La Fornaretta is simply scrumptious! Yes, I said Scrumptios. My husband, mother and I all went for my birthday last Thursday for the first time. It was a nice surprise to have such a great little restaurant in a surprising area.
Newcastle, CA is sandwiched between Auburn, CA and I-80 East towards Reno and CA-Hwy 193 in Lincoln. It is a very small little restaurant situated on top of the hill in the old town area. In fact La Fornaretta resides within an old fruit packing shed, so the outside of it is a bit deceiving.
The food is authentic. Don't expect to find a steak here unless its apart of a pasta special.
The three of us each tried a different meal. Hubby settled on the more traditional spaghetti and meatballs, (primarly because a lot of the dishes are seafood based and he doesn't like seafood.) Mom had the eggplant parmigania and I had the canneloni.
The red sauce, known as Suga Sauce is deliciously sweet, but not sickenly so. It was drapped over all three dishes. Hubby had two rather large meatballs with his dish, which was a decent portion. Mom's eggplant was amazing. It had about 8 large slices of eggplant and covered in mozzarella and parm cheeses. My canneloni was meat stuffed with cheese and artichoke hearts. I was so full from eating my side salad and the fresh made bread, which appears to also be the dough they use for the pizzas that our neighboring table had, that I could only eat one of the two in my dish.
While it was a great meal and the pizzas looked fantastic, its not a cheap place, nor like a Macaroni Grill, so plan on bringing some cash ($86 for the three of us and only 1 glass of red wine was included in that bill.)
I do highly recommend for date night. Dress is casual. Place only hold maybe 40 people inside at a time, thought it appears they may offer some outside seating.
http://lafornaretta.com/
Bon Appetito!
