Speaking personally, I've had enough run-ins with bad Chicago-style pizza to give up on it -- it tends to be a gloppy soup of crap cheese and over-sweet sauce, fit only for a Hefty sack. Even the stuff in Chicago proper can seem overpriced and overhyped. But when local chowhounds began whispering sweet nothings about Di Noko's Pizzeria, it seemed odd enough to check out.

Quality deep dish pizza: confirmed.

Di Noko's 12-inch deep dish ($13, plus $2 per topping) has a strong point of view. The sauce is balanced, not oversweet, and it's defined by chunks of tomato married to a pleasantly spiced flavor. The sub-sauce cheese layer is substantial but not unpleasantly gooey, and like all of Di Noko's cheese, it has a real dairy kick that makes it a joy to eat. In a nutshell: Di Noko's deep dish is the kind of pizza that will turn skeptics into converts. The only minor knock is that it takes 45 minutes to make, but that's the nature of the beast.

And while the whole pie works well, the cheese is the lynchpin. Owner Rich Moore, who bought Pizza Joe's in July of 2010 and turned it into Di Noko's in November of that same year, credits the team at Burnett Dairy Cooperative in Alpha, Wis.

The overall package prompts a query: Why deep dish pizza ... in Minneapolis?

"I was inspired by the pizza that I used to love getting over at My Pie," said Moore, referring to the pizza place that used to coexist with the Edina location of the Original Pancake House.

Di Noko's thin crust ($9 plus $2 a topping for a 12-inch, or $11 plus $3 a topping for a 14-incher) is also a pleasure to eat and far less of a commitment. The crust on the thin variety is simple and Midwestern -- no fancy carbon-kissing, and mostly chewy rather than being a complicated chewy-crispy hybrid. But the sauce is still balanced (although far less chunky than that of the deep dish) and it's still topped by that same Burnett Dairy cheese. Add toppings with some meaty depth and acid -- we tried pineapple and Canadian bacon -- and you've got a tasty supper on your hands.

Although located in the Nokomis area of Minneapolis, Di Noko's willingness to drive pie wherever it's needed (Uptown, downtown, south Minneapolis) could be the secret weapon that turns them into a local pizza superpower -- or it may just run their delivery guy completely ragged. Time will tell. In the meantime, this writer, a Longfellow resident, has a new favorite neighborhood place to order pizza from. It just happens to be in a different neighborhood.

The Churn

A six-course meal featuring house-cured ingredients, music by the Dreamland Faces, and tastings of six different house-made vins maison (a drink made "from the magical combination of fruit, wine leaves, twigs, sugar and booze") promise to make an upcoming dinner at the Craftsman very special indeed. (5 p.m. Mon. $65 per person.)

• The Heavy Table team writes about food and drink in the Upper Midwest five days a week, twice a day, at www.heavytable.com.