What I did on my spring staycation was this: I ate pizza.

That may not sound exciting, but I considered it a thrill. Pizza hot from the oven, wolfed down before it has a chance to cool, is the food experience I missed most acutely over my quarantine year. More than sushi, even; or a riotous fajita-and-margarita feed with friends. Take-out pizza just isn’t the same.

So I bracketed my quiet week of gardening, reading and coddling newborn kittens with two pizza forays.

The first took me to the perennially underrated Pizzeria Solario, a stylish Neapolitan-style joint between Greenway Plaza and River Oaks. The second brought me to Tiny Champions, the new casual offshoot from the brain trust at EaDo’s favorite bistro, Nancy’s Hustle.

Readers, I scored. I can’t say I sated myself — where pizza is concerned, that will never happen — but I made up for lost pizza-eating time and consoled myself, somewhat, for the loss of my beloved Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca, the Marco Wiles classic that closed for good last summer.

At Pizzeria Solario, the sight of a front door flung wide to a two-story-high dining room lured me in to sit at the bar, right next to the pizza oven — the first time I had felt comfortable doing so in more than a year.

I could feel the spring breeze at my back and the radiant warmth of the wood fire from my right. Bursts of laughter came from the big family group dining out on Solario’s handsome terrace. It felt far away from my window table in my East End kitchen.

And my favorite pizza, the Appolonia, did not let me down. I always preferred the white pies here, and this one used fontina, the creamy Alpine cheese, to cradle thin tiles of the spicy dry salami called soppressata. Translucent basil leaves rode on top, cracked black pepper and soft confited garlic cloves livened things up, and a runny-yolked egg splooshed forth to meld everything together.

The fontina was a change from the more austere Parmesan treatment of old, but it worked. And the crust was still glorious: stretchy and poufed of crown, desirably scorchy from a final pass through the superheated temps at the top of the domed pizza oven, the bottom thin and crisp and sooty.

I felt transported to my own weird version of pizza heaven, which is what I’d come for.

I drank a decent glass of Gavi from an Italian-oriented wine list that had devolved a bit over the years. I decided the simple house green salad was one of Houston’s better bargains, and, on a lark, made a dent in an enormous dish of fire-roasted olives mined with orange rind, flecks of Calabrian chile and supersoft cloves of caramelized garlic.

In the old days, this splendid dish involved green olives as well as the sultrier reddish-black variety. Maybe they had run out? Yet I discovered I didn’t care. I ate an improbable number and took the rest home for midnight snacks. Many midnight snacks.

Five days later, I was crunching over the vast gravel patio in back of Tiny Champions, which — let’s just get this over with, OK?— is named for the microbes that cause fermentation in the pizza crusts and wines (beers, too!) that are front and center here.

It was only 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening, but all of the tables out under the light strings and market umbrellas were already spoken for. When I had booked online earlier in the day, there were just a few indoor slots left very early and very late. Tiny Champions is already wildly popular, and virtually everything I sampled demonstrated why.

Ordering pizza strewn with chopped kale and chard felt like throwing down a gauntlet, but what a pie it turned out to be. Delicate ricotta cream and pully mozzarella softened those darkly earthy greens, and thin shards of faintly sweet pickled garlic brightened up the flavors. Even a wood-fire snob like me had to admit the super-bronzed crust, product of careful fermentation and an electric deck oven, was spectacular.

It crackled or it stretched in all the right places. Its underside acted as if it had never heard of the concept “soggy.” Eating it (well, OK, scarfing it) felt like the best kind of exercise.

When Tiny Champions opened back in December, I took home a speck pizza with pineapple and jalapeños, another dare-ya proposition in my pizza universe. It was great from Bite 1, consumed right there in my car outside the white frame corner store that houses the restaurant.

Later, I wondered if I had gotten lucky, and how the quality would hold up at volume.

Four months later, the answer seems to be, “fine, thank you very much.” The combination of big talents is what gives this young restaurant its edge. Put Nancy’s Hustle chef Jason Vaughan together with pastry and sourdough bread whiz Julia Doran, shake together with the wine and beverage savvy of Sean Jensen, and you’ve got a scintillating cocktail.

The green salads and pastas and unusual small plates Vaughan does so well are present and accounted for. Jensen’s offbeat wine smarts make the list, superintended by the savvy Bridget Paliwoda, a day in the park. Doran’s house-made gelati and sorbets are a kick. And an eager young staff seems bent on giving guests a good time.

You’d better believe I’ll have more to say about all of that in due course. Under the big fat moon that rose out of the east that night, however, it felt like I really was on vacation.

alison.cook@chron.com