The juicy cornish game hen ($18) has a gentle heat thanks to a guajillo glaze.

Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

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SONOITA — It was a chilly 40 degrees when we tumbled out of the car and rushed into Canela restaurant in this small town.

We were cold. We were hungry. We were positively drooling at the prospect of sitting down in the cozy restaurant and devouring a meal there.

See, we had been there before. The restaurant serves French-accented Southwest cuisine — food that glories in locally grown, often organic ingredients — and we knew that something good was coming.

The moment we closed the door behind us and blocked out the chill, we felt warm and welcomed and were wrapped in delectable scents: a touch of garlic, maybe. And we could have sworn we caught the earthy aroma of a rich mushroom broth. And, shoot, did that faintly smoky scent belong to pork ribs? (Yes, we soon discovered.)

We were quickly seated — it helped that we were eating at the very unfashionable hour of 5:30 p.m. As the evening gathered strength, most of the restaurant's nine tables were filled. Yet, it never got loud; the service never faltered. And such an eclectic crowd — an older couple at one table held hands and let their back-and-forth gazes speak for them. At another, a college-age couple laughed and cheerily gossiped. Great people-watching here.

The menu, happily, changes monthly at Canela. It's a small menu, and attention is well-paid to detail. We want to know what else owner/chef John Hall and his partner, Joy Vargo, can come up with. Besides, the roughly one-hour drive to Sonoita is lush with soft hills and distant mountains with snow spilling off the peaks. Sometimes the snow spills onto the roads. Who wouldn't want to drive down there on a regular basis?

The restaurant's ambience whispers of the Southwest, with a few Western images on the walls, but mostly it's a comfortable, laid-back feel.

Until you're served. Then elegance jumps into high gear.

For what else can you call the cornish game hen ($18), which we found on the menu late last year and again in January? We're willing to bet it stayed on because of demand.

The juicy meat was blanketed in a crispy skin that carried a low-level heat thanks to a wondrous guajillo glaze. Sitting next to this bird was a dreamy risotto spiked with fresh corn kernels and a mild green chile. The gentle heat of the dish was set off with sweet mandarin oranges. It sparkled with textures, exploded with flavors.

We thought we couldn't have been happier.

Then we bit into the elk ($22). Forget the gamey taste here; it didn't exist. This meat, crusted with a mixture of parsley, rosemary, sage and oregano, was deeply beefy. Elk isn't particularly fatty, yet the meat was moist and tender.

The thick slices of medium-rare meat were surrounded by gnocchi so light they almost floated, and cinderella squash so fresh you could swear there was a garden in the kitchen.

OK, we were officially smitten. We knew life couldn't get any better.

Then the stew came ($18). Now, don't pooh-pooh stew. The weather was cold, remember, and there was something terribly comforting about having a small cast-iron dutch oven placed in front of you with a hot, aromatic dish inside. Fall-off-the-bone tender organic beef swam in a full-flavored mushroom broth along with wild 'shrooms, carrots, Yukon gold potatoes, roasted corn, green chiles and crispy leeks.

We slurped down every last drop, ate every last crumb. We wanted more, even though we had had plenty.

Not everything was absolutely perfect. On our first visit we had a loin of pork with a delectable mustard sauce ($18). There's little fat on pork loin, so a light hand in cooking is necessary. This was a touch overdone, and there was too little mustard sauce to juice it up.

We say this with a bit of surprise because everything else sampled, especially on our return visit, approached five-star worthiness.

We finished off with a creamy cheesecake with a crunchy almond crust ($6), and a flourless chocolate cake ($7) that was dense and quickly devoured (Vargo does the desserts).

Then we walked slowly back to the car. The temperature must have dropped 10 degrees. We didn't notice.

Cruising the 47 miles back to Tucson we talked, reliving each bite, and wondered what we'll get to eat there next month.