Trellis | A truly cultivated chef and hearty, handpicked food

It's trendy these days for restaurants to tout their connection to the land, for chefs to cultivate relationships with farmers, foragers and ranchers who provide the raw materials they covet. But some chefs go beyond handpicking their purveyors: They handpick their produce right from their own gardens.

Chef Brian Scheehser does both. Not only is he outstanding in his field — for years helming the kitchen at the Sorrento Hotel's Hunt Club — but he's also, quite literally, out standing in his field. For the past few years he has regularly doffed his white jacket to care for a 3-acre patch of farmland in Woodinville, just a few miles from his new gig as executive chef at Trellis, the restaurant housed in Kirkland's new Heathman Hotel.

Even in late fall, Scheehser is harvesting herbs, garlic, chard, beets, parsnips, squash and potatoes. He's picking leeks for soup and pulling carrots — orange, yellow and white coins that are glazed with butter and sent to the table in little black Staub roasting pots. Four hundred quarts of heirloom tomatoes have been tucked into jars for the winter; assorted wine grapes are on standby in the freezer to finish sauces.

What Scheehser can't make or grow himself he sources with care, seeking out organic or naturally raised products, farmstead cheeses and handcrafted salumi. Coupled with precise cooking and refined techniques, the result is fresh, unfussy, contemporary fare that is pure pleasure to eat.

Emblematic of the kitchen's best efforts is pan-roasted chicken, clutching a bouquet of watercress with its clipped wing bone, brandishing a corsage of haricots verts on its crisp bodice. Rosemary and garlic penetrate the bird's moist flesh and seep into the buttery pan juices. A pot of creamy potatoes laced with veins of bright green basil is served on the side.

Duck partners with a different cornucopia, one that plays bitter greens (braised endive and watercress) against sweet fruit (poached pear and fresh fig). The slices of breast meat, each framed with a ruffle of crisp skin, match the garnet hue of a translucent reduction sauce stunning in its complexity.

An intense demi glace pools under slices of grilled hanging tender — another name for hangar steak — a cut that's a happy marriage of chewy tenderness and burly beef flavor. It wasn't the only steak on the menu — there's a flatiron ($18) and New York ($29) as well — but this $16 special, accompanied by parsley salad and potatoes veiled in saffron-spiked tomato sauce, was a hard bargain to beat.

Tomato and saffron join leeks and a bouquet of herbs, weaving subtle flavor into the broth for Pacific seafood soup. Before liberating a gorgeous gaggle of salmon and shellfish from their black caldron, the waiter readied the bowl, dribbling pale pink rouille from a miniature pitcher over lacy toast. Left to my own devices, I confess to pouring this superbly smooth, peppery sauce directly onto my spoon.

The soup is a dinner-only production. Being a hotel restaurant, Trellis is open for breakfast and lunch too. Frankly, I'd show up in the a.m. just for toast spread with tomato-orange marmalade. But for those seeking other sustenance there are oatmeal; eggs; waffles; corned beef hash; and even an opulent "Wine Country Platter" arrayed with cured meats, cheeses, crackers and condiments.

Lunch and dinner menus have some overlap, primarily among appetizers, such as that Wine Country Platter and a bowl of steamed mussels in an herby broth bristling with piri piri sauce. Mostly, though, lunch aims for simpler fare: sandwiches and salads, an omelet and a fabulous burger.

Huntsman cheese (Stilton and Double Gloucester combined) oozes into the crusty crevices of that pudgy patty of Niman Ranch beef, flagrantly pink at the core (as requested). With two gangly rashers of Berkshire bacon protruding from under the brioche bun, it looks like a four-legged Pixar creature that's almost too cute to eat. Get over it: Pile on some spiced, pickled red onion and have at the haystack of brittle fries as well.

A few things missed the orgasmic mark but not by much. Mushroom soup sent my fingers into the tiny wooden bowl of pink sea salt, which helped focus the soup's woodsy richness. Tagliatelle with sausage and prawns lacked structure of a different sort. The dish is assembled like a child's stacking toy: Grilled prawns and a sausage link teeter atop buttered noodles, blanketed — not tossed with — garlic-studded tomato sauce. Some foods shouldn't go vertical, and pasta is one.

The pleasures of the table extend to beverages and desserts as well. A basil leaf graces a pomegranate and lemon vodka martini. Sage and candied lemon flavor an ethereal flan that memorably melds savory, sweet and tart. Six kinds of cookies, two of each, come with a pot of warm chocolate. Loose-leaf tea is brewed in a carafe covered with a zippered black wet suit — the Angelina Jolie of tea cozies.

The wine list draws from around the globe but is strongest in domestic bottlings. By-the-glass prices average $10, but the quality is high and servers are quick to offer a taste, if you're not sure of your preference.

The front-of-the-house staff is less sure-footed than the kitchen, but confidence should increase with experience and time. Already a demanding coterie of locals, smartly dressed and expensively groomed, populates the gracious dining room and adjacent lounge, looking right at home amid the glossy wood and gleaming marble — suggesting this hotel restaurant won't be counting on transients for survival.

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com