IT'S HARD TO PICTURE a pastry chef who doesn't have a sweet tooth. But Julie Cookenboo (yup, Cookenboo) is just as fond of savory flavors-as the tray of heirloom tomato and summer squash tarts she's just pulled out of the oven attest.

"Actually, I don't like things too sweet," admits the baker, who, in a show of quasi-monogamy rare in the restaurant industry, has spent a decade at Oliveto, after 11 years at San Francisco's Zuni Cafe. "There's a certain level of sweetness I just won't go above."

Inspiration for her never-too-sugary, subtly salted creations, she says, comes from local fruit, her colleagues, and the same tattered cookbooks she's been perusing for years but reads differently every time.

With two kids to care for and three meals a day at Oliveto needing pastries and desserts, you might expect the 51-year-old, self-trained Cookenboo to be relying on old favorites at this point.

Her creations, however, are only getting better. "Back when I was less experienced, I'd have an idea but couldn't execute it," she says with a laugh. "Now my ideas actually work!" (Do they ever.) And with the support of three assistants, she is able to change her menu constantly. "Oh, I'd get bored if I didn't," she says.

When fresh-picked nectarines arrive at her door, for instance, she might serve them with blackberries and a mascarpone Bavarian cream. Or she might decide to make a flaky tart, flanked by a mound of blackberry ice cream, instead.

While there's always a tart on the menu, the other spots on her list are up for grabs. One night, she bakes a torte with Gravenstein apples using a recipe former chef Paul Bertolli brought back from a trip to Italy. Sometimes there's a biscotti, such as pistachio-sultana (sultanas are Turkish golden raisins). Or sorbets and ice creams that often come in eccentric but invigorating flavors, such as Thai basil.

Her only staple is her chocolate cake, a recipe she honed during her Zuni days. Once at Oliveto, she searched for a new recipe. "It was a real quandary. I tried to find another. I tried a flourless, I tried a straightforward 'rich,' but nothing even came close!" says Cookenboo. "It's the best chocolate cake I've ever had."

She's only tweaked the recipe slightly: She used to make it with semisweet chocolate, but now she uses bittersweet, which has even less sugar. Leave it to Cookenboo to show us how sweet restraint can be

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