BR
PIZZA PARTY
By GEORGE
MORRIS
News
features staff writer
Published: Sep 14, 2007
Any way you slice it, Baton Rouge is passionate about its
pizza.
When we asked for your nominations for the best restaurant pizza
in town, it wasn’t just the hundreds of responses that came pouring
in that impressed us. It was the zeal, the ardor, the fervor of the
opinions. Some of you KNOW which place has the BEST PIZZA EVER, and
anyone who thinks differently DOESN’T KNOW PIZZA FROM MANHOLE
COVERS. Or words to that effect.
Considering that 13 restaurants received at least multiple
recommendations, it’s obvious that pizza quality is a highly
subjective subject. But based on the number of nominations and our
own painstaking, waistline-expanding research, three restaurants
stood out.
Fleur de Lis
OK, OK,
stop writing us. We get it: You really like Fleur de Lis pizza. You
wrote us from out of town. You even wrote us from jail, for crying
out loud. (Note to that correspondent: If you ever escape, I’m
telling the warden where to find you.) If the Round the World pizza
could qualify for the gubernatorial race, it might take Bobby Jindal
into a runoff.
And it’s the Round the World that almost every one of FDL’s fans
raved about, even though — paradoxically for pizza — it’s
rectangular, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It
definitely gets the taste buds’ attention, too. The crust is
extremely thin and crisp, so the toppings are what it’s all about:
zesty Italian sausage, pepperoni, salami, mushroom and onions, and
anchovies if you want them. As best we could tell, no tomatoes are
harmed in the making of this pizza, and that’s OK, too.
We suspect a lot of those pizzas are picked up and carried out,
which is fine, but you need to know that the full Fleur de Lis
experience doesn’t come in a cardboard box.
Step inside the oddly shaped pink building on Government Street
and, even before your eyes adjust to the relative darkness, the
cooking aroma is strong enough to make you wonder if it’s possible
to take in nutrition through your pores. At the very least, a
sit-down meal there allows the aroma to penetrate your clothing to
the degree that, after you leave, those around you can guess where
you ate dinner. The furniture and appointments have definitely seen
better days, but it makes the place as comfortable as old blue
jeans.
First-timers don’t always appreciate this fully. Jennifer Jordan
reports a conversation between a waitress and newbie patrons who
asked if Fleur de Lis offered deep dish pizza.
“No, we’ve been makin’ it this way for 40 years,” the waitress
explained.
Undeterred, a customer asked about wheat crust. The waitress
wasn’t amused:
“I done told you — no thin, no thick, no wheat. This is the way
it is.”
And Baton Rouge likes it just fine.
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