Pizza Lucé – Minneapolis, MN

We got a tip for this place from a guy I work with. He has the best recommendations for ANY kind of food and has never steered us wrong. I’m continually giving him gold stars for his suggestions. We added it to the culinary tour of the Twin Cities with Gerd’s mom because she wanted to get a feel for the downtown. We needed to do some shopping downtown, so we picked Pizza Lucé for a quick dinner.

The restaurant is known for its pizza, but it has a lot of other things that look really good on the menu. The pastas all look great as do the salads and sandwiches. There’s nothing bad in the entire place. They also cater to Vegans, but that’s not my thang. Good beer selection and drink specials as well. The staff are hip punk rockers who are normal non-kiss-ass functional staff. They get the job done without schmoozing, but they’re super helpful. This place has won all kinds of city awards for being awesome.

We started with the Focaccia Katerina for an appetizer. It’s a loaf of Focaccia bread sliced, covered with pesto, tomatoes, and provolone. It’s served with red sauce which was waaaay better than standard marinara. Not sure what’s in it, but it’s darn good. Having stuffed ourselves with appetizer bread, we began to haggle over whether to get three pizzas or two.

We decided to get two 10” pizzas since we would be walking and didn’t want to gorge ourselves (well SOME of us wanted to, but were denied, we won’t mention any names…). We got a baked potato pizza and The Wrangler. The Wrangler is a BBQ chicken pizza with mushrooms and cheese (we left off the peppers and onions due to someone’s name which rhymes with Nerd…). It was awesome. The sauce was really good and the chicken wasn’t gristle-y. What’s a baked potato pizza you ask? Only the best pizza idea ever (with a close second being tater tot pizza from Pizza Joynt in Milan, Illinois). Pizza crust without red sauce, but covered in ruby red mashed potatoes. Add some broccoli, tomatoes, cheese and bacon bits and serve with a side of sour cream. Seriously, it’s awesome. I’ve been to a couple of places in Minneapolis with mashed potato pizza of some sort but this one is the best, I’m saying. It’s really really really good.

Top 5 things about Pizza Lucé
1) Random pizza selection which will shock you at first, but will make you want to experiment
2) Awesome décor (cool menus) (downtown location only – we haven’t been to the other ones – yet)
3) Staff are “quirky” but great
4) Menu has soooo many good things on it
5) They have a “slice” line for grabbing a quick and cheap lunch if you work downtown

Bottom 5 things
1) Only have one stomach
2) Location can be crazy during normal work hours
3) Some of the staff might be mistaken for surly
4) Like any downtown restaurant in any city, there are some freakshows that roll in
5) Some of the waiters wear those stupid punk rock skin tight pants

http://www.pizzaluce.com