The San Antonio Pizzeria Il Forno was ranked #24 among the "Top 50 Pizzas in the USA" by an Italian rating guide. Newspapers and websites in Austin and San Antonio reported on this local pizzeria earning international acclaim.
I'm wary of any "Best Pizzas in America" or even "Best in Texas" lists, since so many of these stories are clickbait and recycled reviews written by interns. However, sometimes a quick scan of the places covered in the list will give me a feel to assess if it's a credible source of good pizza data.
The legitimacy of their list was bolstered by inclusion of places that I've been to and know are superb: Jersey City's Razza (#2), Phoenix's Pizzeria Bianco (#5), Portland's Apizza Scholls (#20), New Jersey's Bricco (#28), San Diego's Tribute Pizza (#36), and New York's Don Antonio (#37). That was enough to prompt me to make the drive to San Antonio.
We arrived for a late lunch on a sweltering Saturday in August. Il Forno is located in the South Durango neighborhood near the intersection of Nogalitos and South Flores. It appears to be on the fringe of the SoFlo district, known for its "neo-industrial setting with an array of lofts, townhomes, art studios and entertainment destinations that occupy the once dilapidated, early 20th century buildings."
The small one-story building has previously been home to Wolff's Bar and most recently Nesta, a bar/club that featured a lot of punk rock bands. On this slow afternoon, there was plenty of street parking available.
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| The kitchen area |
Even at 2:00 pm, the restaurant had a nice crowd of happy diners inside. The space is small but open, with most of the food prep area visible to the small dining room. Our group of four grabbed a table, secured cold drinks from the cooler, reviewed the menu (hooray for physical printed menus!), and then placed our orders at the counter. The place had a hip, casual vibe, and all of the staff were genuinely interested in making guests happy and explaining the menu.
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| House salad |
We started by sharing the House Salad and then ordered four different pizzas: the Margherita (red sauce, mozzarella, basil), the Carbonara (Fontina, Pecorino, garlic, mushrooms, pancetta, parsley, fried egg, roasted onion), the Americano (red sauce, mozzarella, house-made pepperoni), and the Intero (red sauce, mozzarella, crumbled sausage, sopressata, capicola).
The salad was a very fresh mix of greens, red onion, kalamata olives, and thinly sliced radish in a bright and tangy red wine vinaigrette; it was a nice launch pad for the pizzas to follow.
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| The Margherita |
All of the pizzas are genuine Neapolitans, baked less than 2 minutes at a very high temperature in a dome oven. That wood-burning oven (using local oak) was hand-built by chef and owner Michael Sohocki. The theme here is "local" with house-made meats and local vegetables, but the spirit is true to Naples in the crafting of the pizzas.
The Margherita, in its simplicity, is the perfect baseline pizza to evaluate in a Neapolitan pizzeria. There are no fancy toppings to help disguise shortcomings in the crust, the sauce, or the cheese. This one was perfect in its minimalism, with a tender crust sporting just the right amount of leopard spotting and a mostly-thin cornicione with a few nice puffy areas.
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| Nice char underneath |
As with every pizza of every variety, the crust is always the key. Is it good enough in flavor and texture that you'd want to eat it without any sauce or cheese or toppings? This one surely was. Not breaking any new ground, but a perfectly executed Neapolitan crust, the necessary base for success.
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| The 3-meat Intero |
The cheese and sauce worked together nicely on this fundamental pie, although I would have liked just a bit more of red sauce with its lovely bright flavor. No complaints at all about the Margherita, but it didn't seem special enough to qualify as the #24 pizzeria in America.
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| A slice of the Intero |
The Intero takes that Margherita base and adds three meat toppings - sausage, sopressata, and capicola. The sausage was crumbled, which is not ideal but necessary because a Neapolitan pizza does not spend enough time in the oven for raw chunks of sausage to cook properly. The sausage and the two cured meats added plenty of umami and some nice texture, but I found that the sum of the meats did not exceed the individual parts.
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| The Americano |
You might be reluctant to get the "Americano" because it sounds like a dish that has been modified to suit diners with timid palates, but it was a winner. Much like the Intero, it was essentially a Margherita with some meat topping added. The house-made pepperoni was nicely crisped and full of flavor, and it added that extra layer of texture and umami. Still pretty simple, but wonderful.
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| The Carbonara |
The pizza that was truly next-level was the Carbonara. I love the concept of a fried egg on a Neapolitan pizza, and it rarely disappoints. The blend of Fontina and Pecorino cheeses was creamy and rich, while the exotic mushrooms added a blast of umami. The garlic sauce, applied in ideal proportion, was yet another layer of flavor. The roasted onions and pancetta and parsley all made their own contributions to the swirl of flavors and textures that blended harmoniously.
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| A slice of the Carbonara |
This Carbonara pizza was one of the best Neapolitan pizzas I've had anywhere, and the one pie on the menu that can help justify Il Forno's high national ranking. I loved this pie and I can't wait to go back for more of it and also some of the items on the "Not Pizza" side of the menu, such as the pesto potatoes with goat cheese or the House Meatballs with flatbread.
Bottom line on Il Forno: cozy interior space (and some outdoor patio seating), superb service, rock-solid Margherita, house-made optional meat toppings, and an other-wordly Carbonara pizza that may be the best thing I've eaten in 2023.
Is it the 24th best pizza in America? I'm not going to argue for or against, but I'm so glad it made that list and got on my radar. It's destination pizza in San Antonio.
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