Deck ovens are magnificent beasts. The broad steel boxes turn out some of the best pizza in the country, from New York to Chicago to anywhere there’s a will to make pizza with a thin, toasted crust and a fat, chewy collar. Julian’s Italian Pizzeria & Kitchen is faithful to the church of the deck oven, and the pies coming from those ovens at the Alamo Heights location will strike familiar chords with fans of big city walkup pizza joints.

The steadfast combination of Italian sausage, roasted red pepper and onions — they call it Gesing’s Favorite — hit the right notes of cheesy, herbal, sweet and sharp on a foundation that held its shape from the lift to the fold, the fold being key to a slice that big. We’ll talk more about pizza, but Julian’s has cultivated an identity beyond pizza since it opened on West Avenue in 2006, then expanded to the Sunset Ridge center in Alamo Heights in 2016. The deck ovens form the heart of that larger identity, because they’re the jumping-off point for baked lasagna and stromboli and fresh bread for an Italian sub, and for the melted crowns of cheese over meatballs and rigatoni and eggplant Parmesan.