Seattle — The sun bursts through the platinum clouds only occasionally, and that's fine, because I'm not here to bask in the sunshine, I'm here to eat. In Seattle, it's serious business.

It doesn't take a genius to ferret out the icons of the dining scene: any or all of Seattle phenom Tom Douglas' half-dozen places, such as the Dahlia Lounge and Etta's (he's more or less the Wolfgang Puck of Seattle); Rover's (favored by the Microsoft and tech crowd); Canlis; the Seattle-area Herb farm; and the latest glitzy downtown spot.

Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Tims/Photographer (ENLARGE)

The caviar pie at the Steelhead Diner is one of the restaurant's top appetizers.

Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times (ENLARGE)

Seattle also has a popular wine growing region. Pair restaurant keeps its bar stocked with local vino.

Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times (ENLARGE)

Fresh bread and house wines are lined up for the dinner rush at Tilth. The cheese selection is written on a chalkboard in front of the open kitchen.

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But for food lovers willing to explore other neighborhoods and more modest venues, Seattle offers a wealth of wonderful dining. The restaurants profiled here are remaking the local food scene in their own homegrown image. With Seattle friends in tow, it took me two visits to the city to dine at all of them.

Sitka & Spruce

Sitka & Spruce, set in an unpromising strip mall between a kebab place and a Subway sandwich shop, is a small hole in the wall. It doesn't take reservations unless there are five or more in your party and you can fit at the communal table.

Propped on the bar, a child's chalkboard is scrawled with the words "Food worth standing up for." And stand up they do. People lean against the bar and the big chalkboard where the menu is written each day, waiting for one of the half-dozen tables.

Matt Dillon, 34, the chef and owner, in a tweed cap and cartoon tattoos, ambles between the kitchen and the dining room.

My friends and I start with Stellar Bay oysters with a pink grapefruit and Campari granita, its bittersweet bite delicious with the oysters. That's followed by a beguiling salad of warm beets and wild watercress and an order of grilled oyster mushrooms with shallots, freshly cracked walnuts and wood violets. Chicken livers sautéed with sultana raisins and a splash of rosé are wonderful and earthy. I love the fat white beans heaped with charred octopus tentacles in a bright green salsa verde, too.

Most dishes come in regular and half portions, the better to taste one's way through the menu. Sometimes, there's quail or "poussin al mattone" with creamed celery root and leeks, hanger steak topped with a poached duck egg, or shredded braised beef shank, fried and presented with yeasty homemade lavash and wilted radicchio.

Lark and Licorous

Another must-stop is Lark, in an old barn of a place, a former woodworking shop with pitched roof, exposed beams and walls painted the color of buttermilk. Panels of sheer fabric carve the space into smaller areas, conferring a coziness without messing with the dining room's appealing airiness.

Here, too, no reservations are taken. As soon as you arrive, check in with the maitre d' before heading next door to Licorous, a spinoff of Lark, for an aperitif and a small bite while you're waiting. Inside the demure, wood-framed building, it's three deep at the bar, with others, the lucky ones, disposed about on comfy little sofas. Most requested drink: the Lark, which is prosecco, freshly squeezed pink juice and a dash of Campari.

By the time our table is ready at Lark, we're happy and relaxed instead of grumpy. Chef-owner John Sundstrom knows how to write a small-plates menu: We want to order everything on it, and the prices — nothing over $20 — mean you almost can.

We start off with a plate of Fra' Mani salami "toscano" with "mostarda di uva" (grape mustard) and sublime prosciutto di Parma with spring onions and Taggiasca olives. Penn Cove mussels cooked with Calvados, bacon, apples and cream is a fabulous combination. Crusty roasted potatoes, topped with a dollop of ivory clabbered cream, come in a cast-iron skillet. Spinach is swirled with Meyer lemon butter.

But the favorite that night is soft-scrambled duck egg with spicy chorizo, green garlic and ramp. Dessert is a brilliant pineapple tarte Tatin with rum-spiked caramel or a silken vanilla bean pot de creme with wonderful old-fashioned rhubarb rose hip preserves.

Tilth

Another standout is Tilth, an organic restaurant in a two-story Craftsman house in the Wallingford neighborhood just west of the University of Washington. The tiny woman with a yard-long dark braid down her back is chef-owner Maria Hines, formerly chef at Earth & Ocean in Seattle's W Hotel, who has returned to her roots at Tilth.

