At Penngrove's Humble Pie, fab food is down home in a hip kind of way

As if the Black Cat Bar in Penngrove weren?t unconventional enough, it?s now joined to a restaurant that?s just as quirky, but in a friendly, homey way compared to the Cat?s fierce eccentricity. The door between the two businesses stands open during the dinner hour. They are a matched set of odd but worthwhile drinking and eating establishments.

All you need to know about the Black Cat is that the ceiling is decorated with dozens of brassieres. Whether these have been cheerfully donated or wheedled off patrons, who can say? But as your thoughts drift upward, there?s plenty of support to hold them there.

The Humble Pie Restaurant, to give it its full name, is a tiny gem, with just six tables and room for about 30 diners when the place is full, which it often is. A jacket and tie would be as out of place as overalls at the opera.

Little ambiguities enrich the atmosphere. For instance, a small poster with a mandala-like design reads, ?Bacon from God.? There?s a guest book to sign. A deck of cards held together with a rubber band joined the tea light and pepper grinder on one table. A frieze of vinyl album sleeves adorns a wall: mostly from the late 1960s. There?s Laura Nyro, Creedence Clearwater?s ?Born on the Bayou? and Gil Scott-Heron?s ?The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.? Nigerian music plays on the sound system.

It?s all very 1960s hip in a down-home kind of way, but how?s the food? It can best be described as down-home in a very hip kind of way. Miriam Donaldson and her brother-in-law, Dan McCann, serve the kind of home cooking created by folks who love to cook. Because they are young and in love with planet Earth, the ingredients tend to be organic and determinedly local. And in Sonoma County, that means plenty of great ingredients are close at hand. It shows in the dishes that issue from their tiny kitchen.

For instance, the Daily Greens Salad ($5 ****) could not have been fresher. The greens looked as though they?d just come in from the garden. They were a mix of little half-grown leaves, sweet as spring water, spread around with intense cherry tomatoes sliced in half and topped with bacon crumbles. This, of course, is the perfect time of year for the most flavorful tomatoes, whether the little cherry or toy box types, or large ones. Now?s the time to place a bunch of them in a freezer bag and freeze them. Come January and February, you?ll be glad to have their sunny summer flavor ready to add to soups and stews.

For the same tomato-y reason, a bowl of Gazpacho ($5 ****) was extraordinarily delicious, and about as good a version of this cold soup as you?ll ever find. The tomatoes were the perfect consort for herbs and spices, with a smattering of nasturtium leaf pieces on top and a little spicy zing in the flavor.

It?s also the height of the late fruit season, which made the Fruit and Prosciutto ($5 ***) a delight. Slices of sweet, perfectly ripe, orange-flesh melon, three small strawberries, and very salty ?prosciutto? filled the plate. I put prosciutto in quotes because it is really salt-cured local ham from Bud?s Custom Meats in Penngrove and tastes more like Pennsylvania Dutch dried beef than the Italian uncooked, air-dried ham called prosciutto.

For the adventurous, the menu offers BlueBalls and Homemade Ketchup ($7 **?). You get four ground pork and beef meatballs about the size of golf balls that are indented in the center and stuffed with Point Reyes Original Blue Cheese, then baked. They are set on a spicy concasse of ripe tomatoes given bite by a splash of vinegar.

There?s nothing humble about Humble Pie?s Shepherd?s Pie ($16 ***?). In fact, it?s a rather classy version of this classic ?poor man?s pie.? Lamb is ground and cooked with minced carrots and onions and used to stuff three flaky-crust vol au vents, or cups of puff pastry. These are topped with herbed mashed potatoes and baked, then served with a lightly dressed green salad and seasonal fruit ? in this case, tasty little strawberries and slices of nectarine.

One never eats better ? or can ever eat better ? than when the cook has a garden right outside the door and gathers her vegetables minutes before preparing them. That?s when they have all their fragile flavor and fragrance compounds still intact. The folks at Humble Pie may not have a garden outside, but they surely gathered the vegetables for the Garden Quiche ($12 ****) from their farm sources just that afternoon. The quiche was feather light, ultra-smooth, mildly cheesy (they used chevre), with a buttery crust, and laced with greens and heirloom tomatoes. Unlike many intensely savory quiches, loaded with ham and strong flavored cheeses, this one was delicate. The vegetables for the quiche change according to what is in season. As the menu says, ?Availability subject to the whims of nature.?

Sometimes cooks attuned to nature like this veer toward vegetarianism, but not Humble Pie. The menu is anchored by a whopping big Pork Chop ($18 ***), a center cut beauty at least an inch thick, cooked in a very hot pan and enhanced by brandied peaches and brown sugar compote. It?s served perched up on a bed of mashed potatoes and given a meat reduction sauce.

Unfortunately, a Baked Mozzarella Caprese ($13 *) was nearly inedible. A caprese is a classic Italian salad of a slice of ripe tomato topped with melt-in-your-mouth mozzarella (preferably made from water buffalo milk), pieces of basil leaves, good olive oil and sometimes balsamic vinegar. Here, cow?s milk mozzarella was used. It was heated but had cooled down enough when it reached the table that the cheese had turned rubbery. Cooking the cheese simply ruins the dish.

For wines, The Humble Pie offers two ever-changing wines by the glass and a handful of well-chosen bottles from California and France. Service is quick and friendly.

You?d expect a place called Humble Pie to have a nice assortment of pies, and you?d be right. A confection they call Strawberry-Lemonade Pie ($5 ***) had sliced strawberries baked onto a lemon chiffon base, all set in a crumbly crust.

A piece of Apple-Ginger Pie ($5 **?) was full of apples and fresh, spicy ginger and sugar baked to a caramel so chewy you?d better watch the fillings in your molars. But it sure tasted good.

To sum up: The Humble Pie serves homestyle cooking with wonderfully fresh ingredients nicely prepared by folks who know what they?re doing.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.