All Hail Flammkuchen

The French city of Strasbourg isn’t one of the world’s most exciting travel destinations. There’s a cool cathedral in the center of town and the history is interesting (Traditionally a German-speaking city, Strasbourg has flipped hands between France & Germany plenty of times – and the traditional language of Alsatian is a German dialect) but as for the city… It’s just a long string of boring residental neighborhoods, bad post-war architecture and endless kebab stands.

But the local specialty of flammkuchen is amazing. It’s Alsatian pizza: A flatbread topped with white cheese, fried onions and bacon. Over at Epicurious, Francis Lam wrote an appreciation of flammkuchen:


And at the moment, my favorite non-Dom pizza is not really a pizza at all, but rather its Alsatian cousin, legendarily a product of hungry bakers waiting for their just-stoked ovens to cool to where they could bake bread without incinerating it. They would stretch out pieces of their strong dough ridiculously thin, brush it with crème fraîche and fromage blanc, toss on some onion and cured lardons, and stick it in their inferno. Tarte flambée, as the French name suggests (flammenkueche in the German-inflected Alsatian dialect, flaming coochie in the New Jerseyan), is all about blistering heat–it’s what causes the edges to develop some crispness while the body stays chewy and tender, all the while taking the rawness off the onions and rendering out the pig pieces just until they glisten. When it’s good, every bite is a progression–crisp, chewy, tart, smoky, sweet, salty, creamy. You can see how this can become a thing of obsession.

Here in Philly, the place to go for this awesomeness is the Caribou Cafe.

The French city of Strasbourg isn’t one of the world’s most exciting travel destinations. There’s a cool cathedral in the center of town and the history is interesting (Traditionally a German-speaking city, Strasbourg has flipped hands between France & Germany plenty of times – and the traditional language of Alsatian is a German dialect) but as for the city… It’s just a long string of boring residental neighborhoods, bad post-war architecture and endless kebab stands.

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All Hail Flammkuchen