Pizza and Scissors

My mother and I are always trying to find new and exciting places and dishes to show to each other, either in Zurich or London as we both love food. This is how I was introduced to Palavrion, especially this interesting pizza.

Mum told me that this restaurant near to where she work serves this amazing pizza, which I had to try the next time I was in town. She said that she had it before and really recommended it to me as she knew that I would enjoy it. So one cold day we met at the restaurant for a lunch and I ordered the formentioned menu item.

The restaurant is modern in design with an open-plan kitchen, allowing guests to monitor the progress of their food and be entertained by the chefs working. The table we were sat at had dark purple tiles embedded into it giving it an outdoor garden feel. As we sat down, the waiter brought us a small brown paper bag which contained a mixture of breads.

When the pizza arrived, it was not the typical round shape, but a long rectangular. It came on a long wooden board and a pair of large scissors, a rather fun way of cutting up the pizza into manageable slices. The pizza was not based on the typical Italian style, which has a thicker dough base and tomatoes sauce, but follows the French style of “Flammkuchen”, which is a wafer thin base, almost like a crisp and a creamy first layer. I love Flammkucken more than the Italian pizza. It had toppings of thin slices of apple, goat cheese, rocket leaves, tomatoes, caramelised walnuts and all lightly drizzled with honey.

The taste was scrumptious. The bitterness of the goat cheese and the rocket leaves helped to offset the sweetness of the apple, walnuts and honey. The walnuts added a nice contrasting crunch to the softness of the cheese and apple. I felt that the chefs had made the right choice of using the French base when making this pizza, as the typical Italian method would have made the meal heavy and less enjoyable while the tomatoes sauce would have dominated the more delicate flavours.

When I first saw this combination on the menu, I thought that it would be too many conflicting flavours, each too demanding and would clash unpleasantly with each other, but it works so well together. I recommend this to anyone interested in trying a unique pizza topping and to try a dish typical to Alsace, a part of France with German influences!

Address: Beethovenstrasse 32, 8002 Zürich, Switzerland

www.palavrion.com/grill-zuerich/