Pizza on a Sunday in Perpignan

In small cities in France, not a lot is open on Sundays. The farmer’s market, yes, but not much else. Thus, when we arrived in Perpignan past 1pm on Sunday (a week ago), we had some difficulty finding a place to eat. We ended up going to L’Arago which is a bar brasserie, apparently known for their steaks (actually entrecôte), but we didn’t order that.

We ordered two huge pizzas for 10€50 each, a saumonée with crème fraîche (at the very top of this post) and a venezia (above), with fresh mozarella, tomatoes, olives, and basil oil. They were both good. I loved the basil oil on the venezia. We also got a plate of fries, which were decent.

For dessert, we had a crème catalan which looked like a crème brûlé when it came out, but it was another thing entirely. Beneath the thick layer of caramelized sugar was a fragrant, sweet, delightful custard which had some unplaceable scent, like some faint spice. It was delicious. It was a discovery.

Unfortunately, we were really disappointed by the service. It was 2 or 3pm as we were eating, and the restaurant was not busy, yet we could not get our servers to serve us, and then when we asked them to wrap up the pizza that we didn’t finish, they disappeared and we had to go downstairs and find them ourselves. It took forever for us to pay the bill too, because the waiters wouldn’t come over, and then we had to wait for them to swipe our card, and then to come back.

L’Arago
1 Place Arago
66000 Perpignan, France
Tel: 04 68 51 81 96

Overall rating for the price: 5.5 out of 10
I don’t care if it was cheap, service like that for an average meal will not get you a good grade