Delmarva Pizza, a cheerful shopping-center storefront restaurant, has a lot going for it, including good food. That's why the place is always humming with activity.

The decor is about what you'd expect: booths and tables, plastic plants, pleasant lights, and arches and half-walls separating the kitchen from the dining room and the two dining rooms from each other. Pretty jars full of mixed pastas alternate with bottles of gourmet oils lined along the ledges, giving diners a preview of what's to come.

When it comes to the food, Delmar Pizza serves up a wide range of stuff from food-service pedestrian appetizers (jalapeno poppers, onion rings, mozzarella sticks), to signature pizzas, to rather impressive homemade desserts such as Napoleons with Bavarian cream, baklava, and strawberry cake with deli sandwiches, oven-baked meat and pasta dishes, pan-sauteed chicken entrees, and traditional pasta specials.

With so much to choose from, we passed on the appetizers, other than the soup-of-the-day. Our cup of corn chowder was piping-hot, thick, and sweet-ish with a subtle black-pepper bite.

Our entrees came with side salads and garlic bread. Both were fresh enough though just OK. The Greek dressing was sweet without the expected feta, but enjoyable; the soy ginger vinaigrette dressing was more "light" than expected and either hadn't been mixed well enough (too much oil, not enough vinegar and flavorings), or was one of those yuky low-fat concoctions. (Too bad "low-fat" or "no-fat" uttered in the same breath with "salad dressing" always means gummy and bland.)

Of our entrees, the Baked Ziti with meat sauce was the star of the evening. All too often pasta floats in a watery or bland tomato-based sauce, but this ziti was positively robust. The meat sauce was thick and chewy with wonderful flavors of full-bodied tomatoes and Italian sausage. Highly recommended.

The Clam Pizza is offered with your choice of red or white clam sauce. Unfortunately the kitchen couldn't or wouldn't do a half-and-half, so we opted for the red. This was pretty good - the crust was firm and freshly made, and the whole thing was long on flavor if short on clams. Some of the other signature pizzas sound excellent: Artichoke Pizza (with black olives, diced tomatoes and fresh mushrooms); Marengo Pizza (sauteed chicken in a pink vodka sauce with onions, fresh mushrooms and tomatoes); Pizza Provencal (with shrimp, broccoli, olive oil and minced garlic --t no tomato sauce); even Caesar/Salad Pizza, Barbecue Chicken Pizza, and Mexican Pizza.

The Eggplant Parmigiana, served with spaghetti on the side, was quite good too. Breaded, tender eggplant slices were baked with marinara sauce, and topped with melted cheese. The spaghetti on the side had pleasant oregano overtones.

One of the munchkins in our party ordered the Golden Chicken Nuggets with French Fries for $3.25. Let me tell you, this was a huge serving probably the equivalent of two boneless chicken breasts and this healthy, happy eater couldn't finish it all. The chicken was extraordinarily tender, the dipping sauce was pronounced "perfect," and the French fries were good too.

For dessert we pigged out. The Napoleon, we decided, sounded irresistible (and we were right). The irony of this thing is that it's so eminently gobbleable — yet its construction, with crisp flake pastries layered with squishy Bavarian cream and topped with ever-so-potentially-messy confectioner's sugar, requires careful, well-mannered eating with a knife and fork. (Bavarian cream, by the way, has a custard-like base of cooked eggs, sugar, and vanilla with whipped cream and perhaps unflavored gelatin folded in.)

We also sampled the strawberry cake, a yellow layer cake with rich fresh strawberry glaze in between. And the triple-layer chocolate cake also lived up to its luscious looks.

For a reasonably priced, excellent dinner sure to please palates of all ages, check out Delmar Pizza. We'll bet you'll go back.