This French dish has been an Alsatian staple for the reason that 1800s—simply do not name it pizza

“This is food for peasants,” says Daniel Vierling. He’s rolling out a skinny layer of dough at S’Fassner Stuebel, his restaurant positioned some 10 miles from Strasbourg. “Flammekueche was created by the local farmers in this region, the Kochersberg, to test the heat of their ovens.” Wearing a black polo shirt speckled in flour, Daniel rolls out the dough, explaining that bakers would layer this with leftover cream and/or fromage blanc, then onions and lardons, earlier than, like him, slinging it into the crackling flames of a wood-burning oven. As president of the Brotherhood of True Flammekueche, an organisation devoted to preserving the authenticity of this straightforward dish, Daniel makes it the old style method. That is: utilizing high-quality native substances, that are cooked over a wooden fireplace. Only 40 such orthodox eating places exist on this planet, and the overwhelming majority are right here in Alsace, a area that’s flip-flopped over the centuries between Germany and France.

For the following minute, I watch as flames burst from splattering bacon fats, licking the perimeters of the dough, the place it bubbles and blackens. I’ve come to Daniel’s barn-turned-restaurant within the ho-hum French hamlet of Fessenheim-le-Bas to be taught in regards to the area’s signature dish, flammekueche (also referred to as flammkuchen or tarte flambée) forward of an oniony odyssey to search out the area’s finest iteration. The dish is a mainstay of this little nook of northeastern France and the southwestern German areas of Saarland, Baden and the Palatinate.

Served by native innkeepers within the area from the 1800s, flammekueche didn’t see its reputation take maintain till the Sixties, as pizzerias turned commonplace. But don’t name it pizza. Its dough is paper-thin and normally yeast-free, and its toppings adhere largely to a standard roster of substances. And nowhere has flammekueche turn into such an obsession as it’s right here in Alsace. And Daniel would be the most obsessed of all of them.

He uncorks a bottle of pinot blanc and begins my crash-course. “The dough should be rolled out to a millimetre thick,” he says. “The cream should not soak through it. The lardons should be spread out to guarantee you get a few pieces in each bite.” He notes {that a} good flammekueche joint is “not fancy, usually a tavern, often family-run.” As for tips on how to determine an genuine spot, he tells me to search for the wooden smoke and “if you see people of all ages inside, there’s a good chance it’s delicious.” Above all, although: “avoid restaurants cooking with electricity because it’ll have the texture of a jellyfish.”

Daniel’s son Sebastian slides a freshly made tarte onto our desk, and I love its umber bubbles and scorching lardons. It cracks once I lower into it, and I savour every salty, creamy, smoky mouthful — every snapping like a cracker as I chew.

Comfort meals

Strasbourg, the capital of Alsace, has lengthy charmed guests with its medieval Petite France district, the place Germanic timber-framed fachwerk buildings flank slender alleyways. When it involves flammekueche, although, the very first thing any Alsatian will inform you is that the most effective variations aren’t discovered within the metropolis, however moderately in rural inns. However, just a few locations in Strasbourg are doing it proper. And craft brewpub Le Tigre is one among them.

Helmed by Geoffroy Lebold, Le Tigre is a neighborhood establishment. Far from a country village tavern, this restaurant delivers eye-popping pink fluorescent lights and serves big tanks of beer round a two-metre-tall wood tiger. “There’s no secret to a good tarte flambée,” says Geoffroy, who nonetheless has just a few prospers up his sleeve. His recipe makes use of the brewery’s blonde beer within the dough and a particular in-house fromage blanc sauce. It’s a concoction that reminds him of sharing flammekueche on the household dinner desk, a common incidence when he was rising up. “Flammekueche is la madeleine de Proust for me,” says the reserved, grey-haired chef with childlike pleasure. “Every time I eat it and smell it, I am taken to those childhood memories.”

I ask him what to order, and he suggests a ‘traditional’, which is solely onions, cream and lardons, adopted by a dessert flammekueche with apples and cinnamon in a calvados flambé. The former comes twice baked — a uncommon diversion from purist kind — and with fairly fatty cream. But the apple-cinnamon model that follows is the standout. The heat sweetness of the fruit and spice pairs completely with an extra-thick layer of cream, identical to a comforting apple tart.

A tarte tasting menu

The subsequent morning, I hit the street in the direction of the pastel-brushed medieval village of Kaysersberg, positioned an hour south on the Alsace Wine Route. I arrive a bit earlier than midday, sufficient time to marvel on the timber-laden properties and fantasise about dwelling above one of many small bakeries, the place every single day I’d seize a freshly baked baguette and a brioche-like kougelhopf cake. My reveries are interrupted by the church bells chiming the hour, and I enterprise into Flamme & Co. First conceived by chef Olivier Nasti, who helms native double-Michelin-starred La Table d’Olivier Nasti, Flamme & Co is now run by younger enterprise companions Yoan Jacquet and Pierre Moiso, who current a contemporary tasting menu of wood-fired flammekueche.

“We want to turn the tarte flambée into a new, original dish,” says Yoan. In addition to the everyday variations discovered throughout Alsace, the six-course menu additionally affords creative interpretations together with a comforting iteration with salmon, dill, leek, carrot and lemon; one with rib-eye steak, sundried tomatoes, parmesan and a bouquet of herbs; and one other wealthy with duck, butternut squash, celery and a candy raspberry sauce. It’s a symphony of elaborate flavours, far faraway from the dish’s usually porcine profile.

From there, I meander north, zigzagging throughout the countryside, again in the direction of the Kochersberg area. On the way in which, I move by way of the fortified Sixteenth-century cities of Colmar, Ribeauvillé and Riquewihr — within the latter indulging in a gooey Munster cheese flammekueche at Restaurant À la Couronne. In the night, I take a look at Zum Loejelgucker, an old-school wine tavern in Traenheim, and delight of their famously punchy tarts topped with purple onion.

In the Kochersberg village of Pfulgriesheim the next day, I meet Lydia Roth and her son Antoine Doerr, the fifth technology of a household who put together Alsatian house cooking from their Seventeenth-century farmhouse restaurant, L’Aigle, the place tarte flambée is the speciality. “Everyone starts with one flammekueche,” says Lydia. “And then they order another one.”

Each tarte is made to authentic household recipes and, because it was then, no ingredient comes from quite a lot of miles away. Lydia reckons even the stone oven is roughly 300 years outdated. I ask Antoine for his favorite model, and he delivers one which’s heavy on cream, bacon and candy onion with a sprinkle of Emmental cheese. I’m instantly floored by the creaminess, thick lardons and the way it has one way or the other retained its distinct texture by way of this denseness. It’s tangy, hearty and rustic — a rib-sticking meal that might certainly fulfill a farmer.

As I slink right into a meals coma and watch flambée after flambée fly out of the kitchen, I reminisce over the handfuls of dishes my odyssey has taken in, the accompanying wine and the brand new notch in my belt. “It wasn’t like this 20 or 30 years ago,” I bear in mind Daniel saying. “Every year, you see it more and more in restaurants; more people are making tarte flambée, even top chefs.”

For many born in Alsace, flammekueche symbolises house. It represents the land, agriculture and dinner at grandma’s. You can get a pizza anyplace, however flammekueche? It’s a speciality tied to those borderlands. And with that parting thought, I wave over to Lydia. “I’ll have one more, please.”