Dinette inspires in me a feeling of particular joy and for a long time I struggled to understand what it is that I loved so much about this restaurant.

It is in many ways a restaurant in miniature. It seats only 36. The wine list is limited to 20 bottles. The menu? About eight starters, eight pizzas and two or three desserts. After dinner you can have espresso. No drip coffee, no americanos, no cappucinos. Just espresso.

The menu is constrained by the small size of the restaurant and the priorities of chef/owner Sonja Finn, who, to a large extent, plays a substantial role in preparing everything on the menu. She has a couple of line cooks and a dishwasher, but Finn is executive chef, general manager, wine director, prep cook and to some extent forager. It is, perhaps, this last role that most influences the style of the restaurant and the reason for her success.

Pizzas are at least nominally the restaurant's raison d'etre. And Finn's pizzas are delicious and consistent. She chose a brick-lined gas-fired oven with a two-inch stone for Dinette, in large part because it is more reliable than a wood-burning oven, which takes years of training to master. Her crusts are thin with good flavor; they have a nice chewiness and excellent edges.

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Dinette

3 stars = Excellent
Ratings explained

5996 Penn Circle South
Eastside
East Liberty
412-362-0202

• Hours: Tuesdays-Thursdays 5-10 p.m.; Fridays-Saturdays 5-11 p.m.; closed Sundays and Mondays.
• Basics: Salads, soups, and more; seasonally driven, neapolitan-style pizzas; frequently changing menu and wine list; emphasis on local ingredients and sustainable practices.
• Recommended dishes: Salumi, fritto misto, cranberry beans and tuna, beef carpaccio, mussels, heirloom romaine lettuces with Green Goddess dressing, cauliflower soup; Pizzas: prosciutto and arugula, brussels sprouts and butternut squash, grilled eggplant and oil-cured olives, oyster mushrooms and shiitakes; chocolate pot de creme, rice pudding, sour cherry cake.
• Prices: Starters, $3-$12; pizzas, $13-$16; desserts, $6; wines by the glass start at $7, by the bottle, $28.
• Summary: Wheelchair accessible; park in any Eastside lot; credit cards accepted; no reservations; corkage, $20.
• Noise level: Low to medium-loud.

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Even Finn's simplest pizza -- ricotta, basil, mozzarella and tomato -- is mouth-watering, the kind of pizza that could equally please a picky child and an omnivorous gourmand. But for the most part, her pizzas are simply a canvas on which she showcases wonderful combinations of seasonal ingredients with bold, yet spectacularly well-balanced flavors.

She favors bitter greens balanced by an element of sweetness and another of saltiness, such as a pizza of brussels sprouts, butternut squash, a mild chevre and lardons on a thin base of mozzarella ($15). This pizza in particular is as appealing to the eye as it is to the mouth, dots of orange and red against threads of bright green on a white background.

One of the purest combinations was a layer of mozzarella topped with artfully arranged anchovies, capers and slivers of serrano chiles, which offset the brininess without concealing it -- an anchovy lover's dream.

Finn doesn't fight ingredients; she simply works with them to bring out the best of their flavors. So a pizza with oyster mushrooms and shiitakes is deliriously earthy, pushed just far enough by the subtle aromas of truffled pecorino. I can't imagine a better companion for a fine burgundy.

Finn spends about an hour and a half each day tracking down ingredients, whether from Penn's Corner, the Strip District, the East End Food Co-op or even Whole Foods where she can sometimes find regionally available ingredients that she wouldn't have access to elsewhere. Sustainability is one of the restaurant's guiding principles and the food will be as local as Finn can make it, given the constraints of the seasons.

Finn demonstrates a respect for ingredients, especially for produce, that is rare to see outside of Northern California (Finn worked at the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco before taking over the kitchen at The Rotunda, also in San Francisco). That's why to call this restaurant a pizzeria is to grossly oversimplify what she is doing.

One could easily skip pizza altogether and put together a few courses of starters. Rugged heirloom romaine lettuce is a sturdy, crunchy base for that all-but-forgotten classic Green Goddess dressing, an amazing mayonnaise-based concoction of anchovies, chives, chervil, tarragon and lemon juice. Perfectly ripe, luscious avocado slices add a buttery richness cut by a handful of thin, spicy radish slices.

Steamed mussels commingled with thickly sliced onions in a heady tomato-saffron bath ($9). A well-executed fritto misto ($8) is a deliciously Spanish combination of fried cauliflower, chickpeas, onions and lemons which quickly become an excuse to eat the harrisa aioli that I would happily eat by itself with a spoon. .....

A beef carpaccio ($11) rendered all previous beef carpaccios imperfect. Tasting meatier than raw beef has any right to, perhaps because Finn uses the top round rather than the filet, its flavors were enhanced by the surprising accompaniment of roasted baby beets dressed in a sherry-shallot vinaigrette. I suspect that the minimal fat added by small touches of horseradish cream helped capture and enhance that flavor further.

A true winter salad made use of two very under-appreciated ingredients -- cranberry beans and olive-oil packed tuna, basically a poor-man's tuna confit. Finn is a genius with vinegar and other acids, and here she uses lemon zest and a champagne vinaigrette to brilliant effect.

Desserts ($6) are simple and satisfying; an insanely rich chocolate pot de creme topped with a dollop of rich whipped cream, an excellent arborio-rice pudding that might be topped with poached pear one day and blueberries and lemon zest the next, and a sour cherry sponge cake that Finn grew up eating were equally splendid ways to end a meal.

Dinette is a member of the new breed of casual fine dining restaurants that earn their "fine" distinction through quality and consistency, rather than through the apparent complexity of the food. And there is a decided emphasis on "casual," though it's the kind of casual that looks as good with a suit as a pair of jeans.

The orange plastic chairs? Amazingly comfortable. The room that is practically all windows? Nice and warm without a discernible draft. The service? Friendly, knowledgeable and efficient, as comfortable with a celebratory dinner as they are with children making swords of the long crunchy breadsticks.

Some people seem to find the restaurant a little expensive, an estimation I attribute partly to the fact that most people don't leave with leftovers. And it's true that those with large appetites will probably need to have an appetizer, a pizza and a dessert, which will run approximately $35-$40 with tax and tip. But plenty of people will find the servings more than adequate. It's also important to note that Dinette does not use a heinous wine markup to subsidize food costs.

This wine list deserves some special words. It's short, but well chosen, updated online with vintage dates included. I especially enjoyed the Domaine Mission La Caminade, Cahors France 2006 ($8/$32) and the Nero D'Avola Rose Regaleali, Sicilia 2006 ($8/$32). The list changes frequently so that there's always something new to try, and markups are some of the most reasonable in Pittsburgh, with almost every bottle seemingly priced at around 200 percent retail and many marked up even less.

Oh, and about that espresso? Well, on two separate occasions under different circumstances it was hands down the best espresso I've had at a restaurant in Pittsburgh (the beans are from La Prima).

If Dinette makes me this happy in the winter, I can only dream of the magic Finn will work in July. Right now, with many months of winter still ahead of us, I look forward to settling in for the long haul.