Forno500, Dublin

Guys – I have recently discovered my absolutely FAVOURITE dessert! Over the past few months I’ve spotted this one coming up on more menus in Italian restaurants and I’m only too happy to order it every time. Read on for more!

Over the Easter weekend myself and a couple of friends dropped into the relatively new Forno500 on Dame Street. You may have been familiar with this spot in it’s previous life as Les Freres Jacques or more recently, Jules. I had heard whispers of “the best pizza” etc etc and so obviously I had to investigate and off we went on Good Friday to have a few glasses of wine and a catch up over dinner.

The exterior and interior are both decorated in dark moody tones and make for a pretty cosy setting.

We were seated to the back and had a view into the kitchen and the roaring fire of the pizza oven. Their Neopolitan wood fire pizza oven or Forno maintains temperatures of approx 500 degrees and is where the name stems from.

We decided to save room to really enjoy our mains and ordered the Bruschetta 3 Ways to share to start. The three varieties were Caponata (stewed mediteranean vegetables in tomato salsa), Caramelised onion & goats cheese & Aubergine, chilli and 24 mth parma ham. Portion size was just perfect for a little nibble while we sipped on a glass of wine and waited for our mains. (More about the wine at the end!)

You’ll have to forgive the fact that we all went for pizza for our main course which leads to a less varied review! I can however vouch for all of the good reports that I’d heard about the pizza here. Pizza base thickness is a personal thing, some people are all about the thin base while others love a thick one. The pizza base here wasn’t the thin and crispy kind and certainly had a bit more bite but the dough was still nice fresh, light and airy and there was just the right amount of toppings – very important!

And on to dessert… being honest I’d had a few gins and a couple of glasses of wine by this point so can’t fully recall all the options on the dessert menu! However, as soon as I see Affogato on a menu I’m all over it. Affogato (Italian for “drowned”) is an Italian coffee-based dessert. It’s usually a scoop of vanilla gelato or ice cream topped or “drowned” with a shot of hot espresso, and of course, we added the shot of Amaretto for an extra euro. A couple of these along with Espresso Martinis made for a good start to the rest of the night!

Total bill was €160, with €90 of that on the drinks. I have GOT to mention the WINE we tried there… it was a Barolo and at €60 it wasn’t cheap but was absolutely the nicest red wine I’ve ever had, 100% recommend you try it if you pay a visit.