Philadelphia Weekly

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Under a glass-topped table at Caf� Estelle, among the Kennedy-era Better Homes & Gardens recipe cards for lemon-sour cream tarts and chicken Vienna, you'll find a Confucian proverb stamped on top of instructions for Chinese pork and peas: "In ordinary life you must be economical. When you invite guests you must be lavish in hospitality."

The maxim rings true at this charmer, suspended in the limbo between Old City and Northern Liberties and tucked inside a monolithic loft conversion.

Despite its industrial composition (concrete floors, exposed ductwork), Estelle exudes surprising warmth. Local artwork colors the walls; vintage cookbooks, unraveling at the spines, crowd the coffee tables. Slender blue glass bottles sprout yellow daisies and bubblegum-colored chrysanthemums while ovens full of muffins, coffee cakes and sourdough baguettes perfume the room.

Co-owner Kristin Mulvenna, late of Cantina Los Caballitos, flutters effortlessly between tables, chatting up the bespectacled bookworm, the executive foursome, the thirtysomething couple with the Jack Russell puppy. She's the instantly likable face of Caf� Estelle.

With a Goldilocks 'do and Susie Homemaker apron, she seems as though she might pluck a recipe from the nearby circa-1964 Mary Meade's Country Cookbook, head into the open kitchen and whip up a mean meatloaf. But it's her Phillies-capped boyfriend (and business partner) Marshall Green cooking at this shindig.

The pair opened Caf� Estelle--named for Marshall's grandmother--this past November. What was first all cherry scones and margherita pizzas morphed into an all-day operation in May when Green began dinner service, flexing culinary muscles built on the lines of Meritage, Ansill, Django and Fork.

The reasonably priced menu focuses on locally sourced, seasonal stuff. The tiny saltwater oysters are from Cape May; the intense coffee is roasted in Germantown; the spearmint in the house-churned ice cream is plucked from a wild patch growing nearby.

Mint, chives and sugarsnap peas bestow garden-grown freshness to plump from-scratch ravioli stuffed with Mascarpone and braised free-range chicken legs; house-made pancetta offers a crunchy, salty counterpoint. A locally raised duck duo brings it with tangy pomegranate molasses-glazed breast and lush confit tangling with arugula and sweet-tart slices of yellow peach.

Thick country gravy surrounds a tower of fried yellow, red and green beefsteak tomatoes topped with a succulent Jersey softshell. Fava beans, ramps, red wine syrup and spring onions grown in Green and Mulvenna's South Philly row home complement crisp sweetbreads, the best in recent memory.

Tweaks would elevate certain dishes from merely good to great. The lovely pan-seared grouper topped with two doubloons of herbed butter is overwhelmed by dill overkill in the accompanying shrimp salad. Less fatty lamb chops would mean more meat to savor with pearly couscous and Mustang-red marinara brightened with fresh oregano and preserved Meyer lemon.

The cucumber soup's smoky grilled prawn could use a mate; the soup itself, though refreshing, needs salt, pepper and acid to achieve total Zen balance. The truffle oil anointing the pillowy gnocchi tossed with crimini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms reads like an artificial coda to Green's all-natural gospel.

Dessert is a short list inside a wallet-sized gold picture frame on each table: dense chocolate-hazelnut terrine, a threesome of cheeses drizzled with woodsy sage-honey--infused in house, natch. The homey, misshapen strawberry-rhubarb pie looks like the little pastry that could, its buttery, flaky crust stuffed within an inch of its life. One incision unleashes a pink peak-of-season magma flow oozing toward a scoop of strawberry-rhubarb sorbetto spiced with star anise, cinnamon and clove.

The pie has all the hallmarks of what I consider a great dessert: familiar but interesting; hot-and-cold interplay; understated sweetness; wonderful acidity. I'd gladly eat it at the end of every meal from this day forth. Bummer that the sundown of strawberry season means the pie will be on the DL till next June.

But that's the way love goes at a seasonally conscious restaurant. Jersey peaches, here we come.