Pissaladière

Pissaladière is a thin bread base spread with deeply caramelized onions and topped with anchovy fillets and black olives. It's Nice's answer to pizza, built entirely without tomato or cheese, and the name comes from pissalat, the salted anchovy paste that traditionally goes into the base before the onions do.

What it actually is

A large batch of onion is cooked down very slowly in olive oil for well over an hour, until it collapses into a sweet, jammy, deeply caramelized mass with almost no liquid left. It's spread thick over a thin bread dough base, and anchovy fillets are laid across the top in a lattice pattern along with whole black olives, usually Niçoise, before the whole thing bakes until the base is crisp underneath.

The absence of tomato and cheese isn't a simplified version of pizza — it's the actual point of the dish, letting the sweetness of the slow-cooked onion and the salt of the anchovy carry the whole thing without competition.

How it's served

• Cut into squares, at room temperature or warm.
• As a starter or snack, often alongside pastis or a glass of rosé.
• With the anchovy lattice visible, a recognizable presentation rather than a scattered topping.

Writing it on a menu

• Flag gluten and fish; the base and anchovy topping carry both.
• Note that it's made without tomato or cheese; guests expecting a pizza-like dish should know this is a different, simpler build.
• Mention how long the onions are cooked down, since the slow caramelization is the real craft of the dish and worth naming.
• Say if you can make a version without anchovy for guests who don't eat fish, since the onion base itself doesn't require it structurally, even though it changes the traditional flavour.