Just because The Oven looks like a pizza joint, smells like a pizza joint and sounds like a pizza joint doesn't necessarily mean it is one of those places we all love that deliver a huge pliable crust piled with toppings at 2 a.m.

The Oven is an artisan food shop and bakery whose main specialty happens to be thin pizza along with a few excellent edible accessories.

The Oven's owner, chef Mark Tarbell, has won big-time awards by the bushel for his Tarbell's restaurant in Phoenix. He's famous in national culinary circles for his obsession with high-quality ingredients and organic and preferably local produce, and his unwillingness to gouge diners with exorbitant wine prices.

At The Oven, Tarbell has applied all that accumulated knowledge to making traditional Italian pizza. "House-made" applies to just about everything at this eatery: crust, sauces and cheese. The result is that eating there is an ongoing series of "Aha!" moments.

Located in Lakewood's recently minted Belmar development, the small eatery includes long, communal, wooden tables and comfy stools in front of the two huge ovens where you can watch the pizza artists at work. It's loud, it's lively and quite engaging.

You know these guys are the real deal because of the attention they pay to each pizza and the fact that their hands are hairless from working near the 500-degree wood-fired heat. A campfire bouquet permeates the neighborhood, the room, the mushrooms, onions and meats.

The Oven's itty bitty menu boasts a handful each of salads, starters, sides and desserts to go along with the pizzas, but it's plenty.

The memorable Oven salad ($7.95) is graced with rolls of soft prosciutto, thin slices of sopressa - a narrow, hard salami - ripe tomato and Haystack goat cheese. The caramelized onion and Balsamic vinaigrette had a sweet-and-sour balance that matched up perfectly with the fatty meats.

We also fell for The Oven's signature Italian vegetable soup ($5.95), an ingenious variation on the French onion theme. Shredded roasted chicken, mushrooms and spoon-tender vegetables simmered in a Parmesan-flavored broth are placed in a crock. It's topped with a thin pizza crust round and a big handful of mozzarella and baked until bubbly hot. We battled over the last bits of broth and craveable cheese.

Then there's the pizza.

"Thin" doesn't adequately describe the crust. This magical stuff is only a few silly millimeters thick, crackerlike around the edges and a tad softer in the middle. The edge, which is rubbed with olive oil before it's baked, is dark brown, singed in places and bubbly in others.

What gets me is the taste of the crust with it's fine wheat crunch. We found ourselves nibbling on the leftover bits long after the toppings were gobbled.

The simplest of tomato sauces is ladled on, lightly followed by a sprinkling of fresh cheese, top-notch ingredients, herbs and a pinch of finishing salt, and then it's into the oven to be moved around repeatedly to get the ideal bake.

You can compose your own pizza using any of the house ingredients, including sliced olives, anchovies, roasted vegetables, pepperoni and gorgonzola, but I recommend starting with first-class menu pies like the iconic Margherite ($6.50 9-inch; $11.95 12-inch) with marinara, mozzarella and basil.

The dreamy white pizza ($6.50; $11.95) is layered with smoked ricotta, Parmesan, mozzarella and fresh rosemary while the inspired barbecue chicken pizza ($7.95; $13.95) is brushed with sweet, spicy barbecue sauce made with ancho chilies. The shredded roasted chicken breast is garnished with charred green onions.

For me the crowning achievement is the smoked portabello pizza ($6.95 small, $12.25 large). The marinara, mozzarella, smoked 'shrooms and oregano leaves produced overlapping layers of nuance that could only result from intelligent design. This is pizza's leap to immortality.

The Oven's sides are also noteworthy. The Marczyk's spicy Italian sausage ($5.95) baked with creamy tomato sauce, browned onions and cheese had just the right snap and chew.

The bowl of mozzarella ($5.95) was a natural wonder. The sweetest, freshest, milkiest cheese was blessed with just a pinch of salt and baked only enough to warm it. We spread it on good, puffy Parmesan bread.

To match the fare is a small but exceptionally well-chosen wine list. Except for such high-end items as Kistler "Les Noisetiers" Sonoma Coast Chardonnay ($110), the bottle prices are reasonable with most also available by the glass from $4 to $12. The beers ($3-$5) are served with a properly frosted glass.

Even the desserts followed the good-and-simple-is-better credo. The flaky-crusted apple pie ($5.95) served a la mode with vanilla gelato was piled with paper-thin slices of tart apple. We wouldn't have minded a little more sugar to cut the pucker.

Our favorite was the oven-baked doughnut ($4.95), a warm circle of dough dusted with cinnamon sugar plus the doughnut hole on the side. We liked the side of grainy chocolate espresso mousse, but we weren't sure the dish actually needed it.

Three cheers to The Oven's savvy staff. They know how good the food is and have a talent for gently explaining the menu to newcomers expecting a standard, drippy slice of a 32-inch pie.

Sure, The Oven is a grown-up pizzeria, but I've seen plenty of children there enjoying the kids meal ($5.95) of 9-inch cheese pizza, drink and vanilla gelato. They particularly enjoy sitting on the high stools so they can watch the pizza being created.

Maybe they'll grow up knowing that this is real pizza, and wonder how we could have loved that other stuff with the stuffed cheese crust.

The Oven Pizza E Vino

• Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily

• How much: $2.95-$8.95 starters; $6.50-$13.95 pizzas

• How loud: Moderate to loud

• Reservations: no

• Information: 303-934-7600

John Lehndorff is the dining critic; lehndorffj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5103.

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