La Forchetta: Handmade pasta and Italian food in Burnaby

La Forchetta is an Italian restaurant located in North Burnaby. My boyfriend and I came here for dinner one random night so this review is based on an in-dining experience.

Interior

The interior of La Forchetta is quite modern and classy. I like the overall feeling when I walked in. Chairs were comfy and tables were properly spaced out or had a barrier if there is not enough room to distance.

Food

Every time we try a new restaurant, we try to order a bit of everything to get a taste of what is good (or if everything is good). Here we order 1 appie, 1 pasta and 1 pizza.

But first, some free bread:

The bread is pretty average – tastes like the basic french loaf that one might get from Save on Foods for $2. With the olive oil and balsamic vinegar, it tastes less plain.

Burrata ($21)

My boyfriend and I love burrata so we were excited to try their burrata salad. It comes with arugula, cherry tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil.

The quality of the burrata is quite good and they actually give you quite a lot of it in terms of portion size. The burrata cheese is creamy and milky (not a strong cheese taste like cheddar) and goes really well with the tomatoes.

Maltagliati La Forchetta ($25)

So the menu really boasts their pasta selection. All of the pasta at La Forchetta is handmade daily by Chef Manrico so we chose our pasta selection carefully. The pasta that caught our eye was the Maltagliati La Forchetta. Now I have no idea what Maltagliati actually is, but it looks like it is their signature pasta based on the name (it’s also the first pasta listed on the menu).

This pasta has uses pancetta (love pancetta!), zucchini, cream and crushed pistachio. These are all unique ingredients I don’t usually see in the pasta I’ve tried. Anyways, the pasta arrives and I think it looks really good! It looks like a high-quality pasta, one you would see at a fancy upscale restaurant.

It is a very sophisticated dish in my opinion and unique. Obviously it tasted great and I found out Maltagliati is like flat square pieces of pasta. It’s not too creamy or too strong and I really like the saltiness of the pancetta that adds to the cream.

Salsiccia e Rapini pizza ($25)

For pizzas, we end up choosing the Salsiccia e Rapini pizza, which is a tomato-sauce based pizza. For the toppings, it uses mozzarella, mild Italian sausage and rapini, which is kind of like a broccolini.

The pizza is big and it’s thin-crust. I thought the pizza was just average but maybe we didn’t choose the right pizza. The primary reason I didn’t like this pizza that much was because of the rapini – I found it difficult to eat and it kind of fell off the pizza slice from time to time.

Panna cotta ($10)

For dessert, I choose a panna cotta and there are 3 flavours to choose from – passionfruit, chocolate and raspberry. I choose passion fruit. On appearance, it looks quite simple but the texture of this panna cotta is great. It’s really smooth and creamy and every spoonful is tasty with the citrus/sourness of the passionfruit on top.

Tiramisu ($12)

My boyfriend orders the tiramisu and it comes in a fancy presentation. The tiramisu is nice but the layers are quite balanced. However, we prefer to have more mascarpone cheese in our tiramisu.

The chocolate and raspberries on the side were nice – kind of felt like a bonus dessert!

Final thoughts

*Update* 8 months later:

Loewe’s rating: ⭐

I came back to La Forchetta for a birthday dinner with 3 other friends and didn’t have good service. Our server was friendly and sang me happy birthday, which was nice, but overall the experience was bad. Things that happened:

• I ordered the pistachio pasta because I liked it the last time I came here. The server came back a second time to confirm that I ordered the pistachio pasta. However, when the pastas came, my order was wrong and I received a different pasta. It’s not a big deal to make a mistake, but then my server tried to persuade me to try and eat this different pasta so I wouldn’t have to wait for the kitchen to remake my original order. I tried the other pasta and didn’t like it that much, so I told the server I was fine with waiting for my correct order.
• Our server then said he will offer a complimentary dessert because it is my birthday and he made a mistake with my order. After we finished our pastas, he came out with a panna cotta and a candle, which was very nice. However, at the end of our meal and after my friend paid, she noticed he had charged us for the dessert. We asked him why he charged us for the panna cotta, and he said it is my birthday and a gift. I really don’t understand how it is a gift if it’s not free and also he said it would be complimentary and it ended up not being complimentary. We didn’t order a dessert so I feel like he pushed us/scammed us into ordering and paying for this dessert.
• Overall, I wasn’t upset about the $10 charge for the dessert. I am aware many places don’t offer free dessert for birthdays or for mistakes. I mostly felt like he was just dishonest and the poor service ruined this place for me. Sad because I think the food is still decent but probably won’t be coming back after this experience.

We really enjoyed our dinner at La Forchetta. In total, we spent over $100 but we had like 4 courses and shared half a bottle of wine. Out of all the dishes we tried, the Maltagliati La Forchetta pasta was the most outstanding – I highly recommend it and I’m excited to try some of their other pastas.

I probably wouldn’t order the pizza or the tiramisu again, but everything else exceeded my expectations. Lovely atmosphere and nice service – perfect for a casual date night.

Sincerely, Loewe