The Pink Door is a Seattle institution. It’s tucked into the chaos of the Pike Place Market area and offers Cirque-du-Soleil fun—an energetic, dreamlike experience punctuated with good food and drinks and happy people.

There are two good ways to experience the Pink Door. You can give into the spectacle and dine on one of the cabaret nights, or, if you don’t like the idea of some flexible stranger sweating into your bassoon, come for lunch when you can sit at the bar or on the patio in peace. If it’s wine you’re after, the list here is nice, with the standard Seattle focus on Italy and the Pacific Northwest.

Not every dish at The Pink Door is great, but the kitchen does wonders with seafood and makes a consistently perfect lasagne. Pappardelle al ragù bolognese has delicate folds of wide egg noodles with just enough meat sauce clinging to them, plus curls of shaved reggiano. The risotto—recipes change often—can be a thing of beauty: for example, creamy yet distinct grains of rice floating in a supple butternut sauce with crisp ribbons of shaved fennel. But who cares about the risotto’s texture when there’s a stunningly attractive trapeze artist hanging upside down above your table?