My new favorite pizza

My friends are going to get sick of hearing about the Black Gold pie at Angie's Pizza, the new Heights pizza-and-pasta restaurant from Angelo Emiliani.

I can't seem to shut up about it: the magnificent wood-fired crust, bubbled and singed, forcefully leopard-spotted right around to its crisp, delicate underside. The slight tang from the dough's ferment. The contrast of crunch and stretch in its air-pocketed lightness. The holy-cow umami undertow of its aged Comté cheese, its dark squiggles of liquefied black garlic, its powdery smatter of dried porcini mushroom.

Emiliani makes it in what I'd call a modified Neapolitan style, with a highflying crown and a thin bottom crust crisped enough so that a wedge held its shape, with a little swoon at the tip.

Tasting this pizza felt like falling down some primal flavor well, one I didn't care to escape. Sultry-sweet black garlic boosted the nutty, farmyard funk of the starring Comté cheese, while porcini laid a woodland carpet down the middle.

The Black Gold was fermentiness squared...well, quadrupled, really, when you count that crust.

I ate 3/4 of the foot-wide pie all by myself. It was $22 and the thrill was worth it. I would have finished it all, had I not been distracted by a perfectly nice app of wood-grilled zucchini and summer squash moored in rather a lot of vivid pecan Romesco sauce. For my tastes, it had too much swagger for such gentle vegetables and such subtle wood-oven sootiness.

But that pizza! It is guaranteed to be a high-water mark in my year—hell, in my pizza-eating life. It's up there with the finest pizzas I've ever encountered: at Phoenix's original Pizzeria Bianco, where Emiliani trained under the great Chris Bianco; at Una Pizza Napoletana when Anthony Mangieri's New York outpost was young; in that same city at Kesté , circa 2010; and from the venerable brick ovens at John's of Bleecker Street. I'm still mourning the pies that Terrence Gallivan made at the late, great Elro's, so Angie's comes at the right moment for this particular pizza fiend.

Angie's opened just last week in a boldly rehabbed midcentury building on West 11th in the Heights, among the restaurant-rich blocks that house Loro, Camaraderie, Hando and Trattoria Sofia. Its sleek, no-nonsense interior features a long, long counter, along with snug window booths and vintage-look dining tables fore and aft. Anchoring the counter is the shiny, looming totem of a wood-burning pizza oven.

From Emiliani's well-traveled oven, hauled cross-country by trailer and parked in an East End backyard, came my first Angie's pizza during a 2001 pop-up. I wrote about it in the Chronicle. Those pies seemed miraculous to me then, as does the Black Gold now.

I enjoyed Louie's Italian American, the homey 2022 restaurant Emiliani opened on the East End side street where Street to Kitchen currently lives, but I always wished the short-lived spot had had the oven space to put pizza on the menu. Angie's does, and he's also serving a short list of the pastas he did so well at Louie's. Win-win.

Angie's is already thronged with eager pilgrims: I rolled into the front parking lot well before it turned into the valet situation that applies near 5 p.m., when the doors open. Other cars began arriving at 4:45, and by 4:50, one determined couple had already breached the front door. I followed.

Later, I learned from service and wine director Renato Bringas that Angie's plans to seat on a 50% reserved, 50% walk-in basis, so that the restaurant can approximate the feel of a neighborhood joint. I was glad to see Bringas, who when I met him at Chardon earlier this year, steered me towards a Sunday half-price champagne bottle that sounded far from my preferred flavor profile. I loved it, and learned something.

Sure enough, he lists a lovely grower champagne, Henriot Brut Souverain, at $26 a glass—the perfect match for funny round polenta "tots" that come off like sophisticated hush puppies with cracked black pepper, parm and an anchoring bit of pale cheese sauce. (Maybe hold the hard-to-chew rosemary needles, though, or just steep them in the cheese sauce?)

The tots are agreeable little cocktail bites at a bar that obviously prides itself on its drinks. Anvil veteran Drew Bennett leads the program, as well as the separate upstairs bar (where supplicants can wait, a nice amenity).

When I asked Bringas what wine by the glass would best suit my Black Gold pizza, he brought out a chardonnay from Friuli I would never have ordered: Vigne del Malina, for $19 a glass. Another hit, crisp and mineral-driven with good fruit. If' I'm paying around $20 or more for a glass of wine, as is more and more common these days, I want something memorable. These two were.

My last gasp was an amusing and altogether brilliant little sundae conceived by Emiliani himself. (His talented pastry-chef sister, Lucianna, is in charge of the other desserts, all priced at $12.)

Having ice cream after pizza feels right to the child in me. (I'm still mourning that black-and-white sundae Pizzana took off their menu.) Angie's edition arrived in a tumbler ringed in cartoon balloons—a tower of trembly coconut flan, scoops of fior di latte ice cream, and a wonderfully sticky amaretti cookie butter. It worked its magic and sent me home smiling.

I can't wait to go back. If I can squish my way in.

Angie's Pizza, 1002 W. 11th Street. Hours 5 p.m.–10 p.m, Monday—Saturday. Reservations: https://www.opentable.com/r/angies-pizza-houston?ref=1068. Be warned: it's tricky.