Coal Fire's Nduja Pizza - Chicago

Feeling soporific after a daylong turkey binge? Make a beeline to Grand Avenue.

There, you'll find a 16-inch circle of taste-bud resuscitation: Coal Fire's nduja pizza, made with sausage from Publican Quality Meats.

The base is tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil, a classic margherita. But a few pucks of PQM's version of the soft, spicy, Calabrian-style pork sausage have a transformative effect. After a minute and a half in the Neapolitan oven's blistering heat, the oleaginous sausage oozes savory red-gold flavor across the top of the pie ($17).

Coal Fire's Dave Bonomi credits writer Steve Dolinsky and one of Publican's owners, Donnie Madia, for the idea. In a September story, Dolinsky suggested that the restaurant source from the butcher shop. Bonomi mentioned it to Madia, who soon arrived with nduja in hand.

PQM's dark, marbled coppa (whole cured pork shoulder) also graces a pizza ($19), the time in the oven rendering it silky. Now that we've tried it, it's ruined us for plain old prosciutto.

There are more carnivore-pleasing pizzas in the works using PQM's lonza (cured pork loin) and Butcher & Larder's mortadella, arriving next week.

Coal Fire, 1321 W. Grand Ave.; 312-226-2625 or coalfirechicago.com