Leslie Kelly

1. Luna Restaurant on the South Hill features a large dock where diners can enjoy their meals in the open air. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review 2. The Cedars in Coeur d'Alene offers waterfront dining and access. Photo by Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review

Roger Hough with one of his creations. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

After Jennifer Siegel experimented with several teas, her recipes led to a cookbook (inset). Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

During a recent visit to San Francisco, I ate at the highly hyped bastion of upscale vegetarian cuisine called Greens. It's been featured in Gourmet magazine and is the subject of a successful cookbook. You must call weeks ahead to get a reservation. But here's the shocker: I much preferred the creative offerings at Spokane's first gourmet vegetarian restaurant, Mizuna.

The sands have shifted on Spokane's Southwest cuisine scene. (If you can call a couple of restaurants a scene.) One spot has dumped its spicy Southwestern fare, while another place is starting to heat up with the arrival of a new chef from Arizona. After more than a year, Ripples on the River at Cavanaugh's River Inn dropped its chili-infused offerings in favor of more mainstream selections. The new menu is called Northwest Signature and it spotlights specialty dishes from various Cavanaugh's properties throughout the region.

1. Hotel del Coronado, a famous landmark, was the site for the movie classic "Some Like It Hot" with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. Photos courtesy of the Coronado Visitors Bureau 2. The San Diego-Coronado Bridge links the big city with the quiet, slower-paced peninsula next door. 3. Sunday concerts in Spreckels Park are a popular reason for a picnic lunch.

Fugazzi has a new chef who will infuse the menu with lighter touches, focusing on seafood and fresh seasonal ingredients. Meg Edwards has replaced Michael Waliser, who left to head the kitchen at Bountiful Foods. That health food store-cafe will open in the next few weeks. Edwards, who is a graduate of the California Culinary Institute in San Francisco, has some impressive credentials. After graduating, she started a well-known Bay Area dining spot called Julie Ring's. She went on to work at celeb-chef Wolfgang Puck's Postrio as the pasta chef for more than a year.

Bob Hancock of Fugazzi bakes full time, creating custom breads. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

What's up at Patsy Clark's? After hearing about a major shakeup in personnel and tales of some bizarre floor show, I wanted to see if the venerable restaurant was still standing. It most certainly is. And my recent dining experience was a carbon copy of my previous trips to Patsy's. In a nutshell, that means a magical atmosphere, efficient, very formal service and fine, yet uninspired food. But more about that in a minute. When three Spokane businessmen with no previous experience with restaurants purchased Patsy's in October, Tracy Niles, his father, Dalen Niles, and Steve Senescall said they had no intention of making dramatic changes at Spokane's favorite special-occasion restaurant.

What's that fragrant bouquet? No, it's not just the gorgeous clusters of lavendar lilacs that give this weekend's festival its name. It's the pungent aroma of wine on wood.

The coming weeks offer a couple of choice opportunities to chow down for charity. This Mom's Day, a bunch of Spokane-area restaurants will donate a portion of their profits to a program for single mothers called CAPA (Childbirth and Parenting Alone). CAPA is sponsored by Catholic Charities. It is designed to help single moms be better parents and self-sufficient members of the community. Last year, more than 650 young women received help from this program.

Upstairs Downtown will soon be history. But before you start crying in your white bean and sage soup over the demise of that lovely restaurant, you should know that the entire operation is migrating to the South Hill. Chef Karla Graves and her husband will try to turn around the bad restaurant karma at the former Cafe Grand, which was the former Amore. They'll call their new spot Paprika, A Little Cafe. (It will be on Grand, just next door to Baskin-Robbins, across from St. John's Cathedral.) The couple had been looking for ground-floor space - their current location is difficult to reach, especially at dinner when the doors are locked at the Skywalk entrance.

