Friday night is Pizza Night here. A truly special treat. A man with a van parks in our village square and makes the most amazing wood fired pizzas.
We are lucky in that the centre of our small village boasts 4 places to eat. Each varies in what they offer, from simple to rather fancy.
All offer something to eat at lunch time, as the big meal of the day here is at mid-day. Evenings vary amongst them from only drinks, to take aways, to sit down. Also depending on which night. But Friday’s, our man in a van comes, parking in the village square, and adding to the atmosphere of Friday Night being special.
Our boulangerie (bakery) is not quite in the centre. We pass it on our way in. It also offers a pizza night. Well, more like pizza weekend, as they offer pizzas only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. It’s superb that they do, as it gives our village, and particularly the single men folk (it’s actually noticeable) an easy meal of an evening on the weekend.
We prefer the pizza van man’s wood oven pizza as it is more typically Italian in style; thin crust, not laden with too much so the dough has a little crispness to it rather than soggy. And of course that wood fired taste.
French style pizza is more like a tart. A savoury tart, think quiche but not so thick or dense. Generally puff pastry seems to be the preferred dough. It still tastes yummy, but it is very definitely different from what we at least think of as typical pizza.
In quirky French fashion, you are supposed to phone in your order, or drop by if you prefer. You are then told to come collect it in an hour, sometimes less, but more often more. There’s no pizza delivery here.
We like to liven up our pizza night with a walk into the village, now with our two dogs as recently added young Sanka to our menagerie. We then order our pizzas and attempt to cajole our pizza van man to make them in 10 minutes, giving us a just a little additional walk with the dogs. One of the tricks we have discovered is to be there early enough to beat the rush. We are more likely to get a pizza quickly and not have to wait around.
We are curious to know if he will be there tonight as he does not come to our village every week. It is a little like a lottery. We stop by the cash machine as we walk past the bank (no paying for pizza by card). Then the road curves around to the village square and we have our first glimpse of whether the pizza van is there.