Each Tuesday The Register reviews an area restaurant, with an emphasis on establishments where a couple can dine for $30 or less. Reader suggestions are welcomed.

The decor at Firehouse Pizza Kitchen, a new family-owned restaurant on Jefferson Street, is heavy on the fire art.

Original paintings of firefighters heroically fighting structure fires amid smoke and flames hang over the dining area. By the TV, there’s a large canvas of a forest conflagration.

The paintings capture real fires, owner Ron Prioste, a retired firefighter, told a customer the other night. They were done by a buddy who works in Menlo Park. In a similar vein, Prioste claims to make real pizzas.

Firehouse Pizza Kitchen is a clean, tidy place behind the Jefferson Street car wash. The dining area, which seats two dozen, is dominated by the fire paintings, a large Pepsi cold box and view of a TV, which this night was showing a football bowl game.

Prioste, a lanky guy, was spinning pizza dough by hand, while several teenage assistants waited on customers and made salads.

The menu features the “Firehouse Pizza Kitchen Promise,” which boils down to: We make it fresh. We make it by hand. You can taste the quality.

Firehouse offers 16 specialty pizzas, a half dozen submarine sandwiches, a line-up of salads, calzones filled with ingredients of your choosing and a few extras such as garlic bread and chicken wings.

Several pizza choices, such as the “Firehouse 3 Alarm,” with ham, pepperoni, sausage and linguica with marinated jalapenos, play with the firehouse theme. The “Gone Fishin” features smoked salmon and sour cream, the “Popeye” spinach and ricotta.

Customers can craft a pizza anyway they want or rely on one of the restaurant’s specialties, including the “Clam Digger” with, what else, clams, or the Hawaiian with ham and pineapple. There are vegetarian and “healthy choice” pizza options.

We chose the Firehouse BBQ, which promised chunks of barbecued chicken with red onion, cilantro, pesto and fresh tomatoes. The 12-inch medium, serving two to three, was $14.95.

The very biggest, 18-inch family-size signature pizzas, serving five to six, are $24.95. The basic 7-inch individual pizza is $4.99.

Because the Firehouse menu emphasizes a creative offering of salads, we ordered two smalls at $5.95 each: a Chinese chicken and an Italian with bleu cheese and toasted almonds.

I had wanted the Mandarin, with baby spinach, mandarin oranges and a housemade Champagne dressing, but they were out.

While the owner made our pizza, the rest of his team worked on the salads, which appeared pronto. The serving size of both was extremely generous. The romaine lettuce was cold and crisp.

My companion liked her Italian salad. It was loaded with bleu cheese and toasted almonds, although the slivers could have been crisper. The dressing had plenty of snap.

My Chinese salad featured the same romaine, but I couldn’t find the baby greens promised on the menu. It was of small consequence. The salad was loaded with red onion, bell pepper and white chicken pieces, with a sprinkling of noodles. More noodles would have given the salad more of the expected crunch.

Both salads tasted fresh and hand-crafted. They had integrity.

It didn’t take long for the pizza to arrive. The server put it on a wire pedestal, giving it pride of place. We had been offered an extra sprinkling of asiago on top.

Chunks of white chicken coated in a dark barbecue sauce floated in swirls of bubbly cheese and green pesto, turning the pizza into a surreal painting of sorts.

While Firehouse offers both thin and thick crust, we’d ordered regular, which came nicely browned on the bottom and thus just barely able to handle the thick topping.

With the support of two hands, we were  able to transfer pizza from plate to mouth, where it tasted delicious.

I thought having barbecued chicken on a pizza was a stroke of genius. Can’t get enough BBQ in my book. My companion wasn’t as enthusiastic. She didn’t think BBQ and pizza should mix.

We quibbled about nothing else. The cilantro added a brilliant flavor note as did the swirls of pesto. The sauce was uncomplicated, which let the other flavors shine through.

In short, Firehouse delivered on its promise of fresh and handmade. This place is a welcome addition to the local pizza scene.

Firehouse Pizza Kitchen is located at 3070 Jefferson St., just north of Lincoln Avenue, in a center where parking can be tight, so it offers curbside service. When a customer calls from a cell phone, an employee will carry their pizza out to them.

Lunch is from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. daily. Dinners are from 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Readers with tips about interesting places to eat should e-mail diningout-@napanews.com