For the Edmonds crowd, a stay-in-town delight

If Edmonds had a country club, Shell Creek Grill could be the clubhouse dining room.

The art-filled interior, lit with graceful chandeliers that diffuse their bronzy glow over walls and tabletops of knotty pine, suggests an exclusive mountain lodge. The menu is the straightforward type that doesn't require lengthy explanations: hot spinach and artichoke dip, oysters on the half shell and shrimp cocktail are among the openers; steaks, chops, seafood, pasta and salads follow. The clientele, whether dressed in fleece or down, cashmere sweaters or sport coats, are the affluent type, willing and able to cover a tab that can come close to big-city limits when appetizers average $10, entrees $25 and cocktails $9.

The gloss on this nearly 6-year-old neighborhood restaurant has been applied recently. Proprietors Brian and Heidi Petoletti, both longtime veterans of the Schwartz Brothers Restaurants, are celebrating their first anniversary at Shell Creek this week. In the past year, the couple have tweaked the décor, upgraded service and moved the menu in a more upscale direction. This was happy news for many in the ZIP codes adjacent to 98020 for whom dining in downtown Edmonds means avoiding the freeway follies; what they save on gas can go toward a nice bottle of Oregon pinot noir.

The Petolettis are hands-on owners. They oversee the front of the house, where the waitstaff's efficiency has risen but can still vary: one server handled a bottle of corked wine with alacrity and aplomb; another repeatedly overlooked a phalanx of empty glasses.

The couple also develop all the recipes in collaboration with chef de cuisine Tyler Chamberlin. If some dishes are sauced and seasoned with too much verve and not enough finesse, the overall food quality is good and the cooking competent. Plus, those expensive martinis are doubles and two nights a week (Tuesday and Sunday) every bottle of wine is half the price.

An apple-wood-fired oven is a centerpiece of the visible kitchen, yielding roasted meats and vegetables, including red and gold beets currently paired with grilled wild salmon. The fish, impeccably cross-hatched and cooked through, sat in a brilliant green sauce of minced fresh herbs (tarragon, parsley and basil among them) made tangy with capers and vinegar.

The oven does right by chicken and pork, too. A succulent semi-boneless chicken breast sported crisp, herb-dusted skin, though its mushroom-rich Madeira sauce needed refinement. A pork chop, double cut and served on the bone, is brined with apple cider and maple syrup, making it as juicy as a ripe peach and almost as sweet. The side of apple chutney may look drab, but it sparkles with fresh ginger; pretty red-skinned potatoes, specked with parsley but undercooked, prove the stodgier sidekick.

The New York strip loin and tenderloin of venison are cooked on the grill. While both the steak and its brandy peppercorn sauce were so salty a few bites exhausted the taste buds, venison displayed more equilibrium. The chunky medallions were tender and agreeably gamey; rosemary contributed a pleasantly piney note to the tomato and mushroom-enhanced "sauce chasseur." But meat that good deserves something less run of the mill and bland than a "medley" of wild rice and bell pepper.

Entrees are matched with a starch or vegetable, but substitutions are allowed from a roster of accompaniments that also serve as auxiliary sides ($4). I would ditch the rice in favor of spinach gently sautéed with garlic, fluffy mashed potatoes mixed with sour cream and chives or those lovely roasted beets.

If you split a salad, it'll cost $2 extra, which bumps the "Salad 526" up to $11, but it's worth it for a plank of lightly grilled romaine stuffed with crumbled blue cheese, diced tomato, red-onion confit and hazelnuts. There is no surcharge for splitting any of the flatbreads ($12). Those pizzalike squares come variously topped, but I was unimpressed with the soggy crust and mushy tapenade on the vegetarian version I sampled.

Pastas are a lower-priced entree option, and a bowl of penne in Bolognese sauce was certainly generous enough to share. The fresh-tasting tomato sauce didn't quite capture the intense charm of a long-simmered Bolognese; it was more like a meaty marinara, heavily under the influence of rosemary and oregano.

Nothing so heavy-handed interfered with three standout starters: shrimp bisque, spicy beef tips and scallops in brie cream sauce. The bisque resonated with shrimp flavor. The soft scraps of beef tenderloin marinated with garlic, ginger and jalapeño stoked a fire nicely squelched by a cooling cucumber and sour-cream dip.

The thinly sliced and seared sea scallops were lined up on a rectangular platter like overlapping gold doubloons. The brie is muted in the sparingly drizzled cream sauce; bits of crisp pancetta and fried sage provide an elegant finishing touch.

As a finale to your meal, nothing is more eye-catching than the white chocolate hazelnut mousse served in an amber bowl of spun sugar that looks like a Chihuly knockoff. Warm walnut spice cake has less visual panache, but this divine mini-Bundt cake is chock full o' nuts and ankle-deep in crème anglaise and maple syrup.

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com