Just when wood-fired pizzas and gourmet pastas began blossoming on the local culinary scene in the early ’90s, a contemporary-style restaurant adding fodder to the trend opened its doors at the nonexclusive corner of Sports Arena and W. Point Loma Boulevard. Nearly 12 years later, Embers Grille prevails with new, gay-friendly ownership and the same colorful fare that put smoked Gouda and barbecue chicken on top of pizzas.

Cesar Ortega purchased the restaurant a few years ago to the plea of longtime customers insisting he keep the menu intact. “Why fix something that doesn’t need fixing?” he recalls thinking. So he retained all of the recipes established by the former owner – largely California and Southwest-style fare – and tapped into the GLBT community to diversify his staff.

Embers might feel like a franchise to some. But it isn’t. The structure is similar in size to a Denny’s and sits within the parking lot of an everyday-looking strip plaza. An open kitchen echoes the original design of Sammy’s Woodfire Pizza. And the spacious dining room, adorned by potted floor plants and sandy colored walls, appears a little corporate shackled at quick glance.

Arriving with voracious appetites for lunch, my dining companion and I settled in with a basket of complimentary rosemary focaccia that we remembered devouring after it was served to us on our last visit several years ago. The salads, which come in nimble varieties, are still big no matter what size you order. The Texas Grille with smoky Ranch dressing, for instance, proved an excellent choice. It’s served with a fiesta of ingredients that include corn, walnuts, red tortilla chips and grilled Cajun chicken. Lots of crunch and zippy flavors surge forth from this generous bowl of greens.

Embers’ pizza list is deliciously lengthy. Each 10-inch pie yields six slices. The Wild Mushroom offers an earthy bouquet of crimini and shiitake mushrooms mingled with shallot butter, mozzarella and ribbons of fresh basil. And the Thai Chicken, which broke all the rules of pizza-making a decade ago, is like eating your favorite chicken stir-fry held down on a thin, crackery crust by mozzarella and fontina cheeses. The sweet and spicy flavors struck a pleasant balance.

From the pasta category, the reasonably spicy Margaritaville is a shining example of nouveau Southwestern cuisine. The tri-colored fettuccini takes on a fair saturation of creamy tequila-lime sauce kicked up with cayenne pepper, Anaheim peppers and cilantro. An encirclement of purple tortilla chips added color and spunk to the presentation.

Other unique pasta medleys include the Peppered Steak tossed with linguini in a piquant chipotle cream sauce, the Seafood Capellini with basil, garlic and feta, and the Louisiana Heater, a high-powered noodle suckle featuring Cajun-style tomato sauce, avocado and blackened shrimp.

In a more daring move, we tried the Embers Burger, which isn’t something you should put in your body more than once a year. The thick, flame-broiled patty is crowned with an overdose of minced smoky bacon and Black Forest Ham and made more sinful with Jack cheese and Thousand Island dressing. (Pass the fibrillators, please!) The accompanying rosemary potatoes with their delicious crunchy edges became rightfully upstaged.

Though the restaurant caters well to heavy eaters with steaks, pork ribs, hearty pasta dishes and the Neal’s Deli Combo Pizza (topped with three cheeses and two meats), bulge-battling customers can take refuge with slightly lighter fare. This would mean sticking to items such as Atlantic Salmon, Angel Hair Pasta with marinara, a Philly French Dip or a couple of toned-down salads – any of which could spur indifference if you start eyeballing the swooped-up signature dishes whizzing by.

Embers’ time-tested recipes zigzag through several culinary categories while retaining their Southern California flair – Tex-Mex, Asian, Cajun and Italian bob intermittently to the surface without over-compromising one another.

Service is casual and friendly, and definitely less scripted than what you’ll encounter at Chili’s, for example, which formidably competes with the Embers concept on certain levels. But given a choice, I’ll take a family-owned joint flaunting a real wood-fired oven any day over a Pollyanna chain that misleads consumers with a chili pepper logo and mediocre food.