Ridgway keeps it real - and really good - after all these years

As a rule, restaurant reviewers gravitate toward recently opened establishments in their never-ending quest to be first to let readers know whether the newcomer is worth a visit. Not today. This time I'm writing about a well-established restaurant owned and operated by one of this city's trailblazing chefs.

Ridgway Bar & Grill is the creation of long-time restaurateur Tony Ridgway and partner Sukie Honeycutt. Mr. Ridgway oversees the food operations while Ms. Honeycutt handles the wine. They also run Tony's Off Third, a deli and wine shop that adjoins Ridgway, and Bayside, a large seafood restaurant at the Village on Venetian Bay.

Over more than two decades, Mr. Ridgway has had a remarkable run in Naples, operating a string of successful establishments, including Truffles, Plums, Villa Pescatore and Chef's Garden, which occupied the space now filled by Ridgway Bar & Grill. Each restaurant had its own unique concept and menu; what they had in common was fresh ingredients combined in imaginative but not over-the-top ways.

In that respect, Ridgway continues that tradition, offering a wide-ranging menu that includes some classic comfort fare as well as dishes that allow the chef to demonstrate his creativity. The result is a menu with appeal to all tastes, from the strictly meat-and-potatoes folks to lovers of straight-up seafood to more adventurous souls.

Corn and red pepper cream sauce along with vivid green sugar snap peas add subtle flavor and crunch to first-rate crab cakes. This is a kitchen that doesn't use short cuts, either. The salmon is cured in house and the mozzarella is made there, as well as an impressive array of desserts.

Yet another appealing feature this summer is a $24 three-course, prix fixe menu available all night long. It offers a choice of six entrees with either a house or Caesar salad and the restaurant's signature carrot cake for dessert.

Considering that some of the entrees available on this menu are priced at more than $24 on their own, I figured that portions on the prix fixe menu would be smaller. That didn't appear to be the case. Two of the three members of my party chose the prix fixe and, in both cases, the portions were generous and the meal satisfying. The Caesar salad had a well-balanced dressing and was topped with shaved slices of mild grana padano cheese and crisp focaccia crostini. The soup du jour, crab chowder ($5.95), had a well-seasoned tomato base chock full of crab and veggies.

Fresh red snapper is expertly grilled and served with mango salsa. The entrees set before us were as bountiful as that of the person who didn't order the prix fixe. I tried the Bell & Evans herbroasted chicken with mashed potatoes, pancetta and onion demi-glace. Roughly half a chicken sat upon a large mound of creamy potatoes, all topped off with a savory sauce.

Bell & Evans is one of the country's oldest natural chicken companies, one that doesn't feed its chickens antibiotics or hormones and insists on an all-vegetable diet. The result is poultry with natural flavor, something that's been lost in most of the chicken available in this country. That flavor combined with herbs and demi-glace served as a testament to the potential of this oft-dismissed protein.

Also from the prix fixe menu came two plump crab cakes set in a pool of orangehued corn and sweet red pepper cream and accompanied by tender-crisp sugar snap peas. The cakes were made of back fin and lump crab meat, with just a bit of breading covering them to hold everything together, allowing the crab flavor to shine through. The intense corn and red pepper flavors of the sauce paired perfectly with the crab cakes, while the snap peas added color and crunch.

From the regular menu, our third diner selected grilled red snapper with mango salsa ($21). (Options include several other fresh fish selections, all of which may be grilled, sautéed or blackened and served with remoulade, mango salsa or lemon-caper beurre blanc.) The fish was perfectly grilled, the salsa lovely and fresh. Our server also brought some of the beurre blanc, which was as good as the salsa. From a list of 11 side dishes, our companion chose the potato and artichoke gratin ($7). It was a luscious and generously portioned casserole topped with cheese and crunchy bread crumbs.

A crisp, properly chilled Cakebread sauvignon blanc, with its grapefruit, kiwi and green apple notes and a hint of minerals, proved a worthy companion to all three dishes.

The carrot cake, which came with both prix fixe meals, was moist and dense, the cream cheese frosting just sweet enough. The star, however, was the apple galette ($11), which consisted of a buttery short pastry topped with thinly sliced Fuji apples and served with cinnamon ice cream.

There's as much attention paid to the caliber of service as to the quality ingredients used in the food. Our server had a professional polish about him. He clearly knew the fine points of hospitality and took pride in performing them. It appeared that servers at other tables possessed that same professionalism.

I'd recommend dining in the glass-enclosed room that overlooks a lush garden on the east side of the main room if there's space available.

From start to finish, this was an excellent meal delivered by a polished staff in a sophisticated setting. There are plenty of newer, flashier restaurants in town, but I've yet to visit one that delivered better value for my dining dollar.