I had pizza on the brain, but not in my belly, after the troubled recent inaugural edition of the Fort Lauderdale Pizza Festival. Like other attendees who felt short-sliced, I wound up hankering and hunting for cheesy goodness in the aftermath. Such is the power of pizza. It is America’s ultimate communal comfort food, the stuff of teen sleepovers, college cram sessions and election night newsrooms. When done right, it is ephemeral. When done wrong, you just shrug your shoulders and still end up eating a slice or two, particularly when it’s 2 a.m. and last call has passed.

Fortunately Sicilian Oven does pizza right. It also does many other Italian-American and Sicilian favorites right, including meatballs, rice balls, marinated chicken wings, fried calamari and a variety of eggplant dishes. I had heard many good things about Sicilian Oven, a growing regional chain, but had never been to one until last weekend, when I visited the fifth and latest outpost at The Fountains shops in Plantation, which opened last year.