If you‘re on the hunt for a resort dinner with plenty to do afterwards then I suggest looking here at Trattoria al Forno at Disney‘s BoardWalk. This resort is just outside of World Showcase at EPCOT or a quick boat ride from Hollywood Studios. Trattoria al Forno is a table service restaurant featuring Italian fare.
If you‘ve been a long time Disney person then you may remember Kouzzina‘s which used to occupy this space (RIP one of my favorite vegan meals). They kept the restaurant with the open kitchen layout and the smell of garlic in here is top tier.
When starting your meal here you are given a basket of bread and garlic confit. Our server informed us that the rolls were vegan and the garlic confit is just olive oil with roasted garlic. The rolls were nice and warm and easy to open to put the roasted garlic on. The garlic confit was cold, which was a surprise with the warm bread, but flavor wise was very good. I love anything that has too much garlic so that was a great start.
The vegan appetizer is the Tomato Bruschetta. You get two long slices of ciabatta loaded in tomatoes, basil, and an aged balsamic. The tomatoes were a mix of tiny cube cut tomatoes and grape tomatoes which was a nice bite.
The bread was less crispy than a crostini would be and was very good. If you plan to share with more than one person I suggest ordering more than one of these as you‘re not going to want to cut the bread in half. The aged balsamic had a nice sweetness to it and it was a really tasty starter.
We also opted for the side of warm olives. This was as expected but with surprise black olives in there. But it was a variety of olives and they were good.
For our entree here we had the Plant-based Bolognese. This features tons of vegan meat crumbles in a tomato sauce, rigatoni, and arugula. The sauce had a light sweetness to it and I really enjoyed it. We‘re not ones to go anywhere for pasta, but I really liked this plate.
We were given a ton of the vegan meat crumbles, which I assume was Impossible. There were also mushrooms and tomatoes in the bolognese which was a nice texture addition. The pasta was cooked well and I have no complaints about this dish. As someone who doesn‘t love pasta dishes at restaurants, I would happily order this again. I definitely liked this meal more than Corey did, he felt the sauce was a bit too acidic, but I loved it.
For a vegan kids option we were able to get penne noodles and fruit. We had the option of them with red sauce or not, we went with the oil and garlic. Finn enjoyed it, but didn‘t love the whole wheat pasta. I think if he had red sauce it would have been less noticeable. He did like the fruit bowl as well.
For dessert we ended the meal with the Olive Oil Cake. I had no idea what to expect for this, but man did it wow us. The cake itself is a pistachio and olive oil cake and is then topped with a blackberry sorbet, candied pistachios, vegan whipped cream, and a blueberry compote. This was the perfect amount of sweetness and the cake was incredibly moist. I still can‘t believe how far we have come with vegan desserts at Walt Disney World.
We didn‘t ask at the time, but I have seen my friend Princess of Princess and the Bear say you can get vegan pizza here as they do have vegan cheese. Our server didn‘t mention it when we were asking about vegan kids options, but that should be an option for them as well as us as they have pizza on the menu.
If you‘re a pasta fan I definitely suggest checking out Trattoria al Forno on your next visit. We left very full and happy. That dessert alone was worth the visit!
Price $$$
Review from May 2024.
