pizza al'uova

Pizza dough, tomato sauce, prosciutto, oven roasted artichokes, olives, egg, basil

Pizzeria Wine Bar Rosso, 53 Montgomery Drive, Santa Rosa; tel. 707.544.3221

THE FIRST TIME I TASTED a pizza with an egg on top was at the Café Chez Panisse, and it was extraordinary, so good I immediately thought of a song about it. Alice's pizza with anchovy and egg, it was called; I thought it was a sudden glimpse of another cosmos. Ich fühle luft von anderen planeten, as Schoenberg sang in his first quartet.

Well, that was years ago. Today we ate lunch at a nearby pizzeria everyone's been talking about, and what should I find on the menu but Uovo, egg. There were four of us at the table: Lindsey had an odd-sounding pizza, "Goomba," with saffron tomato sauce, roasted tomatoes, sliced meatballs and spaghetti on top; our friends both had the "Moto Guzzi," a white-based pizza with smoked mozzarella, sweet Italian sausage, roasted sweet onions and swiss chard.

Their pizze came as you'd expect, on plates; mine was served on a wooden peel set atop one of those lampshade-minus-covering affairs atop which you usually expect to find a platter of oysters. The waiter ceremoniously quartered the pizza with one of those disclike pizza knives, breaking the yolk, and I dug in.

The dough, in all truth, wasn't quite up to Chez Panisse -- or, for that matter, Pizzaiolo. But it was pretty good, and the topping was delicious. And it makes a pretty picture, don't you think?

2004 Verget du Sud Roussanne; 2005 Regaleali Rosso Nero d’Avola.