Cafe Estelle

The house-baked ciabatta bread looked too puffy for panini. But when pressed, it took on a toasty crisp that highlighted some startlingly good fillings: mesquite-smoked eye of round Wagyu beef with fig compote and smoked Gouda; and an amazingly tender Giannone air-chilled chicken breast roasted in aleppo pepper-spiced Buffalo sauce, then topped with celery- root slaw in Gorgonzola dolce remoulade.

Cafe Estelle dabbled for a few months with some intriguing dinner menus, but the nighttime crowds were too sparse for this out-of-the-way space to sustain. After tasting some of the kitchen's more entreelike lunch offerings, I can only hope dinner will be revisited someday. The large but pillowy potato gnocchi basked in a roasted-tomato sauce steeped with an unexpected twinge of anise and clove, and the earthy piquancy of capers. The braised chicken leg, meanwhile, a meltingly tender bird over a crock of white beans and beet greens, is possibly the best $8 entree in the city.

Green's cooking isn't quite flawless. The soups were flavorful but thin. One day's batch of sausage was too salty. The barbecued pork wore a soulfully deep smoke, but the chile-rubbed seasoning wasn't tangy enough to be labeled "Carolina"-style. The homemade ice creams churned on a cheap machine from Target were simply bad, as chewy as frozen taffy.

Those few misfires, though, were instantly forgiven when Cafe Estelle's peach pie landed before me. A wedge of ripe, thinly sliced fruit piled high, it was like eating late summer's golden sunshine inside a flaky double crust. And suddenly I was grateful: The dying art of pie wasn't lost just yet.

But it was just one of many unexpected revelations I discovered at this charming cafe, where an ambitious young couple is making the most of their location in the heart of convenient obscurity. Just follow the smoke signals, and come hungry.