Review of Plant-Based Pappardelle at IL FORNELLO on The Danforth by louisg

#ilfornello #danforth #vegan #veganisnotscary #pappardelle #pappardellepasta

This is my second visit to Il Fornello restaurant in Toronto’s Greektown neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was once dominated by Greek immigrants and restaurants (hence the name), but now it’s very multicultural. Il Fornello is an Italian restaurant with a very good plant-based menu to complement its ‘regular’ menu. Kudos to the restaurant for taking the initiative to create very good plant-based /vegan dishes. This is so contrary to my observation and experience at many other Italian restaurants that just refuse to evolve. 

Create / Offer it and they will come! And come back!

We ordered a few entreés to share. We ordered a couple pasta dishes simply because we couldn’t decide on one. The first pasta dish to be reviewed is the Plant-Based Papiardelle. I chose this for two reasons: it offered me an opportunity to write another review on abillion (😊) and I had no idea what Pappardelle was (obviously, I’m more Canadian than Italian). Pappardelle is a not-too-common type of pasta. It’s a large, very broad, flat pasta. The word Pappardelle comes from the Italian verb “pappare” which means “to gobble up”.

This pasta dish was comprised of pinto bean fennel sausage, cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, olive oil and garlic, finished with plant-based Parmesan and arugula. This was absolutely delicious! I think the fennel sausage was a Field Roast product. This is certainly not a complaint; I just recognize the taste as I’ve had it before. It beautifully complemented and blended well with the other flavours in this pasta dish. 

My date / friend who was fully open to eating vegan was very impressed with the fennel sausage. She absolutely loved this and every dish we had ordered.

I’m surprised nobody had previously reviewed this pasta for this location on this app. It truly deserves to be ordered.

The Plant-Based Pappardelle was priced at $24.75.

I will definitely return to Il Fornello and support / promote its vegan menu, whether it be this location or any of its other locations. 

Our waitress last night was great. She was very helpful in recommending various dishes.