Recoveries, by nature, are limited affairs. One endures hardship; one recovers from it, and ideally, one moves on to the next great thing.

When it comes to New London’s Recovery Room restaurant — named for its proximity to L+M Hospital — it might not be so easy to move on to that next great thing. Rather, you’ll likely want to hang around a bit and maybe try another intriguing pizza or a creative cocktail or some dessert.

What at first glance appears to be yet another pizza pub in the region becomes anything but upon further examination of the menu. Sure, you’ve got standards like salads, soups and pasta dishes, but the execution thereof sets Recovery Room apart from its numerous peers.

First among the standouts is the Asian Sesame Chicken Salad ($11.95) on the lunch menu. I was intrigued by two things in the description of the salad: wontons and angel hair pasta. Wontons in salad I’d seen before, but pasta? Sign me up.

This huge salad also includes sliced chicken dressed in a citrus-y, tangy sauce and sesame seeds; lettuce greens; grape tomatoes; and Mandarin orange slices. Due to all those flavors and textures, the salad would have been fine without the accompanying sauce on the chicken. Plus, I found the dressing that comes with the salad — a very nice champagne honey mustard vinaigrette — tastier than the Asian chicken sauce. Still, this salad is a keeper for many reasons: it’s filling and rich in lean protein; greens and pasta are a very enjoyable texture combination; the chicken was grilled to perfection; the wontons were freshly fried and delicious; and I loved the dessert-y addition of the orange slices.

The salad was so satisfying that I had to wait until later to try the pasta fagioli ($5.95) I’d also ordered for lunch that day. Next time, I’ll have to eat my soup first, because Recovery Room’s is possibly the best batch of this hearty soup I’ve ever tasted. While it’s chock full of soft-as-silk beans, pasta, and spinach, the broth hardly takes a back seat, offering first bright tomato flavor followed by savory waves of garlic. It is the epitome of comfort food — warming, filling and familiar.

During another lunch, I sampled another hit in RR’s Roasted Turkey BLT ($8.95; comes with a bag of chips). You’d think there isn’t much to piling turkey and bacon onto some bread, but apparently much thought goes into the process at RR. From the thinly sliced, ample serving of tender, flavorful turkey to the warm crumbled bacon atop it, this sandwich makes for a delicious lunch best eaten solo, since it does tend to fall apart due to the precarious balance all that turkey creates.

But it was two dinners that really clinched it for me. For the first, I paired RR’s Zia Margarita pizza ($11.95) — topped with fresh mozzarella, basil, sliced tomatoes and pesto sauce — and the arancinis on the dinner menu. Perfect crust aside, what really makes the margarita pizza a standout is that addition of pesto sauce. When it merges with the fresh mozzarella, the combination yields an amazing flavor sensation that left me uncertain as to whether I’d share any with my husband back at home. Where some pies become messy with the addition of sliced tomatoes (which subsequently fall off or make for messy mouthfuls), the sliced tomatoes on the RR pie, expertly baked, blended easily into the rest of the toppings.

As for the arancinis, for $9.95, you get three rice balls packed with mozzarella in a delicious, mildly creamy tomato sauce. Honestly, we almost loved the sauce as much as the fried rice balls, which were far more flavorful than others we’ve sampled elsewhere. The addition of what we thought was a sharp cheese added a distinctive flavor layer to the dense rice.

We’re still talking about life-changing dinner #2, enjoyed at Recovery Room on a quiet Sunday. Two us of split Ed’s BBQ Chicken pizza ($13.95) and an order of Gnocchi “a la Mama” ($16.95), and one of us (not me) ate his way past room for dessert. Yes, we went in hungry, but it was the amazing flavorfest of food that kept us going back for more (and yet, we still had leftovers).

I’ve had other BBQ chicken pizzas and tend to find them middling — whether due to not great chicken or dull sauce or too much onion — and unwieldy. Well, RR’s chicken pizza exists in a realm beyond those problems: the BBQ sauce is rich and tangy; the red onions are thinly sliced and used judiciously; the chicken is tender. Plus, the clever addition of cheddar cheese and more of that warm, flaky bacon add layers of flavor on two ends of the spectrum. Add on RR’s delicious crust and you’ve got a riotously enjoyable pie from start to finish.

Gnocchi has a reputation as simple fare: rolled dough dumplings, usually in tomato sauce, maybe with a sprinkle of cheese. I have yet to meet a gnocchi I haven’t liked, but RR once again raises the bar with its outstanding rendition of this dish: loaded with chunks of chicken breast, prosciutto, shiitake mushrooms, reggiano cheese and not mere tomato sauce, but a tomato mascarpone sauce, which was somehow light and tangy. So, yes, the dumplings were delightful, but the added nuance from all those other textures and the overriding tomato flavor made it hard to decide which entree we enjoyed more. We’ll call it a draw.

We’re still recovering from how much we enjoyed Recovery Room, and I suspect it will be a long one. At least we’ll be well fed in the process.

Twitter: @TheMDesk

Recovery Room Restaurant

445 Ocean Ave., New London

(860) 443-2619

www.recoveryroomrestaurant.com 

Cuisine: Italian-inspired dinners; pizza; salads and sandwiches

Atmosphere: Welcoming and warm and usually bustling

Service: Friendly, knowledgeable, professional

Prices: Moderate, but portions are typically generous. Pizzas run from $8.95 to $14.50; dinners from $9.95 to $26.95.

Hours: Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

Credit Cards: Yes

Handicapped access: A tight parking area and small vestibule could make entry challenging, but wheelchair access is available. Dining room area is fairly spacious.