There is something wonderful about a neighborhood restaurant.
It’s a place where folks gather together to celebrate moments both extraordinary and utterly ordinary, where good food combines with relaxed atmosphere. In Seattle, few restaurants embody that ethos as much as Cafe Lago.
“We wanted to make it about life. That’s what life is. It’s kids, family, it’s date night, it’s all of that. We wanted to be that kind of very inclusive place,” said Carla Leonardi, owner of Cafe Lago.
Located in the Montlake neighborhood, Leondardi and her ex-husband opened Cafe Lago back in 1990, fulfilling their shared dream of opening an Italian restaurant.
“It’s Tuscan. I’m from Tuscany. I was born in Lucca, which is right there. But, my ex-husband’s mother is from Calabria. So, we had a lot of influences from her cuisine when she grew up,” explained Leonardi.
The initial inspiration for the restaurant was to showcase the Tuscan-inspired recipes the families grew up cooking. Now, all these years later, ‘taste memories’ remain a focus for Carla and her team.
“We have a lot of kids who grew up coming here and, for them, our meatballs are what meatballs should taste like,” said Leonardi. “So, we have a commitment to keeping that correct, but with our new chef coming in we have eyes towards the future.”
You could hardly find a person better suited to lead Cafe Lago forward than Chef Lauren Thompson. She spent more than 15 years at Kirkland’s bastion of northern Italian fine dining, Cafe Juanita, including 12 as chef de cuisine.
“Lauren is a dream come true,” said Leonardi. “It seemed to be such a cool idea to take what she learned from Cafe Juanita, to take those sort of heightened ideas of food, and bring them to a more everyday experience.”
“I had been under the tutelage of (Cafe Juanita owner/executive chef) Holly Smith for so long and I have so much respect for her, but there comes a time when you need to learn something new and go try new things and new challenges,” explained Thompson. “I wasn’t necessarily looking to change, but when an opportunity comes along that you try on and that just feels right, you go for it.”
Now, Thompson is helping chart Cafe Lago’s path for the future, adding fresh, new dishes to the menu and sourcing more local products while also staying true to the restaurant’s roots.
“It’s a real balancing act. I can’t describe it any other way,” said Thompson. “There are certain aspects of the menu we can manipulate and massage into more elevated and more modern cuisine, sticking with the rustic Italian feel, but then also maintaining the classics.”
To that end, dishes like the14-layer lasagna remain unchanged. The same goes for the pomodori al forno, that one on very specific orders from Thompson’s mom.
“She told me, ‘Okay, I know you’re going to touch things on the menu and start changing things, but that’s the one dish I’m asking you to leave alone’. And I don’t think there’s anything that needs changing on that dish, so I got you, Mom,” said Thompson with a big smile.
One area where Thompson is already putting her own stamp on the menu is pasta, with preparations morphing and changing based on the seasons.
“I was the pastaia at Cafe Juanita for a while…and it’s the station I always loved working there most, so I know it very well. I know it intrinsically,” said Thompson. “That’s the place I feel the most comfortable with and probably the place where there’s the most area to play around in.”
While food is, of course, the focus at Cafe Lago, equally important is the act of dining itself, the opportunity to sit down together and share a meal.
“The time (our guests) spend with their family, talking to their parents, talking to their kids, I want them to remember that. The community, the conviviality of dining with other people.”
Their tagline couldn’t be more true; Cafe Lago is “Seattle’s beloved next-door Italian restaurant.”
Learn more about Cafe Lago here.
Dining and Cooking