People who own fancy restaurants are strange in a lot of ways. It sometimes emerges, for example, that what they really wanted all along was to own a downscale restaurant. Who would have thought that an elite chef like Jasper White always wanted a lobster shack? Here we have Peter and Colleen McCarthy, who own a fancy Somerville restaurant called Evoo, and it turns out that their real fantasy was the 10-inch pizzas sold in Quincy barrooms.

Well, and maybe a few fancy salads. And recently, a few fancy desserts. And the toppings can get a little gentrified. And not a lot of bars have blackboard-special pizzas. Za, in Arlington, also has a lot of toppings, so the permutations run into high numbers. On your basic 10-inch shell with tomato and cheese ($6), for 50 cents you can add onion, garlic, green pepper, or mushrooms. But for a dollar, you can get pepperoni, Black Forest ham, homemade sausage, roasted garlic, " Pete’s pickled peppers, " homemade bread ’n’ butter jalapeños, extra cheese, anchovies, apple-wood-smoked bacon, caramelized onion, or kalamata olives.

But first, there are fancy salads. The obvious one is crisp iceberg lettuce ($6), a whole wedge as at Cambridge 1, but not so elegantly dressed; it’s glopped up with buttermilk dressing, blue cheese, smoked bacon, grated carrots, sliced red onion, and even a few bits of tomato. The overall effect is pleasantly like a club sandwich. Packer’s Farm beet salad ($7) is one of those cylindrical salads, all red beets, glued together with goat cheese and studded with morsels of orange, which add to the sweet impression without standing out. It’s very good, and the accompanying salad of pea tendrils would have been special, too, if dressed.

Haas-avocado salad ($8), a special, was the same shape, with vaguely Mexican touches: a little cilantro, cheese, and tomato. Arugula salad ($7) included a brilliant idea: using sliced strawberries as well as cheese and nuts to moderate the spicy greens.

Moving up to those barroom pies, they have thin, crisp crusts, with a flavor more like cracker bread or biscuits than flatbread pizza. Ten inches is a full dinner plate, cut into eight wedges for easy handling and sharing. I found them a little sweet, but in any case they tend to be overwhelmed by the toppings, which can be superb. On the duck-breast-and-apricot pizza ($11), the cured and smoked breast reads like salty ham against the odd slice of apricot, which mostly melts into cheese (allegedly some Gorgonzola), visible scallions, and a strong underlying onion flavor, perhaps those caramelized onions. It’s excellent pizza.

My guests assembled a sort of regular pizza with fresh tomatoes and roasted garlic ($8), and one with chicken, broccoli, and extra cheese ($9). The latter worked for the odd reason that broiled chicken chunks and broccoli florets end up with the same, slightly rubbery texture. The former was very, very good, especially if one took a moment to mash the cloves of roasted garlic and spread them around.

The wine list runs to Italian reds and California whites, reminding me of the late Neil McGhee’s dictum that it’s " red wine with cheeseburgers, white wine with spaghetti and clam sauce. " There’s also a long list of beers and a couple of blackboard specials on microbrews. However, the drink of choice may well be iced tea ($1.75), as it’s brewed and refilled for free. Be warned, however, that the tea is Earl Grey. I don’t like Earl Grey as a hot tea, but it does have an intriguing bite as iced tea. Sodas ($1.75) are also " bottomless, " but our night the soda machine was turning them out without much carbonation. That will be fixed as soon as this review appears, but it shows a slight lack of attention, surprising in such a well-designed restaurant with a roving manager. This is never allowed to happen at Legal Sea Foods, and probably not even at Cambridge 1.

Za opened without desserts, but it was quickly realized that people, especially families with children, wanted them. Desserts are up to three now, and none is entirely suitable for most kids, but they are good. Chocolate cheesecake ($6) is the only one you might try on a kid, but it has a sophisticated overtone of coffee, and comes off somewhere between an adult brownie and cheesecake.

Cashew-chocolate-caramel pie ($6) is too busy for kids. It’s mostly like pecan pie, but with cashews and chocolate chips among the caramel, too many things are touching each other. Adults will inhale it, although the crust is more like the pizza crust than a flaky pie crust. My favorite of the desserts was goat-cheese panna cotta ($6). It’s pudding, but with a sour flavor like Greek yogurt that no American child will accept, and just a few strawberries to cut the sourness. I love desserts like this, and they do go well after too much pizza, which one tends to eat here.

The room has about 20 tables and booths, plus a quarry-tile floor, walls of wood in pale gray-greens, brick-red booths, and a painted tin ceiling. That’s a bit loud, but hey, it’s pizza. The walls have one giant blackboard with the specials, so you may have to get up to read it. There’s also an art exhibit, recently of photos too small for the room.

Service is good if not exceptionally swift. Servers compensate for the kitchen’s lags by refilling tea and sodas. This is also one of the new restaurants that offer you a drink before you sit down. I don’t know how the liquor authorities will view this practice, but I find it civil. The atmosphere comes from a mix of people: family groups early, and later a young crowd, casual but willing to spend a little for table service.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.