La Vela, Boulogne's Italian restaurant that puts the Mediterranean in the spotlight

La Vela is the name of a new Mediterranean-scented Italian restaurant in Boulogne-Billancourt, just outside Paris. A superb setting, delicious pinsas romana and ultra-gourmet fresh pasta, this is a promising program.

Chef Guiseppe Caruso has set up shop in Boulogne and is waiting to treat you to his Sicilian dishes. Alert to all fans of Italian cuisine, always on the lookout for the right address to treat yourself to fresh, generous al dente pasta, here's a new address that should entice you.

Discover La Vela Boulogne on video :

On arrival, the elegant but narrow frontage suggests that the restaurant is rather small, but not at all. Open the door and you'll find the restaurant is long and deep. In two parts, separated by a central bar, on one side you discover a rather subdued space, and on the other a lovely, light-filled room under a glass roof with a screen simulating an open fire for a cosy touch.

Velvet chairs, chic floral prints and superb leaf-shaped golden chandeliers make for a welcoming setting.

As for the menu, La Vela offers a selection of fine charcuterie and cheese boards to share, as well as gourmet antipasti. For our part, we're won over by fried calamari with homemade tartar sauce and Pinsas Romana to share. If you don't know what a pinsa is, it's a reinterpretation of an ancient recipe dating back to ancient Rome.

Originally, peasants used a mixture of millet, barley and spelt, mixed with salt and dried herbs, to make this stretched flat bread, which takes its name from the Latin "pinsere". Today, the recipe has evolved to include wheat, rice and soy flour. Like a pizza, this mixture produces a dough that's super-crisp, light and elastic, with an incomparable chewiness - we love it. La Vela's Pinsa Romana is generous, but let's face it, it's easy to gobble up. We enjoyed the Trieste version with Mozzarella, Gorgonzola, pear and walnut, and theEsquilino, which combines stracciatella, beef carpaccio, arugula and Parmesan shavings.

To accompany all this, the restaurant offers a fine wine list. A selection of Italian and French wines. From Chianti to Barolo to Nebbiolo, all the great varietals are on the menu. And when it comes to cocktails, you can enjoy the classics just the way you like them.

No good Italian restaurant is complete without good fresh pasta. At La Vela, you'll find lasagne with beef ragout or truffle, risotto with mushrooms or zucchini, and gnocchi with tomato, basil and mozzarella sauce. For our part, we fall for the house specialty, La Vela pasta, featuring linguine with truffle and Bronte pistachio cream, accompanied by prawns. We also love the fillet of sea bream with capers, a perfect accompaniment to the generous and colorful ratatouille.