From the outside, Thadeus T. Thudpucker's looks like a hillbilly museum. Blame it on that goofy sign that lords over the southeast corner of Riverside and Browne. The three-dimensional still life looks like a scene out of "Grapes of Wrath," with the rusted-out vintage trucks parked in front of "endorsements" from Bonnie and Clyde and the Waltons.

Let's call it a coming out party for spring. The sixth annual Festival of Flowers is just the sort of fete that should help chase away memories of what was an especially long, dismal winter. The April 14 event - a benefit for St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute - is part formal tea party and part celebration of all gorgeous things that grow. "People get so excited about dressing up and coming out with their friends and family for a relaxing time," said festival coordinator Cheryl Brandt. This year, area florists will transform the Davenport Hotel into a lovely English garden, overflowing with fragrant flowers of every shape and shade.

Glover Mansion - that gorgeous historic house on Spokane's South Hill - started serving dinner this week. The mansion has long been a favorite among those who lunch, and general manager Paul Strickley is sure the venue's popularity will spill over into the dinner hour. The evening menu will change weekly, to emphasize the freshest ingredients available in the area. Strickley describes the fare as continental-style cuisine, which seems perfectly appropriate for such elegant surroundings.

Veteran restaurateur and one-time mayoral candidate Dave Albertini is back in business. When he sold his downtown Spokane restaurant (and busy watering hole) several years ago, he planned to live on Lake Coeur d'Alene and run Carlin Bay Resort, on the east side of the lake. But he found it tough to make a living during the short summer season.

Some people embrace change. Others squawk if you make the tiniest adjustments - say, swapping crushed ice for cubes or switching Folger's crystals for freshly ground coffee. This week being one of major seasonal change, we salute those restaurants whose menus seem in perpetual motion, evolving to showcase the best seasonal ingredients. Spring menus have just blossomed at Luna, Ankeny's and Fugazzi, to name a few. On the South Hill, Luna's tulip-blooming weather fare includes couscous crusted salmon, grilled duck breast with peppered apple relish, Greek chicken pasta, mango-lime mahi mahi, a New York steak served with a sweet potato and carrot puree and lemon-garlic chicken.

Chef Karla Graves

1. A breakfast of muffins, fruit and cheese, strawberries, banana split pancakes, coffee and juice is served in a beautiful setting at the Clark House on Hayden Lake. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review 2. Monty Danner, Hayden Lake's Clark House

Hey, pardnur. Bet'cha didn't realize the ol' Longhorn Barbecue has been in business for some 40 years now. It hasn't stuck around so long by being hip and trendy, either. The success of the family-owned business reinforces the old cliche, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Over the decades, few things have changed at what is possibly Spokane's oldest restaurant.

Let's face it, Mexican food, like Chinese cuisine in this chunk of the country, has been Americanized. The term authentic has been wrongly applied to cheese-covered enchiladas swimming in thick gravy and crisp corn tortillas stuffed with shredded lettuce and sour cream. Still, there's no denying the success of this tame style of south-of-the-border fare. Mexican restaurants are simply giving customers what they want.

For years, area residents have been salivating over Red Lobster's nationally televised ads that star plump prawns glistening in chafing dishes, crimson heaps of steaming lobster and succulent crab legs dangling over a plate. Dang, mother, those are good-lookin' vittles. Last week, the national chain opened its much-anticipated Coeur d'Alene location and the waiting line for tables ran out the door.

Rooms at the Bellevue Club are warm and cozy.

It's so easy to take good Thai food for granted in Spokane. There are at least a half-dozen Thai restaurants where diners can feast on well-prepared, authentic Asian fare. It's easy to forget that just 10 years ago, there was zip, nada, nothing in the way of restaurants that specialized in the distinctive cuisine from Southeast Asia. That made Val Chalard something of a pioneer when he opened the Thai Cafe in a slightly seedy part of downtown Spokane nine years ago. In the years since, the amiable Chalard has walked scores of diners through the basics of Thai, recommending a stir-fry or mild yellow curry to neophytes and gently prodding regulars into trying something new.