European Vacation - Part 6 - Pizza time in Grenoble, France

One of the best known area in Grenoble to eat Pizza is the Quartier Saint Laurent (Saint Laurent Quarter) on the bank of the Isere river. It is one of the older quarter of Grenoble and is known as the Italian quarter since a lot of Italian immigrants settle there years ago and opened Pizza places (pizzeria) next to each other. Yes, there are plenty of Italian restaurants that mainly serve pizza and pasta, but can also serve crepes...

Like anywhere else, there are some good ones and some bad ones. For instance, last year, I went to Casanova: it was pretty bad!

Now, let's talk about pizza in France:

• Pizza is pretty popular, but in pizzeria, you will have a whole pizza that is typically for one person (usually 11 to 12 inches). They never sell by the slice.
• If you want a slice, you can buy it in a boulangerie (bakery) or in a sandwich shop.
• Usually, pizza is made with tomato sauce, but you can find white pizza South of France.
• In term of toppings, you will find some differences with the US: smoked salmon and creme fraiche, merguez (lamb sausages), seafood...For a four cheeses pizza, you usually end up with goat and gorgonzola or roquefort besides other cheeses.
• The majority of the pizzeria cook in a brick oven.
• Frozen pizza is popular and they are of pretty good quality! They even sell frozen brick oven pizza!

So, this year, we went to Pizzeria Di Roma. They serve pizza, pasta, salads and crepes. I have tried couple of their dishes...

They had a traditional tomato and mozzarella salad called Salade Italienne (Italian salad). It was served with some lettuce, cabbage, black olives, basil and drizzled with Olive oil. It was delicious and very fresh. The mozzarella was perfect and not rubbery at all!

Then there was the fried ravioles salad. 

Ravioles is a regional specialty from France and are a type of ravioli but the dough is much lighter and thinner and the filling is meatless. The typical filling is made of comte cheese (similar to aged gruyere), fromage blanc and parsley, but you can find variations such as mushroom filling. You usually cook ravioles like pasta, in boiling water during few minutes and it is the first time I saw them fried. The taste was good, but I prefer the traditional way of cooking them.

Then came the pizza:

The first one was made with gorgonzola.

The other one was a 4 cheeses pizza. The cheeses were: goat, emmental, roquefort and mozzarella.

The pizza were delicious and had a lot of cheese on it! The crust was very thin and crispy. I really liked them, but was not able to finish my plate, although I managed to finished all the parts of the 4 cheeses pizza where there was goat cheese! Of course, after such a meal, I was unable to go for dessert! Another time maybe...

So if you are in Grenoble, try it: you will not regret it!

Pizzeria Di Roma

50 Quai Perrière  38000 Grenoble

Enjoy (I did)!

And remember: I Just Want To Eat!