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Chelsea's Kitchen
5040 N. 40th St., 602-957-2555

March and April are the months when you owe it to yourself to find a restaurant with a patio, an outdoor bar, a terrace, anything, but you need to get outside and enjoy the weather before “it” happens. So my associate and I were feeling most pleased with ourselves as we caught a late afternoon round of Mojitos at Chelsea’s Kitchen’s open-air bar. Like the rest of Arcadia, we’ve been waiting a while for DeMarco’s latest creation to come to fruition. As expected, it was worth the wait.

The atmosphere at Chelsea’s is simple and contemporary without taking itself too seriously. Let’s call it contempo-comfortable. The bar is big enough to find yourself a spot if you choose to bop in for a ceviche and a glass of wine. I like how the interior bar becomes the outside patio when the large windows are swiveled open. It’s a reminder that when you build a restaurant from the ground up, you get a chance to make some very effective decisions about design.

The menu’s design has some play in it. We started the evening with Shrimp Ceviche Baja Style ($11). The ceviche comes with saltines, which are making a comeback. I’m a big ceviche fan and I hope its popularity keeps growing. Now from there we had a pretty wide array of choices in front of us. We could keep with the southwest angle and go for a variety of tacos or we could change course and go for steaks, roasted chicken, grilled prime rib or a burger. I decided on the green chili stew with griddled corn cake ($15). I expected chili verde but this was a bit different, sort of cowboy’d up, I suppose with the corn cake in the middle and all the product chopped down to a finer cut which made it seem like a hybrid between classic chili verde and a Texas-style chili. Very good stuff.

We also ordered the “Picnic Style” Dixie Pan Fried Chicken ($16), which came with mashed potatoes, veggies and a homemade cinnamon roll (how cool!). Over the top comfort food was the last thing I expected from the Postino and La Grande Orange pedigree so I was intrigued with the choice. I figured there was going to be some sort of trick in the works. Maybe the bird had an elaborate brine or it was cold smoked before the bread and fry rigmarole. Actually not. It was simple pan-fried chicken, and it was nicely done.

Chelsea’s does not have an identity crisis. It all works together under one roof just fine. Chelsea’s can be a glass of wine or a cocktail on the patio with Tuna Tar Tar (a tasty appetizer that easily supplied four of us for $14) and it can deliver child’s plates like Grilled Cheese ($4) or Scrambled Eggs and Bacon ($4). By doing just that, Chelsea’s judges all great dishes and all great customers equally and ignores the cliché of theme we expect.

Chelsea’s serves dinner in a cell phone, tank top and “canal wear” free environment, six days a week, starting at 4 p.m. Lunch is a few months down the road.