It's Saturday afternoon, the restaurant won't open for another couple of hours, and chef Hanspeter Aebersold is pounding medallions of pork for Jaeger Schnitzel while his kitchen assistant preps the vegetables. Aebersold's First Hill eatery, Geneva (formerly known as Reiner's), is one of that rare breed of restaurants that has been around long enough to be cherished by its regulars, and fresh enough to feel like a discovery to the rest of us.

With 17 tables and a polished atmosphere that comes from its 1929 domed ceiling and original chandelier, the place is full of Old World charm and quiet sophistication. And at dinnertime, it's full of regular customers. Even since the terrible events of Sept. 11 that sent many small, high-end restaurants into a tailspin, Geneva has been busy, and Aebersold was getting ready for yet another busy night. His wife, Margret, working in the restaurant's office, was checking the messages on voice mail and putting together a seating chart for the dining room.

"The secret for us," says Margret, "has always been consistency and good customer care. When people come back to a restaurant, they have expectations. If you meet those expectations, the people feel they can trust you, and they come again. Over time, you develop a relationship." At a restaurant as small as Geneva, the bulk of the clientele is composed of a fairly small group of loyal customers, but this is more than just a neighborhood crowd. Some come regularly from as far away as Olympia. "They come every time they're in town. They care about us because we care about them."

Thierry Rautureau, chef-owner of Rover's in Madison Park, might agree. "In a small restaurant, you need only a certain number of people who believe in what you are doing. But it takes a while to build that customer base. There were plenty of nights, when I first opened," he acknowledges, "when I served only one table. The waiter and I would spend a lot of time playing UNO. But I had to hang in there and keep doing what I knew was right. And eventually word got around.

"There is no real secret to my success," claims Rautureau, waxing poetic now. "What is success anyway? For everyone it's different. For other people, maybe it's making a certain amount of money, or achieving a certain amount of fame. For me, it's being able to get up every morning, come into my restaurant, and do what I love best."

Clearly, what Rautureau loves best is not playing UNO. These days, he is widely acknowledged as one of the city's best chefs and, even though economic times are hard, Rover's is consistently busy.

"If there is any secret, I would say it would be staying true to your vision. Some people try to re-make their restaurants to fit every fad that comes along. If they see a busy Southwest restaurant, they start making tacos, or if they think people are looking for Asian influences, they start adding soy sauce and ginger to everything. I just continued to do the food I started out to do, and after a while, people started to understand what I was doing and they liked it. I really connected with those guests, and they became regulars; then they told their friends, and they became regulars, too.

"Also," says Rautureau, "I was lucky to start when I did. It was good timing. If I had come to Seattle 10 years sooner; the people here might not have been ready for me, but I came at a time when people were feeling adventurous and they were looking for something new."

Ludger Szmania, who rules the range at his eponymous Magnolia eatery and a new satellite restaurant in Kirkland, says timing influenced his business, too.

"At first," says Szmania, "it was difficult. I opened Szmania in September of 1990 and the economy wasn't good. Then in January, the Gulf War broke out and there were nights when literally no one came in. But on those slow nights I did everything myself. I knew exactly who was in the restaurant and what they were eating. Gradually it got great. Now, after 11 years, I'd say the secret is just being there.

"It's hard because you have a family and you hire someone good and you trust them and you want to get out of there sometimes. So when things aren't done exactly the way you want them done, you look the other way a little; you close one eye maybe a quarter of the way. And you want the person you put in charge to succeed, so maybe you close that eye halfway. Maybe you close one eye. But the minute you start to close that other eye, you're dead. So if things start going the way you don't want them to go, you just have to be there."

Sometimes, people in the industry call this work "playing restaurant." Like playing house, or playing baseball, playing restaurant is simply a matter of going through the motions that constitute doing what needs to be done. Tables must be set, food must be prepared and plates have to be delivered to tables. What makes it real is that personal connection. Being there, making a real connection with the guest, is doing it right.

On Sept. 11, when the whole nation was numb from the impact of those planes slamming into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, into the Pentagon in Washington and into the hard ground in Pennsylvania, a lot of people in this industry were in shock. We had to question the significance of what we were doing. How could anyone ever care about going out to eat again?

At the restaurant where I work, the owner, Chris Canlis, called a meeting of all the staff scheduled to work that night and gave everyone a chance to express their feelings. "We're going to open tonight," he said, "because for a lot of people, Canlis is a place of comfort and security. It's a safe haven, and the personal connection we make with our guests is going to help them get through this thing. Being there for them is going to help us, too."

So we pulled ourselves together and did what we had to do. Canlis has a big staff; we range in age from barely 17 to almost 70. We come from Seattle, Boston, Hiroshima, Hawaii and the Philippines. We are Cambodian, Korean, Mexican and Floridian, but we all work together with one common goal, to serve great food and make a personal connection with our guests.

On September 14, when the president called for a national day of mourning and remembrance, we had a full house. But at 7 o'clock, we stopped service for a few minutes and passed out candles. The kitchen staff came out and stood still while the candles were lit at every table, and the servers stopped in their tracks, and we shared a moment of silence with our guests. Then, in one of the most surreal and authentic moments in my working life, the valet brought in an American flag, every member of the crew and each of the guests stood hand-over-heart and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

The guests dabbed their eyes and tried to compose themselves as the piano player softly tapped out the notes of "God Bless America." For the next few minutes, service was a little choppy; servers scrambled to get back into the rhythm of their tables and cooks clambered back to the stoves. But one thing was certain: A personal connection had been made.

Greg Atkinson, Canlis executive chef, is the author of "The Northwest Essentials Cookbook" (Sasquatch Books, 1999). Susan Jouflas is a Seattle Times news artist.