Avalon Gardens claims to have the best pizza in town, and has plenty of regular customers who agree. In fact, the Belmont Avenue restaurant, which serves full meals six days a week, has nothing but pizza and salad on Sundays.

The Ave, as it’s known by its habitues, packs ‘em in for the food and its wide selection of beers and wines. It offers music mostly as a bonus, and because Al Salata, the owner for the past 11 years, likes it.

“We’ve had just about everyone in here over the years,” Salata says, “including The Rage and the HouseBand,” which is remarkable primarily because the bar has a seating capacity of about 150 and no bandstand. Tables must be moved to get a band set up.

Offering music is always a business balancing act, which has been seriously affected by the state ban on smoking. “It used to make sense for us to have the bigger acts because people would stay til closing,” Salata explains, “but since the ban, the crowd usually eats and leaves. Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s much nicer in here without the smoke.”

Avalon Gardens is in a curious transitional neighborhood on the north side, where north-south Belmont swings east-west; removed from the busy commercial intersection with Rte. 80 on the north, and not quite downtown but close enough to get lots of lunch traffic from city workers.

The Gardens is also sufficiently removed from north side residential traffic that safety is not the concern it is, for instance, on South Avenue north of Midlothian. And lots of cops hang out there, according to staff; and people going outside to smoke keep an eye on the parking lots.

So the Avalon Gardens has individual performers or small bands during the week for jazz, pizazz and pizza.