Cafe Juanita
9702 NE 120th Pl, Kirkland, 425-823-1505
Tues-Sat 5 pm-10 pm, Sun 5 pm-9 pm.

Cafe Juanita's not new, but when I say how much I've liked eating there, too many of my food-loving friends have told me they've heard good things about the Northern Italian-inspired restaurant but have never actually tried it. After a week of particularly dismal eating, I thought I deserved a treat, and so I gathered a team of very good eaters and headed east.

Although I tried to be low-key, chef and owner Holly Smith spotted me and came out to say hi. She's even more pregnant than me--due to give birth a few days after this review is published. (They've put together a nursery onsite to keep Smith close to the stoves after the baby comes). Later on, Smith sent us a complimentary dish of Romano beans coated in anchovy butter and breadcrumbs. Show me a chef who's as proud of her simple vegetable preparations as she is of her fancier goods, and I'll show you a good restaurant.

Juanita meals typically get off to a festive start with aperitifs, each matched with a little nibble--Italian bubbly gets a few chunks of spunky parmesan ($8), a peach Bellini (made with fresh yellow peaches) comes with a breadstick veiled in prosciutto ($9), and my favorite of the bunch, an icy limoncello martini ($11) (I just had a sip, I swear), had an appropriately swank shaving of cured foie gras to go with it.

This is my favorite time of year to be eating--summer's tomatoes, beans, peaches, and berries are hitting their ripe peak, but hints of fall, namely mushrooms, are also making their appearances. Juanita takes advantage of the timing--if tomatoes are great, why save them for just one dish? Why not sprinkle them in salads, pastas, and entrees too?

The kitchen can be minimalist when it serves a purpose. Take the woody bounty of a big porcini mushroom ($15): (Quick: what do you call a 12-inch mushroom? A real fungi!) One half was served raw, shaved, and dressed with a bit of parmesan and extra-virgin; the other was kept intact and seared to a caramel-brown crust. A portion of sweetbreads ($12), which was, like the mushroom, crisp outside and yielding inside, needed only a few crunchy fried capers and a bit of good olive oil to dress it up.

At other times, the dishes are more fanciful, like little bonbon-shaped pasta bundles (they're even called caramelle) filled with a slightly sweet lamb stew ($11). Tomatoes and crumbles of creamy sheep's milk cheese helped cut through the pasta's unctuous filling. We also dug our tagliatelle, which was wrapped into a graceful knot around Sicilian ingredients: pine nuts, sweet and sour bits of eggplant, and one perfect silvery grilled sardine ($12).

If like me, you have a little small-plate fatigue, you'll appreciate Juanita's entrées that come balanced out with just the right sides and garnishes. Rosy lamb loin got a chickpea purée and a shaved-fennel salad ($27); an island of seriously buttery rib-eye was tamed by the bitter bite of arugula and salty Castelmagno cheese ($38). The kitchen's well-known braised bunny is about as well accessorized as it could be, with a thin chickpea-flour crèpe enclosing a chanterelle-y salad, and surrounded by a sluice of truffle-scented sauce. Simpler, but no less stunning, were pork cheeks ($25) slow-cooked in goat's milk until the cheeks could be spooned up in their slightly nutty sauce.

Dessert is no mere afterthought at Juanita, it's a serious course for which one needs to save room. I can't tell you how good it was to drag warm plum cake ($8) through its tangy, magenta sauce; crunch down on the nuggets of hazelnut praline buried within the velveteen chocolate torte ($8), and stain trembling buttermilk panna cotta ($8) with potent huckleberry sauce.

As we left, we realized we'd whiled away more than three hours in the restaurant, happily taking our time with each course. Beyond the food (and drink), there's something about the kind service and the woodsy setting that makes conversation flow. It's true that Juanita's not inexpensive and that you might need to wait for your daddy (biological or sugar) to take you there. But do what you need to do, because one of Seattle's best restaurants is not in Seattle.