Gluten free pizza at Gemini restaurant

Recently Gemini Les Halles has been using a new pizza mix with deglutinated wheat starch,

I personally don’t like this ingredient and I can’t recommend this pizza any longer.

Yesterday I went to eat a gluten free pizza at  Gemini Les Halles, a restaurant and pizzeria in Paris that is close to Les Halles and is niched at the very heart of the city.

I was happy to meet again Julien Zanon, owner, entrepreneur, passionate cook and “pizzaiolo” in the making. Julien and I met earlier in Spring this year as he was considering some new gluten free pasta for his restaurant and if you’ve been following me for a while, you might know that apart from blogging I also distribute Italian artisanal gluten free products in France. For an Italian like myself who loves pasta, I couldn’t choose something more appropriate to do.

Julien has been serving gluten free food in his restaurant for two years now. He became responsive to the gluten free food issue because a couple of his best friends could not eat gluten. So he started to make it, and he started to learn by himself how to cook it. The real challenge for him was gluten free pizza. He started to try and try, and after several kilos of gluten free flours, he started to make something that looked like and tasted like real pizza!

When I met Julien the first time, I tasted his gluten free pizza but to me, he wasn’t there yet. So I shared with him a tutorial video from my dear pizzaiolo in Naples, Roberto Susta, and thanks to it and to Julien’s skills, his gluten free pizza is now really good and I can say that I did like it very much. Furthermore it is made with an Italian, natural mix that I distribute in France called Glutino, produced by the Molino Quaglia in Italy. The Molino Quaglia is renown for its great tasting flours and mix that combine tradition with innovation and researches. So my lunch was a gluten free Margherita with bufala mozzarella, my very favourite, fresh tomato sauce, Julien added fresh basil and a sprinkle of extra virgin olive oil. The pizza was crunchy, perfectly seasoned, needless to say how happy I was to eat it.

And here he comes, Julien Zanon, right here in my photo! I love capturing that little, evanescent expression with my camera. It lasts a second but that’s what makes the difference for me when I shoot and it is definitely what I love.

I spent the rest of my meal talking to Julien about gluten free food and Italy. His family has Italian origins and he goes back to Italy as often as he can. To him opening up an Italian restaurant in Paris was a his own way to follow his passion for great tasting food.

Before leaving, a surprise arrived on the table: gluten free pizza with nutella, strawberries and whipped cream! In Italy pizza with nutella is very common and totally scrumptious. “Une tuerie” as they say it here, in French. If you go to Gemini Les Halles, you don’t want to miss this one.

At Gemini Les Halles the gluten free menu includes also pasta, gnocchi, lasagna from Pastificio La Rosa and there is also the Peroni beer, one of the best gluten free beers that I have ever tasted.

A warm thank you to Julien: I love eating, I love sitting at a table and chatting over great food.

Gluten free can be really good thanks to people like him who engage in this business seriously and with passion.