Il Fornello

At most Italian pizzerias the vegan option is an afterthought — one pizza, maybe a plain pasta set aside for whoever asks for it. Il Fornello runs closer to a second menu. Its Oakville dining room keeps a full plant-based lineup — dedicated starters, pizzas, pastas and a dessert — alongside a conventional Italian menu that stretches from antipasti through fresh pasta, seafood and secondi. It is the kind of parallel cooking that usually turns up at a dedicated vegan restaurant, not at a neighbourhood pizzeria. What defines the place is less a single signature plate than that range: at one table a strict vegan, a wood-fired-pizza traditionalist and someone who came only for branzino can each order the meal they actually wanted.

The conventional side rewards a straightforward first order. Pizzas come out of a wood-fired oven, and the Margherita is the cleanest read on it — San Marzano tomato, fior di latte, olive oil and basil, nothing hiding behind the toppings. Beyond it the pizza list runs from a straightforward pepperoni to a Pizza Fichi built on figs, all off the same wood fire. Calamari Fritti opens the meal lightly floured with a lemon-caper aioli, bright before the plates turn richer. Orecchiette Salsiccia pulls the other way, spicy pork sausage and caramelized onion held in tension by rapini, garlic and chilli. From there dinner keeps widening — Gnocchi alla Trapanese and Linguine di Mare on the pasta side, then mussels, seared salmon, branzino, veal and eggplant, with burrata and prosciutto di Parma anchoring a substantial antipasti section.

The plant-based section is where the kitchen's intent shows. It is not one substitution grafted to the bottom of the page but a menu a diner can genuinely move through — Cavolfiore Affumicati, the smoked cauliflower, to start; dedicated pizzas and pastas in the middle; a Biscoff vegan cheesecake to finish. The dedicated dishes mean a plant-based guest chooses between plates rather than settling for the only one the kitchen can manage. Gluten-free crust and pasta sit alongside as further options, though anyone managing a strict allergy is right to confirm preparation directly. The effect is quiet but real: dietary need stops being a negotiation, and no one at the table has to plan the evening around the exception.

That evenness carries across the week. The Oakville location opened in 2018 and has settled into a clear lunch-and-dinner rhythm: weekday lunch folds panini into the format at a quicker midday pace, while dinner in the same dining room stretches into something longer, built around seafood and composed mains. A seasonal patio opens outdoor seating in the warmer months, and online reservations make the evening simple to lock down — useful for the larger parties the menu is plainly built to feed, where antipasti, a shared pizza and a spread of pastas carry most of the meal. Groups of eight or more should note the eighteen percent gratuity added to the table, and anyone hoping for a weekend brunch is better off calling ahead, since service currently begins at noon.

None of it is showy, and that is close to the point. Il Fornello reads less as a place you seek out for one dish than as a room a neighbourhood keeps returning to because it can absorb whatever a given night asks of it — a weeknight pizza, a planned birthday, a mixed table with three diets among four people. On any given evening the tables run the full range, families working through pizza while couples linger over branzino and dessert, and the kitchen meets all of them at once. The breadth that could read as unfocused is instead the whole design: a menu wide enough that everyone sitting down is eating what they came for, not the nearest compromise.