Last night Todd and I went to a local place for dinner. He wanted pizza so I did some yelp research and found out that Paesano’s, in midtown Sacramento has a cornmeal GF crust for pizzas, upon request. We’ve eaten there a few times before and they’re always decent. They aren’t my favorite pizza place, but nothing can compete with Hot City, who use a whole wheat crust that I clearly can’t eat anymore.
For starters, we ordered GF polenta fries. Let. me. tell. you. These were delicious. They’re giant like steak fries and the outsides are golden and crispy while the insides miraculously stay creamy and fluffy all at once. Unfortunately, I’m way too impatient and burned the ever-loving-goodness out of my mouth on my first bite. Instead of being a total slob and spitting it out, I kept it in my mouth which was a huge mistake that I’m still paying for.
The fries came with two dips: one was a gorgonzola/ranch-type dip: super creamy and cheesy and had a little bit of that funky cheese stink that I love. The other was a balsamic ketchup. On yelp I saw some described it as, “a weird sweet marinara sauce,” which it obviously wasn’t. It was strange… definitely sweet, but nothing like marinara. I love balsamic but we barely touched that dip.
Then came time to order our meals… and I was sorely let down.
As an aside: when I get hungry I turn into a monster. I get irritable and cranky and if the slightest thing goes wrong it feels like my world is crumbling.
So, when I was looking forward to a delicious GF pizza, and I was told they were out of the crust, I almost started crying. They have a really great GF pizza menu. It’s whatever pizza you want, put on a GF crust (with slight modifications for certain sauces like BBQ). So they have quite the selection! Their non-pizza entrees were not as appetizing to me though, since they were mostly pasta and salads.
I ended up ordering the Modena di Balsamico, which I had as a fully-glutenized meal the last time we went and it was delicious. The GF version was not quite up to snuff. All of the GF pasta dishes use the same ziti-type pasta; it’s chewy and not that great. The chicken in my dish was very obviously pre-cooked and therefore dry. I ate a few bites and, despite ruining the roof of my mouth, was glad I had eaten as many polenta fries as I did.
I think next time I decide I want GF pizza, I’ll go to BJ’s Brewhouse, where I know they have delicious, thin-crust, just-like-real-pizza, gluten free pies.
Do you have a delicious gluten free pizza crust recipe or have a favorite restaurant that carries them? I’d love to get some tips so I can make my own pizzas at home!
paigetopus 