Hines has a subtle touch in dishes such as a salad of pale quartered beets with emerald arugula and blue cheese or dark, velvety, house-cured prosciutto with a salad of miner's lettuce and foraged wood violet leaves. A baked Granny Smith apple stuffed with fresh Dungeness crab meat is bound with a little crème fraîche to delicious effect. I can order normal or tasting portions.

Wild sockeye salmon is crackling crisp on one side and almost rare on the other, the better to experience its every nuance. The accompaniments are magic. That salmon, for example, comes with an artichoke "barigoule" and a creamy polenta cake. Mini duck burgers, four to an order, come with fabulous fingerling potato chips. The pan-seared gnocchi, strewn with fried capers, Parmigiano and swatches of dark lacinato kale, are pretty dreamy, too.

To finish, we order several cheeses, including "hoja santa" from Texas (soft goat cheese wrapped in hoja santa leaves). Dessert is a sublime heirloom apple galette with cinnamon ice cream laced with bits of candied bacon and a pine nut tart with fromage blanc, caramel and thyme. As we walk out the door at 9:30 p.m., people are still coming in to eat. Small wonder.

Pair

Pair is a sweet little restaurant in a simple clapboard building in the Ravenna area of northeastern Seattle. Chef-owner Felix Penn and his wife, Sarah, live upstairs. Out front are a couple of wooden benches and flowers spilling from galvanized tin pots. The dining room has a raffish, hand-hewn charm with its deep pumpkin-colored ceiling, pierced tin lanterns and gingham curtains.

The menu is small-plates Mediterranean: house-made rabbit rillette with red wine prunes, steamed asparagus with blood orange beurre blanc, and cinnamon roasted lamb with preserved lemon, potato puree and minted Moroccan olives. Some people come just for the beef brisket with fresh horseradish cream and chives, others for the duck confit with creamy polenta, braised red cabbage and cherry ginger sauce, all under $20.

The dishes aren't highly original, but they're cooked with care and respect, including a magnificent Yukon Gold potato and cauliflower gratin topped with Gruyère and panko bread crumbs.

Matt's in the Market

When I visit Seattle, my friend Roberta usually picks me up at the airport, and we head straight to lunch at Matt's in the Market on a second-story perch overlooking the Pike Place Market sign. Matt's serves terrific soups, sandwiches and seafood based on ingredients from the market. It started out as a tiny counter, but after a lengthy remodel, it has reopened and has nearly quadrupled in size.

Owners Matt Janke and chef Eric Cannella didn't take Matt's upscale when they expanded. They're still turning out the same all-American fare that has made Matt's a hometown favorite. That means three hearty soups every day, a butter lettuce wedge salad with avocado, bacon and cava vinaigrette, big bowls of steamed clams and Penn Cove mussels with fennel and a touch of cream. Fried catfish or oyster sandwiches come with a spicy mayonnaise on bread from Seattle's beloved Macrina Bakery. For dessert, the rich bread pudding with caramel sauce is irresistible.

If you want a table, reservations are essential; walk-ins, though, usually can find a spot at one of the two counters.

Steelhead Diner

Steelhead Diner on Pine Street around the corner from the market is a sprawling space decorated with hand-tied fishing lures. Light bouncing off nearby Elliott Bay floods the room. Chef-owner Kevin Davis, a New Orleans native who used to cook at Sazerac and the Oceanaire here, turns out updated diner fare with a local bent.

Brutus salad features crisp romaine strewed with toasted pine nuts and Parmesan in a juicy citrus vinaigrette. A single giant crab cake arrives like Clarabell the Clown, wearing a frizzle of deep-fried beet threads. Underneath, it's all Dungeness lump crab meat sparked with habanero chile and sauce Louis.

Clams are steamed to order for the Manila clam chowder, which is laced with Yukon Gold potatoes, apple-smoked bacon, shiitake mushrooms and fresh peas.

Dessert is an apple pandowdy, basically a pie crust filled with diced apples, dried cherries and raisins in a caramel sauce. But the clincher is the cinnamon-laced ice cream melting into the apples.

La Carta de Oaxaca and Ocho

We had a quick lunch at La Carta de Oaxaca in northwestern Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. We grabbed a couple of stools at the counter in front of the beautiful "oaxaquena" making tortillas to order. The chips for the creamy guacamole are deep-fried to order, too, tossed in the air to cool, then delivered straight to the table still so hot that they burn your fingers.

