Bonny Doon cafe offers an intoxicating blend of flavors, with each gourmet course artfully paired with a wine

SANTA CRUZ — The Bonny Doon Vineyard Cellar Door Café can be found on the increasingly hip West Side of Santa Cruz, just a few blocks from the ocean. It's a festive and airy place — high ceilings, clean lines — and on a pair of recent visits my wife and I discovered the food to be a vibrant and bursting mix of flavors, textures and colors, all symbiotically matched to excellent wines and brought to the table with an easy graciousness.

The place, which opened last November, grew out of the friendship between Bonny Doon Vineyard owner Randall Grahm and superstar chef-owner David Kinch of Manresa Restaurant in Los Gatos. (They live near one another on the West Side.) With "Iron Chef" Kinch advising, the restaurant took shape, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients from small producers in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

To run the kitchen, the duo brought in a 26-year-old virtuoso named Charlie Parker, who had spent three years rising to the position of sous chef under Kinch at Manresa.

The result is an exceptionally friendly and creative environment where every touch — water is even brought to the table in what look like antique jade bottles — adds something to the aesthetic mix. You can sidle over to the adjoining tasting room to sample the wines (flights are $9). You can stay put in the cafe, sampling snacks (smoked fingerling potatoes and aioli, $5) or a rotating menu of small plates (i.e. line-caught halibut, summer squash, escarole and basil, $16) or focus on the $35 prix fixe dinner-of-the-evening, as we did. And what desserts!

The only slight drawback is that Grahm encourages ensemble dining — sharing long tables with strangers, in other words — which isn't a bad idea in a community-building sort of way. On our two nights, however, the various parties, after a quick hello, conversed separately while wallowing in delight over their meals.

Fine with us. We, too, were wallowing.

Our first prix fixe dinner opened with a warm farro salad with summer squash. Those textures: the crunch of the toasted farro grain along with the squash, delectably tender yet firm, with a splash or two of zucchini mousse. The wine, a 2008 Ca'del Solo Muscat ($11 for a quartino, which is one-quarter of a liter, or one-third of a bottle) breathed oranges, melon and blossoms.

The sweetness of this wine, a food unto itself, carried over into the entree: a whole, local rock cod, dramatically delivered on a large platter to oohs and ahs from neighboring tables. It was deep-fried (but not even a little greasy), golden brown and served on a bed of young rapini and sweet and sour eggplant, puréed with the yin-yang flavors of honey and sherry vinegar. Topped with basil and mint, the fish was delicate, plump, perfectly cooked, though not quite as meaty as we expected. Still, it was yummy, this fish. And paired with a 2007 Le Cigare Blanc ($14 for the quartino) — the dryness of the wine smartly contrasting with the sweetness of the fish — it made us very, very happy.

There was a nice buzz in the room, too, the sound of other happy people. Freddie Hubbard's trumpet was on the sound system, nice and quiet, not obtrusive. And over in the corner, adding a little star-power to the proceedings, vintner-author Grahm was schmoozing with friends.

And then came dessert: meringue with Meyer lemon cream and strawberries. Oh, my. This was pretty crazy, practically a candy store on a plate, but somehow not too sweet. Let me break it down: chewy meringue, potent citrus-infused whipped cream and strawberries at their height. Try rolling that around your mouth, along with a glass of 2007 Le Vol Des Anges ($10), with its hints of pear and quince and blood orange. Feeling decadent, we ordered a second dessert, the olive oil cake with vanilla cream and strawberries ($8), which brought us down to earth — my wife's own olive oil cake, a recent specialty, is moister and richer and more addictive. Sorry, Charlie.

Oh, well. We left feeling high on the ambience, the spectacle — rich wine colors abound in the décor — and the overall deliciousness. Stepping outside, we stopped at the bustling little organic brewery (Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery) around the corner; the immediate neighborhood is filled with destinations, including several other tasting rooms and the famous Kelly's French Bakery. And, oh, the beach: Natural Bridges State Park is just down the street. Lots to do if you make a day and night of it in Santa Cruz.

We returned to our new favorite restaurant 11 nights later — and our waitress recognized us: Hey, this really was our place. We decided to start with one of the small dishes, veal cheeks ($15), braised overnight in apple cider and muscat and served with Robuchon potatoes, soft as silk, and fresh haricots verts (green beans), which were strewn throughout this beautiful medley. It was fabulously flavorful and tender: "Basically, you don't have to chew this," my wife said, eyes gleaming. (The waitress agreed, calling it "perfect post-dental-surgery food.") We were beside ourselves, swirling our glasses of 2006 Ca'del Solo Dolcetto ($12 for the quartino), dusky and luscious with an earthy tang, and fabulous just to look at with its deep purple tones.

And then we began our prix fixe dinner with an "appetizer": seared strawberry and smoked chevre crostini, a feast for the eyes, resembling a large Hawaiian bridal veil, aflame with color and adorned with small edible flowers, adding piquant after-bursts of flavor. It was a little much, almost a dessert, with the strawberries melting into the smoked cheese, and then with our waitress delivering a rosy quartino of 2008 Vin Gris de Cigare ($11), practically a dessert wine, a filigree of fruits.

How could we continue? Easily, with our entree, the herb-crusted pork shoulder, the very best dish of our two-day fling at this restaurant. It was peppery, smoky and succulent, with just the right amount of fat, served with mounds of apples, turnips and other young root vegetables. "Who is this Charlie Parker?" we asked our waitress. There was so much going on with this dish — the colors, the abundance of the flavors, mingling — that the wine, a 2006 Ca'del Solo Sangiovese ($11 for the quartino), was almost a neutral backdrop. We didn't mind.

I suppose it had to end sometime. Warm corn waffles, bursting with the flavor of fresh corn and topped with stewed blueberries and a bit of melting butter — this was our dessert, our finale. We sipped at our dessert wine, a glass of 2007 DEWN Angel Paille ($8), tasting of apricot and who knows what else? By this time we were drowning in food sensations. I looked at my wife, who smiled and said, "This is living, isn't it, Richie?"