Il Forno, West Windsor’s new Italian restaurant in the CVS retail center across from McCaffrey’s, is a family business — all the way down to the beams.
Jeff Malloy, who opened Il Forno on Route 571 at Southfield Road with his significant other, Melissa Virgilio, in October, explains: “The girls (Melissa’s 11-year-old twins), Melissa, and I took 2,000 linear feet of pine beams this summer and finished them to look old,” part of the new restaurant’s artistic barn theme.
Melissa’s daughters, Olivia and Isabella, got to throw rocks at the beams and walk on them with golf shoes to age the wood. Now that the restaurant is open, the girls have begun to bake cupcakes for the cafe section of the restaurant.
“We told them they could keep half their earnings, and half will go to charity once they build up enough to contribute,” says Malloy, who also owns and operates Carmen in Boston’s North End. Carmen is one of the top-rated Italian restaurants in Boston. While Malloy now lives locally, he still commutes up to Boston twice a month to check on the restaurant.
“There are outlets along the way,” Malloy jokes. “It’s not a bad drive.”
Il Forno, meaning “the oven,” offers a new twist on traditional Italian food and is already filling up on weekend nights. Some of the most popular dishes so far appear to be the risotto, orecchiette with sweet sausage, and the haddock francese. On the cafe side, the pizza, including gluten-free pizza, is gaining popularity with the new addition of a Neapolitan pizza oven from Italy. The restaurant menu also includes starters ranging from the traditional caesar salad to the more adventuresome spicy Sicilian pickled vegetables or spice cured beef tenderloin.
Il Forno also has something that health-conscious restaurant-goers will appreciate: the Max Menu, which is a separate menu based on the national Max challenge fitness program (one of which is based at 217 Clarksville Road in West Windsor).
“It’s healthier without giving up flavor,” says Virgilio. On the menu are such things as vegetable “pasta” with chicken and shrimp, which features “pasta” made from al dente zucchini. Vegetarians will be able to find numerous options, and the restaurant will adapt a dish for vegans or others on special diets.
Another fun addition to the menu is the “Prohibition List,” which includes a variety of fruity additions to mix with your BYO wine. “MIT” on the menu means that the add-ons will “Make it Tastier.”
The idea for the restaurant was born about a year and a half ago, when Virgilio was talking to Malloy about her dream of opening a coffee and sandwich shop in West Windsor, a town where she has lived either in or near for the past 20 years. Virgilio had gotten to know Malloy from visits to Carmen during vacations to Boston. Since Malloy was already running a successful restaurant, he suggested that they combine efforts and run a restaurant and cafe. Il Forno Cafe and Trattoria was born.
Virgilio was working until the end of the last school year as a reading teacher in Burlington County. With some 14 years spent in teaching, and going though a divorce in 2010, she decided that she was ready for a change.
“I wanted to have more flexibility with the kids,” Virgilio says. “I was burning out as a teacher — it was hard going from teaching eighth grade non-readers to coming home and helping my two girls in their highly academic school.”
The girls attend Grover Middle School, and afterward they now go to the restaurant, where they do their homework— or make cupcakes. You could say that they are making their mark.
“On one of the beams they worked on,” Malloy points out, “Olivia wrote, ‘Olivia Rocks.’ On another you will find, ‘Isabella loves Italian food.’ Their reward for a couple of hours of roughing up some beams — besides personalizing some of them — was to go to the pool or beach. They were a real help,” Malloy says.
Both Virgilio and Malloy hail from New Jersey. Virgilio grew up in Berlin to a father who worked at Nabisco Brands in Pennsauken and stay-at-home mom, both second-generation Italian.
Malloy grew up mainly in Summit, with an insurance executive father and half-Italian stay-at-home mom, both from Berkeley Heights. From his mother’s kitchen came much of the inspiration for his vocational choice.
“My mother was the traditional ’70s executive’s wife, always entertaining,” Malloy says.
The now-celebrated restaurateur remembers noticing, at a very early age, the raw lamb or turkey going into the oven and watching it coming out, transformed. Although his mother didn’t invite him to participate in her cooking, he learned by observing. “I started cooking sufficiently at the age of eight. I cooked Sunday brunch, popovers and pancakes, for my grandparents at their house,” Malloy says.
After some vocational-technical training at high school, he studied in culinary programs in New England while also traveling in Italy, where he gained knowledge and appreciation of traditional Italian cooking. Malloy worked at several New Jersey restaurants before opening Carmen in 2001.
Virgilio notes that both she and Malloy come from “a strong Italian heritage where cooking, baking, and eating were always important.”
Virgilio earned a bachelors degree from Kean University in special education and a masters in reading education from Rowan University, with a certificate in Wilson Reading for children with dyslexia and other reading challenges. As the restaurant’s manager of daily operations, she says her teaching, organizational, and people skills garnered from years of teaching have helped in her new line of work. This includes training some of the new employees — including breaking down the menu items for them step by step — and working with the public.
“Patience is a must!” she says.
She says giving up her commute and being in the community where her children go to school has been a big plus. “It’s two minutes to pick them up from school,” Virgilio says. “To see teachers and students that your children go to school with, or to see kids from your kids soccer team —here is the beauty of being in your own town.”
Virgilio says feeling isolated as a single mom made her much more community-minded. “We got involved as sponsors of the West Windsor Volunteer Fire Company 5K this year. We were all there,” she says. They also attend St. David the King Catholic Church. Wanting community was part of the inspiration of opening a cafe — to offer a gathering place.
“We had a pizza party here after the middle school dance,” Virgilio says. “That’s the fun part of owning your own business. You can do that,” Malloy adds.
Perhaps the Italian proverb on the restaurant website sums up the proprietors’ ethos the best: “At the table with good friends & family you do not become old.”
Il Forno, 358 Princeton Hightstown Road, West Windsor. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and Sunday from 3 to 9 p.m. www.ilfornowestwindsor.com. 609-799-8822.
