Signs of summer often set Rhode Islanders to thinking about excursions to South County. It happens even to Wakefielders like us. We turn toward Point Judith, East Matunuck, and Misquamicut. Granted, the eatery we recently visited in Westerly isn’t exactly near the ocean, but the drive down Route 1, as the early evening sun lit up the bright green of trees just leafing out, gave us a renewed appreciation of the season’s changes.

In the spirit of spring’s transformation outside, the indoor transformation at David’s is also noteworthy. You might notice a glass window into the kitchen as you enter the restaurant and that the seating on one side of the L-shaped space is all booth-style. But nothing else would give away this spot’s previous incarnation as a pizza parlor.

The booths are covered in a dark ocean blue, picked up in the blue ceiling and in the blue and white seashell-print valences at the large picture windows. The Formica tabletops are covered, bistro-like, in white butcher paper. There’s a crisp French feel to the color scheme, and though the menu does list baked onion soup, a scallop and pepper bisque, and a quiche of the day, its other offerings hew closely to the state cuisine: Italian-American.

And so did we. I went for the tomato and roasted garlic soup ($3.50/$4.50), and my three companions split the mushrooms stuffed with crab and spinach, topped with melted mozzarella ($7.95). They raved about the mushrooms (alas, my allergy to crab), and shared tastes of my soup, which was hearty and creamy.

Our friends studied the sandwich and salad possibilities as well as the entrées. Unusual sandwiches at David’s include a fried shrimp club, a fried grouper sandwich, an Italian chicken club with lemon-garlic mayo, and a lobster croissant. In the salad category were a grilled chicken salad, and a warm spinach salad with grilled chicken ($8.95), which Pam ordered. She thoroughly enjoyed the large portion of spinach and chicken tossed with a candied walnut and Romano vinaigrette.

The broiled Stonington sea scallops ($15.95) caught my fancy from a first glance at the menu (they were also offered as "scallops dore," pounded, egg-dipped, sautéed, and served with Hollandaise). They were expertly prepared and served with fork-tender zucchini.

Of the three chicken dishes on the menu, Bill favored the chicken piccata ($14.95) — chicken quesadillas and chicken francaise with linguini were the others. He was quite pleased, remarking on the zing of lemon juice and capers on the breaded chicken fillets and marveling over the orange-colored salt as he sprinkled it on his roasted red bliss potatoes.

The fourth member of the Westerly outing was Bruce, who chose clams zuppa ($13.95) in red sauce, which was served over linguini and surrounded by steamed littlenecks. Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of seafood in red sauce, but this tasted so fresh, it was a real winner.

One of the things we’d learned from phoning the year-old restaurant was that everything there is homemade, from the soups and salsa through the carrot cake and chocolate sauce. Owner/chef David Saunders has expanded his Northshore Catering from East Lyme, Connecticut, into this extremely customer-friendly eatery.

David’s mom makes all his desserts, and herein lay the final dilemma of our meal decisions: they all sounded great, and Ashley, our super-perky waitress, was even willing to ring her to ask what kind of apples were in the crisp. We might be unreasonably finicky on this, but Delicious apples do not a crisp make. Granny Smiths, on the other hand, can work just fine.

Thus, one Granny crisp ($4.50) made it to the table and was pronounced "very appley" if a bit too sweet. But from the other options — chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis, coconut torte with caramel cream, Haagen-Dazs ice cream with the aforementioned sauce, or "world’s best carrot cake" — which were we to choose? We settled on the latter, and we quickly understood David’s mom’s predilection for coconut. It made the nut-free cake dense, moist, and very flavorful. Traditional cream-cheese frosting sandwiched and topped the two thick cake layers.

What was untraditional at David’s was the order of courses. Accustomed to an introductory breadbasket, then appetizers and salads, we were somewhat surprised to see this flipped, so that we received salads, appetizers, and then a basket of buttered/toasted garlic bread (with a garlic aioli to gild the lily). It all worked to keep us fed as we waited for entrées, but it was unusual.

Maybe the garlic bread was a last salute to this location’s pizza days. Or maybe it springs from a caterer’s custom. Either way, it did not detract from the great food and wonderful service we had at David’s. And it’s really not that far from the beaches.