WHERE CAN ONE GO downtown for a casual, civilized lunch? When I worked in town my midday pause was usually a grab-it-and-go affair. On the rare occasion that I actually sat down in a restaurant, it invariably took too long and too much of my money. For whatever reason, I never thought about the Seattle Art Museum Cafe.

Why the heck not?

I guess I assumed one had to pay for a museum ticket to eat there or something, which I am here to announce is not the case. You enter off First Avenue (unless it’s the first Thursday of the month—free-museum day—in which case you can also walk in off Second), tell the ticket sellers you’re cafe-bound, and endure the searching look you’ll get from the security guard. Then you ascend the glorious marble steps, past the noble stone lions and hordes of lunching schoolchildren, to the mezzanine. It is the rare distinction of this white-marble-and-windows platform that it always seems to be flooded with sunlight, even in darkest February.

Seattle Art Museum Cafe 100 University, 654-3245 lunch Tue-Wed, Fri-Sun 11am-3pm; Thu 11am-7:30pm AE, DC, MC, V; full bar

This is one of the reasons I like the SAM Cafe: It’s light and refreshing. And though I’m no particular fan of ordering at counters, I’ve never waited longer than five minutes here to do so (which may mean I’m not the only one who doesn’t know quite how to drop in to SAM for lunch).

You may appreciate a bit of a wait at this point, however, as the menu demands some attention. Admit it: You had this highbrow joint pegged as a ladies-lunching kind of spot, big on foofy salads and “We took all the calories out of this for you, ma’am!” desserts. So what are braised short ribs doing on the menu? Or a “thinly sliced roasted pork butt” sandwich? (Pork butt? You don’t have to be a lunching lady to recoil at that word on a menu.) Or chicken and dumplings?

Surprise number one: This is hearty fare. Those short ribs ($8.25), for instance, arrive moist and meaty and in unexpectedly manly portion on a plate filled to burstin’ with rough-cut pickled vegetables and big, serious wedges of fried yams. As luck would have it, one of my companions for this visit was a card-carrying manly man, who began growling primally as this plate landed before him. The meat was faultless, and the yam fries made a sweet, original counterpoint.

Same verdict for the pork sandwich ($7.50), which arrived sweetly moistened with molasses barbecue sauce on an onion roll. Butt schmutt! This piggy’s posterior was ten-der and went down particularly well with the accompanying potato salad, daintily presented in a pretty leaflet of radicchio. Yum!

I also liked the grilled halibut sandwich ($7.75), which took some intriguing chances flavorwise. A thick plank of the whitefish, grilled to just-right, lay atop a schmear of tartar sauce on an onion bun. Also on that bun—this is the intriguing part—was something the menu called “sweet and sour slaw,” composed of shredded carrots and purple and green cabbage and plenty of caraway in a tangy vinegary wash. It was a lot of voices in a small room, so to speak, but they added up to a mysteriously compelling sound. I couldn’t take my lips off it.

LADIES CAN LUNCH here; there are plenty of nice, polite options for them. It’s just that these dishes might be more robust than said ladies might have bargained for. The SAM salad ($3.50) is a crunchy wedge of iceberg lettuce decorated with slices of cucumber and tomato and poured over with a thick, mayonnaise-y dressing that is positively overcome by stinky blue cheese. You’ve got to admire that, right?

The smoked salmon chowder ($3.95) is similarly bigger than life, but in a thick and velvety way most people will reflexively adore. It’s the ultimate truth-in-advertising dish—real smoky, real salmony—and luscious-creamy to the point you want to jump into a bathtub of it. The soup of the day ($3.50), which the day I ordered it was minestrone, was pretty nondescript by comparison—or even not by comparison.

As for those chicken and dumplings ($7.50)—nothing nondescript about ’em. They arrive in a steaming bowl of broth with rough chunks of chicken sticking out, green peas glistening like submerged emeralds, big carrots, and a single pale dumpling floating, moonlike, on the side. It’s a beautiful presentation, vaguely Asian in composition, and savory eating besides.

Another hit was the salade Nicoise Northwest ($7.75), an appetite-buster of a lunch in which a grilled fillet of crusted salmon appears alongside a briny assortment of marinated beans and peppers and onions and rosemary potatoes, all held together in a caper dressing and decorated with tomatoes, lemons, eggs, and olives. Bravo!

Less successful were the Tahoma salmon corn cakes ($6.95), which arrived swathed in a mild red pepper mayonnaise. “Relentless,” the table agreed, as our palates registered hit after hit of salmon, corn, and dill. It could have been subtle and wasn’t; instead it was . . .

ROBUST! So there you have it on this pretty damsel of a dining room: It looks delicate but eats hearty—the source of both its strengths and weaknesses. Desserts, like a nicely flaky marionberry tart ($2.75) and a pecan tart ($2.75), look dainty but are in fact quite rich—not unlike some women I know. Those women could lunch at the Seattle Art Museum Cafe, no question. Lucky for me, so can the ones who look a little portly and aren’t rich in the least.