When does a circle become a triangle? When you order a slice of pizza. Only that’s not true at I Fratelli—or, for that matter, at Campisi’s, another Dallas pizza tradition. (We like our Italian food rectangular in Dallas. Not sure why.) These are oblong creatures, and when you order a “slice”—well, that’s more like ordering a small, square personal pizza. It’s big.

Pizza love is—like romantic love—extremely idiosyncratic and irrational. We happen to like the thinnish (but not super-thin) crisp-crust in which I Fratelli specializes, a format that holds a variety of ingredients without burying them in dough. And despite the wait (when we get carry-out and don’t order ahead, it seems to take forever), it’s worth it for the range of good toppings.

We might not mind the wait so much if the Uptown environs didn’t have all the charm of a check-cashing kiosk in the ’hood. But no one ever said good pizza had to come on white and red checkered tablecloths with runnels of wax drooling down a Chianti bottle. Good thing, that.