realized).
We found our entrees to be mediocre. My husband got the Chicken Parmesan & I got the Eggplant Rollatini. For the most part the meals were similar to that at large chain Italian restaurants, nothing to complain about, but nothing too special either. They were both covered in a lot of sauce, which unfortunately tasted much like jarred sauce from a grocery store. The great saving-grace of the meal was the eggplant was not breaded, which I really appreciated because you could really taste the eggplant … once you scraped off the sauce. So the eggplant was by far the most pleasant part of the whole dining experience.
We entered the restaurant planning to order coffee & desserts, but honestly by the time we were done with our entrees, we both felt that we didn’t want to extend this painful dining experience any longer than necessary, we decided to stroll over to boardwalk bakery & get coffee & tiramisu there instead (which happen to be delicious by the way)
When we were walking out, we realized that all the other tables around us did have bread. Our sever just never brought / offered us bread.
All and all it was a major disappointment & couldn’t hold a candle to Kouzzina. Granted, the majority of our disappointment was in the services provided, but there are so many places (Italian & otherwise) so close to that area where we have always gotten amazing food & service, that I see no purpose in ever again trying Tattoria al Forno.
When we’re in the mood for Italian, I think we’ll stick with Via Napoli in Epcot or Il Mulino at the Swan (both wonderful!) If we’re not stuck on Italiana, there are so many wonderful dining choices right in the crescent lake area that we’ve had countless good experiences at (Flying Fish, Yachtsman Steakhouse, Captain’s Grille, Crew’s Cup, Kimonos)
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ServiceReviewed by alfy Review Date: 03/23/2015
Rating: (4) Recommended
We were seated on a Friday night at about the time we reserved. Our table was a two-seat setup in the middle of a row of four-seat tables in the middle of the room, undoubtedly arranged that way so they could be pushed together in varying combinations. Not the best table, but not the worst. Our server promptly brought a flask of room-temperature water and bread, but no bread plates. We ordered pre-dinner drinks and our entrees at the same time. Unfortunately, the pre-dinner drinks arrived 10 minutes after the entrees when we asked the dinner-plate deliverer where the drinks were. A supervisor chanced by the table later to ask how we enjoyed the meal and we pointed out the discrepancy. It turned out the server had failed to turn in the drinks order. The server returned later and informed us that "due to her incompetence," the drinks would be comped. No apology. She must have been scolded. Our entrees, linguini a la vongole, were quite good, with lots of small clams, al dente pasta and a light olive oil-and-white-wine-based sauce. The drinks, spritzes, were correct. We hope they'll work out the bugs as this restaurant offers great promise and an authentic menu. As it stands, Via Napoli is still the best choice among the Italian restaurants in the Epcot area. (We have heard that too-quick service can be a problem in WDW table service restaurants, and have been advised to order the courses separately if we're not in a hurry. We will take more care to do that from now on.)
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serviceReviewed by miketp Review Date: 03/24/2015
Rating: (9) Recommended
I am surprised by some of the negative reviews. Our server was friendly, polite, and helpful. He made excellent recommendations for wine pairings and brought a small free sample for my wife to try. She was very impressed with the chicken Parmesan. I had the beef bolognese and it was fork tender. We'd split a caprese salad and both felt the heirloom tomatoes were super fresh and delicious. We will definitely eat here again. The pizza delivered to the next table looked great. My only negative was that even with reservations we waited 20 minutes.
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Service foot qualityCons:
Wait timeReviewed by Ron S Review Date: 03/29/2015
Rating: (10) Recommended
We dined there this past Friday March 27 and had the best meal of our trip. The food and service were excellent. My wife had Semolina Tagliatelle alla Carbonara - with Guanciale while I had Sauteed Shrimp - with lemon, caper and anchovy butter with polenta. We both loved our entrees. This was a vast improvement of Cat Cora's Kouzzina.
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Great Food & ServiceCons:
NoneReviewed by mcmouse Review Date: 03/31/2015
Rating: (10) Recommended
We had a dinner reservation here on March 17th. We were pleasantly surprised. The service was excellent. Our server stopped back to our table numerous times to refill and check on us. Both hubby and I ordered the lasagna and it was great. It was just the right size serving. It came with arugala and was very tasty. We both had a glass of wine that our server suggested and it paired nicely with our dinners. There was no room for dessert. We felt the prices were very reasonable and the atmosphere was lovely. We'll definitely return on our next trip.
Pros:
delicious foodCons:
noneReviewed by Fitzboyzmom Review Date: 08/10/2015
Rating: (6) Not Recommended
The service here was excellent as was the bread and appetizer (antipasto). The food however left much to be desired. My husband and son had the giant meatball dinner. It was probably made of 75% parsley. It was very strange. I had one of the pasta dishes that was just very forgettable. It had little taste and was dry. I can't recommend coming here since we don't plan on returning.
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FoodReviewed by jaxhockey Review Date: 08/18/2015
Rating: (9) Recommended
We tried the Trattoria on Saturday night during a brief weekend trip to WDW. We had eaten at this location during its previous iterations (Kouzinna, etc.), and I will say this was the best of the 3. Our food was good. I won't say it was extraordinary, but all members of our party of 8 enjoyed our meals. The wood fired pizzas were very good as we had one Margherita pizza and one prosciutto/potato (smoky and unique). All of the entrees were good, and the bread was plentiful and excellent.
Our server (Hollie) was outstanding. She was full of energy and a lot of fun. Great service and she made dining enjoyable for all of us. Her sister was actually the pizza chef, and my 10 yr old son was over talking to her for quite a while as she made the pizzas in the open kitchen.
I really like the atmosphere of Trattoria, as I didn't feel as crowded as I normally do at most Disney restaurants. The noise level was surprisingly low, but we were towards the windows facing the boardwalk area and not in the center.
All in all we really enjoyed our dinner and would certainly return.
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Service, Atmosphere, FoodCons:
NonReviewed by snovak Review Date: 11/08/2015
Rating: (10) Recommended
Had dining reservations here on Oct.26th and enjoyed the food so much we made reservations for 2 days later. It was more than a meal, it was an experience. Our waitress (Andrea) was extremely knowledgeable with both the menu and wine parings and she was great at conversation and making you feel special. At no time did we feel rushed thru our meal even though the restaurant was very busy. The food was GREAT from salad to dessert, we are already looking forward to eating there during next years visit.
