Awful Antico Forno – Boston

Tim Burton is a brilliant producer, and I love his movies. That’s why I loved Antico Forno. Antico Forno is the first restaurant I have gone to that has accurately captured a scene from The Corpse Bride. The staff here are as creepy as the bride and her friends, sporting the gloomy dark looks with the ancient peeling flesh and bug-eyed stares of the undead. The server resetting the adjacent table even slammed plates and silverware as loudly as rattling chains. We were initially ignored for ten minutes (yes, I timed it), and I was afraid that the dead would not rise, but rise they did. A server came to take our order with the charm of an undertaker and the humor of a corpse. I asked him what their specials were and he glared at me with smiting eyes and pointed to the specials menu, which read “risotto of the day”. Apparently, It is impolite to ask the undead what their daily specials are – maybe you just order them if you’d like to be surprised? Just make sure you don’t have food allergies or you just might join them.

So it turns out, our server probably wasn’t supposed to be our server because right after he went to put the order in, a lady who looked like she was covered in dirt walked up to our table with a notepad and glared at us like she was waiting for us to die from the poison in the water. She hovered there wordlessly for several minutes until we became so uncomfortable that the only thing I asked “Can we help you?” Awkward, yes, but no one taught me how to politely ask the undead why they are staring at me. Eventually, we informed her that our order was just taken, that we were happily alive and had no interest whatsoever in joining her subterranean world, and she moved on to the more lively targets at the next table.

The bread was consistent with the start of our movie-going experience at Antico Forno. It was dense and dry, and frankly, I think it was served because the undead would rather die again than eat it.

The Caprese appetizer was crude with thick chunks of irregularly-shaped mozzarella, interspersed with giant slices of tomato on steroids. The mozzarella is made in-house daily, and it’s tasty so it’s a pity that even the fresh greens accompanying this dish are bland and tasteless with a few drops of olive oil. At least the greens weren’t dead, but you’ll spend many years in purgatory for killing good mozzarella.

The Carciofi e Porcini Pizza had a crispy crust that most chefs spend a lifetime (and beyond?) trying to perfect. It may have been the only part of the meal that didn’t make me want to go to an early grave. Sadly, this pizza was doused in a liter of truffle oil, which was about as nauseating as decaying flesh.

I didn’t try a whole lot here, but I’ll never know what the other dishes are like. The undead never rejoin the living, and I will never rejoin the undead at Antico Forno. Antico forno may translate to “old oven”, but the deadly combination of food and service conjure the very flames of hell.