Pizza is a fundamentally simple dish: just dough, sauce and toppings baked in an oven. In the right hands, however, the formula yields more than the sum of its parts. At The Pizza Bar on 38th, chef Daniele Cason elevates the humble dish — which started out as street food in Naples — to new heights of refinement.

Located inside the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo hotel, Pizza Bar takes a fine-dining approach inspired by high-end sushi and kaiseki (Japanese multicourse haute cuisine), both of which express the changing of the seasons through the careful selection of fresh ingredients. This attention to detail shows: This year, for the second year running, the eight-seat restaurant received Tre Spicchi (“three slices”) in Italian food and wine magazine Gambero Rosso’s guide to pizza specialists around the world — its highest accolade.

“I’d always been interested in pizza, but I wanted to give guests the kind of experience they’d find at a sushi bar, where the chef serves each item directly,” Cason says.