Caruso's Italian Café & Wine Bar, Keizer

“We had reserved a window spot and watched the birds and boats on the lake until dark,” wrote a reporter for the Statesman Journal after a visit to Caruso’s Italian Café & Wine Bar. The view of Staas Lake, visible from almost every seat in the house, was instrumental in landing the eatery a spot on the newspaper’s Best of list in 2011 and 2012. With his wife Angie in charge of hospitality, chef Jerry Phipps brings years of culinary experience to bear on northern Italian cuisine. In addition to pastas such as linguine and prawns, Phipps sautés halibut in a sherry-wine reduction and pairs milk-fed veal with mushrooms and light marsala sauce.

Fairy lights encircle the ceiling of the dining room, adding to the soft luminescence playing off of the burnished gold walls. Visitors chat with glasses of wine and small plates in the wine room’s sumptuous armchairs and loveseats alongside stuffed trophy beanbags. Beneath a wide pergola outside, silverware clatters merrily against the murmur of a stone fountain.