Once upon a time, take-out joints specialized. Maybe it was due to space constraints, but you knew you could call up your favorite take-out joint and someone would dependably take your order for falafel or wings or pizza, and post it in the kitchen with all the other orders for falafel or wings or pizza. But Pizzatalia is not an old-fashioned take-out spot. Its modest checkerboard-tile waiting area is deceptive; the kitchen stretches back and covers 1000 square feet. (Plus, there’s an additional room behind the kitchen that owner Bauram Karagul plans to fill with tables.)

In that kitchen on any given day, five cooks rush, reach, skid, and scramble between the fryer, fridge, sandwich-stuffings bar, and oven in response to the perpetual influx of orders. And given the extensive menu, it’s little wonder these guys slip, slide, and execute hairpin turns with the concentration of a hockey team in overtime.

While one of the cooks sprinkles goat cheese on a fluffy spinach salad ($5.75), another is busy assembling tuna salad, artichokes, olives, tomato slices, and American cheese on a giant disk of pita bread, which he then proceeds to roll up, wrap-style ($5.95). Yet a third is busy at the grill scrambling onions, which will eventually appear on someone’s chicken-kebab plate ($7). The one station not on view is the pizza table, where the 18 specialty pies and calzones — from Philly cheese steak ($7.95/small; $10.95/large) to Buffalo chicken ($7.95/$10.95) — are crafted. If one of the kitchen’s custom designs doesn’t suit you, you can mix and match from 40 scrumptious options — including seven different cheeses ($4.95/small; $7.95/large; $1/topping on small; $1.50/topping on large).

Dessert, you ask? With close to a pint of soft-serve frozen yogurt fetching only $2.25, it’s the most cost-effective frosty treat for your money.

Pizzatalia, located at 618 Shawmut Avenue, in Boston, serves food daily, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Call (617) 541-4040.