LEWISTON — Dad Andy MacIsaac services X-ray machines. Mom Anneke is a coach for preschool teachers. Daughter Jana (pronounced Yana) works in publishing, son Bo in restaurants.

Together, as of last week, they are Vittles & Variety.

The Lewiston family has turned the former Boba and Jamie K’s on Scribner Boulevard into a variety store and pizzeria, including a bit of Holland, with offers like friet speciaal, and likely becoming the only place in L-A to score crab rangoon pizza.

“I think we were like everybody else, we would like to have something of your own,” Anneke said. “We weren’t sure what, first it was a restaurant. We saw this and thought this might be a great first step.”

Bo, 28, has been in the food industry for seven years, most of it in pizza. For Vittles & Variety, he is making the pizza dough and buns for $2 sliders fresh each day, and offering pocket sandwiches that start from balls of baked pizza dough cut in half and stuffed.

“Experimenting (with different pizzas) definitely is cool,” he said. “The different balances of yeast and water and flour give you all kinds of different results. After you bake it, too, it looks different again.”

The menu came together over the summer, they said, before they’d found the space. Anneke is originally from Holland and in a nod to her heritage, friet speciaal (hand-cut fries topped with onions, curry ketchup and homemade mayo) and sate fries (topped with Thai peanut sauce) are both on it.

“We haven’t had anybody try it yet, so that’s going to be the challenge, getting people to try new things,” Anneke said. “In Holland, everybody eats it.”

When they bought the building, most of the kitchen equipment had to be replaced, she said, so they all got to work. They added new floors, a new counter, a new half wall and did loads of painting.

“It is a lot of work, but we were motivated and I think it went smoother (than expected,)” Anneke said.

“I thought we’d be arguing more than we have been, for sure,” teased Jana, 25.

After some fine-tuning, a new pizza oven can hit 840 degrees and cook the 10-inch pizzas inside of five minutes. They are offering traditional toppings along with specialty pizzas, such as BBQ chicken, taco and crab rangoon, which has a cream cheese sauce with imitation crab and scallions on top.

Morning prep starts at 9:30 a.m. and, for now, everyone is keeping his or her day job, except Bo, and orchestrating time off to come in and help.

Vittles & Variety is open Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Everything is made to order and takeout only.

“It’s interesting, because everywhere else, when you start your job, you’re like in training,” Bo said.

“I’m sort of like in training, but I have nobody to train me. It’s a new experience, that’s for sure, making all the rules ourselves.”

Working is a recurring Sun Journal feature that profiles people on the job in the community. If you have someone you’d like to suggest, contact writer Kathryn Skelton at kskelton@sunjournal.com or 689-2844.

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