After a decade running the kitchen at Cafe Juanita, Lauren Thompson is now on this side of Lake Washington, shaping a new era at Cafe Lago. An accomplished chef from one of our region’s formative fine dining restaurants remaking one of Seattle’s beloved Italian spots?

It’s exciting news—except the move quietly happened a few months back.

Thompson’s name may not resonate as much as that of her longtime boss, the James Beard Award–winning Holly Smith. But the chef has a formidable track record that includes two stints and a combined 12 years as Juanita’s chef de cuisine, plus a tenure at Lark in its early days, under another Beard-winning chef, John Sundstrom.

She’s clearly impressive in her own right (I still think about this conversation, eight years ago, about work, motherhood, powering through fatigue, and using a breast pump behind a curtain while fielding soft drink requests from coworkers). Now she’s helping Cafe Lago owner Carla Leonardi evolve her 34-year-old Montlake restaurant.

But not too much.

Lago is the kind of place where numerous dishes are sacrosanct among its loyal regulars—the caesar salad, for instance, or the 14-layer lasagna. After a week of learning and listening, says Leonardi, Thompson tweaked the salad: “All she did was, put a fresh squeeze of lemon at the end. Per salad. Not in the actual dressing. You taste the difference immediately.”

Leonardi founded Lago with her former husband, the late Jordi Viladas, in 1990. Much of its food began with him—and his mother. While Leonardi was the one with Italian heritage, “They were so fanatical about their recipes, and doing it traditionally,” says Thompson. Over the years, as the kitchen maintained what Viladas had established, a game of “broken telephone” transpired. Recipes changed a bit. The meatballs lost the traditional veal; Thompson has restored it, via sustainably raised meat from Samish Bay Cheese cows.

Some of her work in these first few months feels almost forensic. “The dishes that I can’t touch I am touching,” she says. “But I’m moving them back to what Jordi’s original recipes were.”

When Leonardi was looking for a new chef, her friend Michelle Magidow, owner of Union Saloon, suggested she talk to Thompson. Turns out, the chef was ready to try something new, and was considering a schedule that lets her see more of her kids, who are now teenagers.

Cafe Lago won’t be morphing into Café Juanita west anytime soon—it’s Northern Italian versus Tuscan, tasting menus versus wood-fired pizza. While she’s no doubt a careful steward for Lago’s legacy, the restaurant will hopefully provide Thompson with a chance to flex her own talent and sensibility. I'm especially eager to revisit the house pasta under her watch.

But most of all, after years of technique-centered fine dining, Thompson can geek out on seasonal produce: “There’s three ingredients on the plate and there’s nowhere to hide. If there’s one little thing that’s not quite right…there’s nothing that’s going to cover that up.”