PIZZA NEUF

 

By Joe Ray

PARIS – Grey day. The kind that makes you wear extravagant clothing in hopes they’ll create a break in the clouds. Parisians, a thin-blooded lot who put on cold-weather clothing at the drop of a hat, use days like this to break out their scarves and winter coats while the rest of us are fine in a long-sleeved shirt.

If you go out on a day like this, you tend not to stray too far. I rode my bike to meet a friend for lunch at pizzeria Maria Luisa behind the Canal Saint Martin, an area larded with good neighborhood restaurants.

It poured once we were inside, but it didn’t matter. The pizza (red sauce, mozz, anchovy) chased clouds and when I took a spin around the restaurant floor, all the different pies looked just as good. A kid at the table next to us got a kid-sized pizza and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see that on the menu. Nice touch.

Nitpicks: my crust could have been done underneath a bit more, my friend’s salad came with a ricotta that, curiously and distractingly, was slightly sweet. Avoid or refuse the table shoehorned into a dead space by the bathroom.

But these are little things. Using my Sicilian scale, this would have been a very respectable Pizza Sette, on a Parisian scale, however, Pizza Neuf.

Maria Luisa – Pizzeria Napoletana - MAP
2 rue Marie et Louise
75010 Paris
+33 1 44 84 04 04

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

 

Comments

[Jollibee Food Corporation]

wow,pizza neuf is really a mouth-watering pizza..i love it!can i have a slice of that?
haha,just kidding..thanks

seth

[bibliochef]

Officially jealous. Have not been to Paris in a long time, and still remember the food My favorite was a salad with sauteed wild mushrooms of various sorts (and the brasserie where I had. . . . )