Al Forno Pizzeria — Restaurant in England

Came here a few day ago and ordered seafood pasta for me and my husband ordered gluten free base pizza, the meaty one. First of all, the entire place lacks atmosphere and the waitress looked so miserable. We weren’t kindly welcomed just menus shoved on the table and no tap water given or even offered. I saw what looked to be the owner being rude to another woman shouting at her, creating a horrible experience that made us uncomfortable to be around, maybe this reflected the staffs rude attitude when they did eventually come over to take our order. We sat near the front and could see everything in the kitchen. I saw a frozen bag of seafood being cooked and a frozen gluten free base being defrosted. This is NOT fresh!! I’ve seen other similar reviews claiming the same and them being denied, yet we experienced the exact same. Overall the experience was awful. We came back and instantly felt sick purely from the fact most of our food was frozen, I can’t say much for the meats and other items but for sure the seafood and GF pizza base were 100% frozen. I wouldn’t mind but be transparent about this and not lie, and then I wouldn’t have ordered something that makes me ill! I will never be returning here and recommend everyone stay far away. There’s other pizzerias that are way nicer. Try some in hove which are authentic and the staff...

Oh my gosh!! We should have just walked straight out! When we entered the premises the staff were arguing (in Italian) an continued to argue few several minutes after we arrived. Eventually one staff member managed to get a word in between the shouty lady shouting and her talking a breath, we are shown a seat ( a very tightly situated bench seat too tight to the table to be comfortable. Then the whole experience took on another level of shock, ftom oder to delivery was max four mins ! Which in some ways was good but given the shouting and the attitude of the server(shorty lady) it all felt like they didn’t want us there at all!! Unfortunately the pizza was very soggy in the center although the rest of it was tasty! I had to just cut the middle out and leave it . Inedible!

As we found we had more time due to the speed of the pizza we ordered puddings, something we wouldn’t normally do, these already plated in a display fridge cabinet seemed to take forever to arrive ironically enough! To the point I had to ask if they were still coming as we need to leave to see a show( Leif Vollebekk, our reason for being in Brighton) They did arrive and were very average indeed! We paid and left vowing to never return!! Luckily the concert...

Not good, but not the worst.

There was a particular buzz to this place. The tables outside were full on a Sunday evening at 8pm and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves!

It was quite busy and the staff were clearly not prepared for it whatsoever. There was a new girl serving and she was having trouble finding wine for the couple next to me. She also wrote down my order but 5 minutes later had seemingly lost that paper and came back to ask what I wanted again, fine no big deal.

There were three servers and somehow it was chaos behind the bar, and clearly chaos for everyone seated in the restaurant.

Fortunately the kitchen was prepared and were churning out pizzas for take-away and dine-in within a reasonable time. FYI they use a proper pizza oven!

The pizza was a cheese-heavy “Italian-inspired,” “American-executed” 15inch beast. It was okay, though the crust didn’t have any flavour (salt) or real rise to it. Fortunately all that cheese was topped with these amazing tomatoes, and caramelised onions that cut through the dairy. I ordered the Melissa.

Even though I was starving I had to leave the crust and a slice- PIZZAS ARE SHAREABLE!

The decor is nice, clean, and modern with some Italian rustic notes.

My...