Of all the things you know, you know this: it’s hard to improve upon a bar. Sure, you can quibble about the details, but bar + stools + drinks is a tried-and-true formula.

Of course, if they put a wood-burning pizza oven behind a bar...

Say hello to La Forchetta, the new pizza bar from your old friend chef Roberto Donna of Galileo fame, now open in Upper Northwest.

All steel and poured concrete, this is like an industrial pizza playground. Well, industrial with splashes of bright orange and an 11-foot-tall take on the Mona Lisa.

Now, you could take up a spot at the counter overlooking the open kitchen and get to work on the parmesan cheese pudding and three kinds of housemade sausage.

But most likely, you’ll be near here some spring afternoon when the pizza craving hits. And you’ll head directly to the bar. On one side, a suspended iron rack for 500 bottles of wine, and a drink list devised by local cocktail guru and big-band leader Eric Felten. On the other: your pizzaiolo, madly shoveling wood into the tiled oven and pulling out Neapolitan pies with fennel, grey mullet roe and mortadella.

Also: lasagna for one, fired in cast iron, and a Nutella-and-banana calzone for dessert.

Ask nicely, and they’ll warm up your jacket in there, too.