Il Forno Caldo Review Essay

You’ve probably had some days that don’t seem to be going your way, but everything turns around when you eat the right food. If that’s true for you, you’ve probably also had your seemingly good day ruined by the wrong restaurant. If you had my same experience at Il Forno Caldo, you’d be quick to put it in the second category. 

Imagine for a moment that you’ve suddenly traveled back to Valentine’s Day 2015. COVID never happened, homelessness wasn’t a problem, and the 2016 election was only a year away. Compared to now, everything seems perfect. 

And to make it more perfect, it’s Valentine’s day. 

You’re with a group of 10 people, all of whom you know well. You find a cute little Italian restaurant only 20 minutes away. To you it seems like the best Valentine’s Day gift there could be. 

Don’t bother looking at the menu. Everybody will find at least something they like. No need to check the Yelp reviews either. They’re probably just forged by competitors, anyway. 

Now you’ve arrived at the front door of the restaurant. It’s pretty crowded; the server has two more couples to serve before it’s your party’s turn. There are many great places to sit. There’s tables by the window. There’s tables by the bar. There’s even a mural on one of the walls. But the server walks your party into a plain-looking room right next to the kitchen. But you still “know” that the food will make up for your inconvenient seating arrangements.

20 minutes have passed and it’s time to order. You feel very hungry at this point. There are some options on the menu that look tasty. You’re leaning towards the Pesto Pasta, but as you look closer, you see in size 6 font “with arugula on top”. You think that that’s disgusting, nut to your dismay, nearly every item on the menu has something you don’t like. 

You find the spaghetti bolognese, and finally, you’ve found something that will fill your stomach. Since you don’t want to miss out on anything, you ask the waiter if there’s anything he’d recommend. He says, “There’s nothing I can recommend to you, but I’ll tell you this, all of our dishes are as great as each other”.

In the end, you stick to your spaghetti bolognese. Your uncle orders lasagna. Your grandmother orders chicken. The restaurant apologizes for taking their time on your dishes, and in the meantime, they give you some bread to snack on. Good Italian restaurants always serve you bread. 

Eager to eat something, you try a slice. But you’re surprised that you took a bite of plain white bread. Well, it’s better than nothing!

After eating four slices of bread, your orders finally arrive. The dishes are impossible to distinguish from each other. Your uncle’s lasagna is near-frozen. Your grandmother’s chicken is indistinguishable from McDonalds. Nearly everyone has some kind of problem with their food, whether it be coldness, blandness, or unwanted toppings. Worst of all, it’s near 8:00. 

You deal with the cold food and ask for the bill. The waiter, described by a Yelp Reviewer as “not so friendly”, takes quite a long time to deliver the bill. When he finally gets there, you zoop out the door before he can ask you if you want to box the cold food. 

Maybe the waiter was right all along. The dishes were just as bad as each other. 

My choice was spaghetti bolognese with disgusting tomato sauce ans sausages. No, I’m not saying that all tomato sauce or sausages are disgusting. I’m saying that this tomato sauce was so thick that I almost wanted to taste their bland and soggy sausages. If this couldn’t get any worse, the pasta itself was a little undercooked to my taste. Maybe that explains why it was so cold. 

The spaghetti represented Los Angeles in the sense that both my city and my dish were both never meant to succeed (while L.A. actually did succeed). Los Angeles’s development was memorable, for most cities across the country don’t develop out of a desert. Obviously, this dish was memorable enough for me having remembered it 6 years after I ate it and 3 years after the restaurant rightly closed. While I appreciate my city much more than I appreciated my food, their similarities at least count for something. 

I’ll have to say that I wasn’t too satisfied with Il Forno Caldo, but hey, bad food can be learned from!