Remember when brick-oven pizza was unusual in area restaurants? Now even wood-fired pizza, once rare and wondrous as an albino buck, has become common as cows in today's pizza marketplace. Not coal-fired pizza, though. Made in an oven heated to 1,000 degrees or more by blazing anthracite, it has been a fixture in New York City and East Coast coal country for a century, but hadn't arrived in these parts until Gallo Coal Fire Kitchen opened in Lewiston.

The intense heat and a rapid cooking session can provide a crisp exterior with an ethereal, pillowy interior, with extra flavor from the almost-scorching. That's what I found the last time I had coal-fired pizza, at Lombardi's in Nolita. So when it was time to try Gallo's pies, I was in search of something special.