The loveably unpolished Bambino’s Pizza & Deli

It was the heart-shaped pizza that brought me to Paradise Valley, a southeastern San Diego neighborhood roughly at the halfway point between National City and Spring Valley. Aside from single-family homes and apartment complexes, there isn’t much to see. I spot a few taco shops, a couple of auto detailers, and a massage parlor, tucked just behind the small pizzeria.

There’s not much to look at inside Bambino’s Pizza & Deli, either. Outside the kitchen it’s barely a couple hundred square feet, mostly taken up by counter space and drink coolers. The walls are plastered with food photos, depicting items off the Bambino’s menu. I see hot sandwiches, pasta dishes, calzones, and chicken wings. And despite a misspelled, “pizzaria,” there are plenty of pizzas pictured on the wall, too. They range in size, up to a giant, 28-inch pie.

There are mostly teens operating the shop this Friday evening, and they’re clearly related: it’s a family enterprise. Though not quite a family of restaurants anymore. The original owner still operates Bambino’s Pizza & Deli 2, in a similarly tucked away part of Chula Vista, but he sold this location, as well as Bambino’s Pizza & Deli 3, near highway 94 in Encanto (but they don’t talk about Bambino, no no no). Also a Giant Bambino’s Pizza, which serves mostly the same menu in Lakeside (Giant Bambino’s II, in La Mesa, closed last year).

All the shops are like this one: small, sparsely decorated, hole-in-the-wall pizza counters. Low investment businesses able to produce a wide breadth of menu items using similar ingredients. And all operate in relatively low-profile locations. However, though they operate independently these days, they do all still have one important thing in common: each will bake you a heart-shaped pizza, if you ask.

A one-topping, 14-inch rendition of the heart-shaped pie goes for 10 or 12 dollars, depending which location you order from. And the Paradise Valley location will assemble one of every size, up to that 28-inch giant pizza ($37 for a heart shape).

When it comes to most of the items I tried from this location, they’re about as good as you’d expect from a low-budget pizza counter in a fringe neighborhood — that is, they’re not too memorable. The torpedo sandwich ($13) stacks precious few Italian deli meats with provolone cheese, lettuce, and tomato. The meatball sub ($12) tastes okay, but doesn’t look much like its photo in the shop, with smaller and fewer meatballs yielding a flatter sandwich. The buffalo chicken wings (five wings for $8) do what buffalo chicken wings do.

But as my hungry family would soon discover, the pizza has more to offer than novelty shape. It’s thinner than deep dish yet thicker than New York pie. It’s similar to a pan-pizza or Detroit style, in that it’s got an almost focaccia-like crust, crispy around the edges but moist and chewy beneath the toppings.

We all enjoyed it more than expected, and none more than the kids, who insist that I order all our pizzas from Bambino’s from now on. And that they should all be giant. I’m sure they’ll mostly be round, but without a doubt, that heart-shaped pizza will be in play for Valentine’s Day.