Paradise Pizza is based on a good idea: Make a breakfast-themed pizza piled with cheese, eggs, bacon and other morning goodies, even country gravy or hollandaise. Then, instead of the standard wheat crust, put it on a surprisingly thin, crisp crust of hash browns.

And it works. The hash browns are warm and starchy in the middle, and brown to a crunchy, toasty amber on the edges. They hold together, even under the weight of gooey eggs and cheese.

But one good idea is not enough to save diners from an otherwise lackluster experience.

Paradise is a closet-size restaurant, geared more toward take-out, in an easy-to-miss strip mall on Austin Bluffs Parkway. Two tables sit near the counter under the sallow light of florescent bulbs. A few island-themed decorations make the place seem like an especially bleak luau party in an office break room.

The restaurant is the work of John Rocco and Linda Lindeman, who have no restaurant experience but spent years perfecting their potato-based breakfast pizzas at home and decided to start their own business after rave reviews from friends and family. Unfortunately, they did not spend the same amount of time perfecting the restaurant.

Pizzas take about 30 minutes from order to table if there are no other orders, but the Spartan dining room is not a nice place to wait. Or a nice place to eat. There are only flimsy paper plates and plastic forks. We did not find any knives when we visited. It is better to call ahead for take-out.

Toppings also show a lack of perfection. We ordered a pizza with egg, Canadian bacon, sausage, onion and Swiss cheese sauce. The sausage seemed to be some kind of unseasoned ground meat and the Swiss cheese sauce was bland and heavy. Other toppings were unremarkable — a dangerous distinction in the cut-throat business of take-out pizza.

This breakfast pizza might be worth ordering at a solid breakfast place, but it may not be worth a restaurant of its own.

Worse, the Swiss cheese sauce had gluten in it — not a wise idea, considering these spud-based pies are billed as a gluten-free alternative to ordinary wheat crusts.

Rocco told me on a recent visit that the breakfast-themed pizzas were confusing customers, who wanted a standard pie. So he started serving regular pizzas. Unfortunately, they have more problems than the original breakfast pies. The wheat crusts are thin and flavorless, often smeared with a canned-tasting, heavy-on-the-paste red sauce.

Paradise offers off-beat combinations: tomato, avocado, mushrooms, feta and pesto, or orange bell pepper, chorizo, pepper jack and salsa. But creative topping options often are better on paper. The Full Moon ($13.50 for a 12-inch), billed as a “romantic date pizza,” came overloaded with chicken, pineapple, mango, jack cheese and “white wine chutney.” The thick, wet toppings left the pizza soggy. Worse, it was woefully unbalanced and sweet. The chicken was bland, the mango overpowering and the chutney unnoticeable.

How bad was it? I took half back to newsroom and left it on a table. Reporters, not being the most discerning gourmands (jackals would be a better word), will eat almost anything. But the pizza was still there at the end of the next day.

Paradise also does breakfast sandwiches and dessert pizzas, but after the pizza, we weren’t feeling too adventurous.

Photo by STUART WONG, THE GAZETTE