It's windy and cold, so when I see the bowls of pozole with big, tender chunks of pork at the communal table behind us, I order that. And it's terrific. "Tasajo," thinly sliced beef cooked on the grill and served with those supple, fresh tortillas dipped in a green sauce and embellished with crumbled Oaxacan cheese, is wonderful too. There's also lamb "birria" and tamales (pork or chicken) with a silky, complex mole negro. This is some soulful cooking.

That night, we head back to the neighborhood to check out a newish tapas bar called Ocho around the corner. It's hard to spot, especially at night and in the rain, because there's no sign. And from the packed seats at the then-nine-day-old establishment, I would say people were having no trouble finding it.

When we walk in, a waitress is standing on a chair, erasing dishes from the blackboard to the groans of the crowd. We step up to the bar and order a crisp vinho verde from Portugal and a lovely manzanilla sherry, little realizing that the real specialties here are the cocktails, the $10 El Tesoro Anejo tequila margaritas and the made-to-order sangria.

The food is simple and rustic: lipstick-red "piquillo" peppers topped with Idiazabal cheese, "pa amb tomaquet" (bread rubbed with tomato), beans with chorizo, tortilla "espanola," diced potatoes and chorizo with a fried egg on top. But it's not dinner.

Txori

We have a another round of drinks, including the sangria, and then head off to another new tapas bar across town called Txori that was opened by the team behind the wildly popular Spanish wine bar Harvest Vine.

Txori doesn't take reservations either, but unlike Harvest Vine, it's open all day and not far from downtown.

I love the look of the place — a long, narrow space with shelves to the ceiling stocked with jars of rice, mushrooms, vinegar, olive oil, stacks of "cazuelas" (terra-cotta casseroles) and bottles of wine. When someone orders a rioja or ribera del duero, a server climbs a library ladder to fetch it.

Because Txori serves "pintxos" (San Sebastian-style tapas), we start with a crisp, mineral-y Txacoli from the same region, the Spanish Basque country. Our server pours it into a thin-sided, stemless glass from 2 feet up, the way they do it in Spain. (It's supposed to aerate the wine.)

The food is flat-out fabulous. The owner comes from San Sebastian, and these are real pintxos — a chunk of slow-braised pork, caramelized and crispy on the outside, perched on a slice of baguette soaked in tomato. A section of octopus tentacle is secured to a piece of bread with a bamboo toothpick. Piquillo pepper is stuffed with morcilla (blood sausage), then battered and fried.

But my favorite has to be the butterfish. Pan-sautéed and finished in the oven, the palm-size whole fish is presented in a parsley and garlic sauce. It's simple and delicious.

On my way out, I peer over the counter and realize the two young cooks are turning out all this food with only two electric burners, a griddle and an oven.

That kind of grit and improvisatory spirit is a big part of what makes this generation of Seattle restaurants so satisfying and soulful.

IF YOU GO

• La Carta de Oaxaca. $5-$10. 5431 Ballard Ave. N.W. 206-782-8722, www.lacartadeoaxaca.com.

• Lark. $8-$18. Closed Mondays. 926 12th Ave. 206-323-5275, www.larkseattle.com.

• Licorous. $2-$16. Closed Sundays. 928 12th Ave. 206-325-6947, www.licorous.com.

• Matt's in the Market. Lunch entrees, $10-$19; dinner entrees, $22-$30. Closed Sundays. First and Pike, 94 Pike St., Pike Place Market. 206-467-7909, mattsinthemarket.com.

• Ocho. Reservations for parties of six or more only. Main dishes about $10. Tapas (Spanish appetizers) from $1.50. 2325 N.W. Market St. (at 24th). 206-784-0699.

• Pair. 5501 30th Ave. N.E. 206-526-7655, www.pairseattle.com.

• Sitka & Spruce. Main dishes from about $10. Closed Mondays. Reservations only for the communal table for five or more. 2238 Eastlake Ave. E. 206-324-0662, www.sitkaandspruce.com.

• Steelhead Diner. Sandwiches from about $11, entrees from $15. 95 Pine St. 206-625-0129, www.steelheaddiner.com.

• Tilth. $7-$29. 1411 N. 45th St. 206-633-0801, www.tilthrestaurant.com.

• Txori. Pintxos, $1.50-$9. 2207 Second Ave. 206-204-9771, www.txoribar.com.