Located at: Al Rigga Road, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Visited on: 19 Nov, 2018

Forno Uno, managed by Il Forno, is one of the latest restaurants to pop up at Al Ghurair Centre. Specialising in Italian cuisine, their menu offers an extensive range of pizzas and pastas to choose from. First up they brought out a bread basket with a tomato dip and an olive dip. The bread sticks were great – crisp, but soft enough to break easily. The dips tasted good too – good flavour and texture in both, and seemingly fresh and authentic. This was a good appetiser to enjoy while we waited for our order.

We began the evening with some soup. Now, their individual soup portions are quite large, so we decided to share two portions among three – which turned out to be a good idea! Their Zuppa de Funghi – creamy fresh mushroom soup (AED 23) was quite good. Creamy, as promised, and with lots of bits of mushroom, which elevated the texture of the soup significantly. With a squirt or two of lemon, it turned into quite a delicious palate-teaser. It would have been perfect with a toasted slice of garlic (or even plain) bread, however what was served was a thick, cold and soft slice of baguette. A slight misfit, I felt.

For the mains, we tried a pizza and a pasta dish each. The pizza choice was Gamberoni – mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, shrimp, smoked mussel and fresh basil (AED 37 for S, AED 51 for M, AED 71 for L). We went with medium size which is the equivalent of a regular pizza with eight slices. The pizza had quite a few chunky, crunchy shrimps, with some mussel and a few basil leaves. The overall taste was fine, however, the mussel (perhaps because it was smoked) tasted a bit… how do I say, different. And I would definitely have liked to have more basil in the topping. Crust-wise, this was far from the thinnest pizza I’ve had, but was alright – not too thick at all.

The Penne Del Mari – penne pasta with shrimp, sundried tomato, oregano in mixed bechamel sauce, covered with mozzarella (AED 44) tasted alright too. Visually, you couldn’t see much other than the penne and some melted mozzarella on top when served, but there were several shrimps hidden inside. taste-wise it was decent. There were several shrimps hidden inside and the sundried tomatoes added a nice tangy flavour in some of the bites. I would actually have liked a little more of the sundried tomato and definitely some more oregano – which seemed a bit lacking. All-in-all, although not spectacular, it was a decent dish in a comfortable portion size.

Yummy Rating: 3.5 / 5.0