a Côté
Add: Ferguson Lane, 376 Wukang Lu, near Hunan Lu 武康路376号, 近湖南路
Tel: 3368 8757
Hours: 12-2:30pm, 6-11pm (closed Monday)
Price: 80~160 RMB/12-inch pizza
Visited: June 2011
a Côté, literally “next door”, is a small pizzeria by Franck Pecol from the neighboring Franck Bistro and Le Petit Franck (see update below). The short menu, scrawled in French on a piece of wooden plaque, consists of 10 Marseille-style pizzas and nothing else (though a green salad is available upon request). There’s no novelty here. It’s simple, and it’s good.
2014 update: Just got word that a Côté is no longer associated with Franck. I wonder who is in charge now?
For lunch, two of us shared the Royale (120 RMB), a gorgeous tomato sauce-based pie generously topped with mushrooms, ham, olives, and cheese. The crust is thin just the way I like it, and pulling one piece away from the pizza dish is not an elegant affair as the pie disintegrates. Juicy, greasy, messy, totally satisfying.
A not so hot hot oil.
In the evening, a Côté transforms into something a little more romantic. The lighting is warm and soft, the air is filled with quiet jazz, and the focal point of the darkly romantic room is a wooden communal table that seats about 12.
For drinks, there is a small wine list, a Belgian beer (Vedett, 40 RMB), juice, mineral water, and coffee.
Genuine wood-fired ovens, sizzling and crackling away!
During the dinner visit, I tried fromage (just cheese, 80 RMB), moitié moitié (half cheese half anchovy, 120 RMB), and the creme-based royale (120 RMB). Other than the overly salty anchovy pizza, everything was delicious (though towards the end they all started to taste the same…) My favorite, though, is still the tomato sauce-based royale we had during lunch.
Unfortunately the mango ice-cream was already out by the time I got to it…
…so I decided to try the Pizza Nutella (75 RMB). It’s shaped like a calzone, and wrapped inside the crusty dough are nutella sauce and whole hazelnuts. An indulgently sweet ending to our simple but scrumptious dinner.
I went there last night for dinner. The place is super tiny, where I didn’t like sitting at the communal bench tables — it was quite noisy and easily distracting to listen to snippets of your neighbor’s conversations. The pizza (Royale) was delicious, although on the small side — they gave us a mysterious bottle of oil that was described as “la jiao jiang” (chili sauce) that was explained to be used for the pizza — it was not spicy, and we chose not to use it on the pizza. Beer selection was small — a Belgian blonde and a Belgian wheat. I wasn’t impressed with the environment and the service. The food was good, but I’m going to try other places in the future when in the pizza mood. One positive note is that they undercharged me by omitting a glass of red wine, and a glass of rose (score, 100 RMB). This makes up for Franck Bistro (same owner) trying to charge me (+ 8 RMB) for the extra Risotto that my father asked for on a 3000 RMB meal for two people.
Great hand-made pizza in a wonderful place. Love the Pizza Royale, the texture of cheese is brilliant : )
I love pizza royale too! Need to visit again soon :)