Pizza

Eastside Road, September 25, 2012—

PIZZA WAS UNKNOWN in my neighborhood when I was a boy; it took the returning GIs from Italy, who presumably brought memory of the staple with them, to instal it firmly in the American consciousness. Now, of course, it's everywhere.

The wood-burning pizza oven came later. It's hard to imagine even that, now; but forty years ago there were few such appliances, even in the Bay Area. One, perhaps, in San Francisco. I mean ovens devoted exclusively to pizza, of course. No doubt bakers with wood-burning ovens were always prone to fixing their own suppers in the oven at the end of the day. But how many restaurants had one?

Now they're a dime a dozen (unless you're in the market for one, in which case they go for a considerable amount more). You can find a good oven in any self-respecting Italian restaurant. In our town, Healdsburg, there must be dozens of them.

Tonight we went a little further afield, finding ourselves in the next town north after a highschool volleyball game. Lindsey and I split a tasty green salad with big meaty chunks of heirloom tomatoes and sweat-'til-soft torpedo onions nestling in the lettuces, a healthy handful of Gorgonzola crumbled in the lusty vinaigrette.

Then, while she tackled her prosciutto and mushroom ravioli with brown-butter leeks and rapini, I tucked into a pizza. It was the house special, a little eccentric, certainly more Southern than Northern Italian: roasted red peppers, meatballs with pine nuts and raisins, provolone, and lots of arugula strewn on top. Diavola, they call it, and devilish good.

What I like about this pizza: it's on the casual side. The dough's tossed and spun and fired hot; the topping are set in place with heart and generosity, not some kind of even-handed compulsiveness. You've read about Franco Dunn's magnificent sausages on this blog from time to time: Diavolo is where he makes them, as I understand it, and the meatballs on this pizza reflect his approach: plenty of intelligence and respect for authenticity and terroir, but equal parts of sensuality and pure pleasure. Why don't we drive up here more often?

Nero "di Campo," Hawkes House (Sonoma Coast), nv: rich, immediate, compelling.

• Diavola, 21021 Geyserville Avenue, Geyserville, California; 707-814-0111