THE CLOSEST SMALL TOWN TO SEATTLE is that leafy Mayberry called Vashon Island, and its main-street café is the effervescent community hub known as the Hardware Store. There may be no better midsummer day trip for landlocked urbanites. Planted in a sprawling historic hardware store in the heart of the island’s commercial center, the restaurant sports the original creaking wood floors, the sunshine-streaming windows, the nook-and-cranny tables, and the hordes of regulars to fill them—every day, lunch and dinner, plus brunch on Sundays. Yep, everyone does know everyone in here—even the servers—but nobody’s excluding the newcomers, just like nobody in the kitchen’s holding back on the flavors. An appetizer bowl of mussels comes skillet-seared with bacon and the pleasant surprise of tart apples in the shallot-wine sauce; the vegetarian wild-mushroom pappardelle Stroganoff comes elegantly deepened with Marsala and crowned with crème fraîche. Everything, cracker-bread pizzas to lavish salads to the signature buttermilk fried chicken, is brought off with more vibrancy and exactitude than captive island audiences can typically expect, and the fizzy ambient spirit of the place is simply irresistible.