Ever since the first pizzeria opened in New York City in 1905, Americans have had a love affair with the crisp yeast-dough-tomato-sauce-mozzarella cheese concoctions.

Our love affair with pizza is such that we eat nearly 100 acres of it a day and spend more than $25 billion on the pies each year.

In the 1980s, California chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck put a fresh spin on American's favorite takeout food and turned it into something fashionable. The wood-fired gourmet pizzas he whipped up at Spago restaurant, with West Coast toppings like avocados, sun-dried tomatoes and grilled duck sausage, soon became all the rage.

As with many cutting-edge trends, it took Delaware several years to catch up. But by the early 1990s, several First State restaurants were fashioning gourmet pizzas. However, few, if any, continue to do them as well as Pizza by Elizabeths.

The upscale pizza parlor (4019 Kennett Pike, Greenville; 654-4478) has changed a bit since opening almost six years ago in the same shopping center that houses Janssen's Supermarket, a Laura Ashley store and a Happy Harry's. The dining area more than doubled in size in November 1998 when owners Betsy LeRoy and Betty Snyder (the Elizabeths of the eatery's name) took over the space next door, once occupied by an art gallery. There's now a roomy bar -- stop there if you're waiting for a table or a takeout order; the draft beers are served in icy-cold mugs -- plenty of booths and a private dining room. Wines are available by the glass and Elizabeths has nonalcoholic offerings like designer root beer and Valrhona hot chocolate.

In keeping with the restaurant's theme, black-and-white photos of famous Elizabeths, as in Montgomery, Hurley and England's queen, decorate the walls. Pizza creations are named for the ladies.

One thing you'll need to know before making a trip to Elizabeths is that the tab won't be cheap. The eatery is located in the midst of Greenville's Chateau Country and prices are set accordingly. Mini pizzas, 8-inch pies cut into four slices that feed one, cost anywhere from $5.50 to $9.50, depending on the toppings. Regular pizzas, 11-inch pies cut into eight slices, start at $8.50 and go as high as $14.50

Customers can order form the menu or create their own pizzas. Sauces include chunky tomato, green olive pesto, roasted garlic, and mushroom duxelles. If you want to taste-test a sauce first before committing to one on a whole pizza, try an order of breadsticks ($6). You'll get three sticks and a choice of three dipping sauces. Pizza toppings include Gruyere cheese, smoked Gouda, rosemary onion saute, pineapple, roasted mushrooms, blackened chicken, country sausage and crab meat.

The Dashing Diner, who's never been much of a pizza fan, is in Elizabethan love with the eatery's crust, always the backbone of a great pizza. A magician in the kitchen is turning out a crust -- patrons can choose a homemade white or a very yummy honey wheat crust -- that somehow manages to be neither thick nor thin, and both chewy and crisp.

The DD's munchers are positively swoony about the Napa Valley field greens with curried pecans ($4 for mini salad). The spicy nuts make the salad, especially when topped with balsamic vinaigrette. Order that and skip the seafood salad ($7 for a mini salad). The shrimp, which tasted defrosted, was limp and flavorless and the salad dotted with surimi, the imitation crab meat. Chicken Caesar salad ($6 mini) is strictly mix-your-own. Servers bring a bottle of the creamy dressing to the table to top the salad made of mesclun greens rather than the traditional romaine lettuce. You can ask for the Caesar sans the chicken, as we did, but you could be charged the same amount as a salad with chicken, as we were.

During one of our visits, we tried the Taylor pizza ($9 a mini), a winning combination of goat cheese, rosemary onion saute, sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, oregano, basil, and black olives. The Davis ($9.50 a mini) can't be missed with its blackened chicken topping, that is as spicy as the actress the pizza is named for. And the DD is hoping the pizza special offered one night, Amborn's [correction: Amporn's] Thai Pizza ($8 for mini), will eventually make its way on the menu. It's one of those fusions that really works -- spicy peanut sauce (in place of tomato sauce) that's topped with chicken marinated in Thai spices and finished with a cool cucumber-jalapeno relish.

Don't forget to leave room for dessert. The chocolate-dipped strawberries ($3.75), decorated to look as if they were clothed in tuxedos, were absolutely precious. The mint chocolate-chip cheesecake was creamy and delicious ($4.50), but for the price could have been bigger than the four-forkful serving we received.

April 6, 1999 Correction

Pizza by Elizabeths in Greenville uses crab meat in its seafood salads. A reference in the April 2 Dashing Diner column was incorrect.

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