There’s just something about the Brick Oven Restaurant on 35th that we love to pieces. It’s tiny and comfortable; a rarity as pizza is finally starting make the food scene in Austin. The newer places are never short on hipness and ambitiously hot wood-fired ovens (this one burns a bit cooler), but sometimes we get nostalgic for the hole-in-the-wall feel. Happily, we don’t have to sacrifice too terribly at this Brick Oven, which is unrelated (yet confusingly similar) to the other three Brick Ovens out there. While there is a certain downmarket romanticism here—warm lighting, cheap wine by the bottle, an informal intimacy—the pizza is wonderfully thin (not Neapolitan, but closer to it than, say Gatti’s) with a soot-stained seared crust, and there’s a gluten-free version, as well. Spinach is a good topping, although more standard options like pepperoni seem ill-paired with pizza in this style.

There’s also an array of unimaginative Italian-American mains like cheesy baked lasagne, spaghetti and meatballs, and so on—their comfort-foodiness can hit the spot on a certain night, but if you’re looking for good Italian dishes, you should look elsewhere. We know the pickin’s in that area are slim, but it’s a matter of time before there are several great options, and we once again find ourselves back here for a little old-school red-sauce factor. It’s a balancing act.