The Omnivorous Fish

When you read about restaurants and food enough, you get to the point where you can name a restaurant in just about every city you’ve heard of. There’s Bern’s in Tampa, Christopher’s in Phoenix and Al Forno in Providence. These are places you may never go, so who knows whether they’re really good, or whether they’re just better than what’s around.

In case you had any doubt, Al Forno is great. And I don’t mean great like “wow that was really good” great but I mean great like “holy shit, I’m afraid to have sex because Al Forno might be better and I don’t live in Providence” great. Al Forno is the kind of restaurant that you want to take people to when they say something decidedly idiotic like “it’s Italian food, how great can it be.” Al Forno is the kind of restaurant you go to to cheer yourself up. Al Forno is the kind of restaurant to go after several meals in places like Sabatino’s.

It’s along a cute little block in Providence on the East side of the river, just south of the Rhode Island School of Design. The address (577 South Main) takes you down a beautiful brick-lined walk to the kitchen door, so, if on foot, you walk around the building to find a very pretty facade with a very pretty view (of the restored foundries across the river) fronted by an onerously ugly parking lot. (Caveat: if you go before the restaurant is open, the doors are all shuttered, and since the edifice is covered with vines, it looks foreboding at best, abandoned at worst.) Once your fifty foot trek through the parking lot is done, you find yourself in a beautiful %arbor, speckled here and there by light filtered by overhead vines, walled by brick and facing a glass wall looking into one of the dining rooms. It seems as though a singing clock and candelabra are about to walk up and seat you. No one, however, comes out, and it’s still another several paces inside. If you’re early, you could easily stand there waiting to be seated until a regular walks past you- and around the corner to the door invisible to you if you’re not looking for it- wondering what you’re doing, standing there like an idiot.

I don’t really have the time right now to go into the food, but let’s just say I ate both meals basically in complete silence, chewing at the same rate a slug runs the mile. The food was so good it was almost scary. If you happen to find yourself there, and you’re wondering whether the melon, feta, mint and olive oil salad is a good idea, let me say this: if you eat nothing else (that doesn’t contain pork fat) in your life, you need to eat this.

Back home, finally, and loving it. Bought a 50 bottle vinotemp today, and down to Bowery tomorrow to get a new worktable for the kitchen. Life is good.