The Saint offers glory in a glass and grace on a plate

The Saint has nearly 90 individual bottles of tequila waiting for you right now. That's 27 bottles of anejo, 30 bottles of reposado, 21 blanco y platas, nine expensive bottles on the lista reserva and two dirt-cheap, dependable mixtos.

That's not a bottle list; that's a conquering army. You could sample a different tequila every day for almost 12 weeks solid, secure in the knowledge that if one of those bottles should happen to fall there would remain many, many fine bottles of tequila on The Saint's wall.

I'm not much of a tequila drinker. I'll take it when it's offered, but it's rarely my first choice, even in Mexican restaurants where the consumption of tequila is assumed. But there's something about The Saint's shock-and-agave overkill that makes me want to pitch all my obligations and begin drinking my weight in the stuff.

Maybe it's the lovely names the tequilas have: Chinaco Anejo, Herradura Seleccion Suprema and Cazadores Blanco, to name a few. Maybe it's the menu's description of how tequila is made -- it's not distilled so much as "wrested from the ground."

Whatever the case, it works. Last one to the tequila bar's a cactus-sucker. You can't miss The Saint -- it's on East Olive at Bellevue on the Hill, and it's painted a particularly vibrant shade of robin's-egg blue. You could probably find it from space.

Flammable though it is, The Saint's booze list only gets the bar halfway into orbit. A comprehensive tequila list can be a dangerous thing if taken unaccompanied, and on that order The Saint offers a modest selection of Mexican dishes. So far I've only had opportunity to try the pozole verde -- a pork, chicken and hominy soup that was just hearty enough to offset one of The Saint's smooth, tequila-based specialty bebidas, and just savory enough to make me crave two -- and the puerco pibil, a slow-roasted, citrus-marinated shredded pork dish served with beans, rice and compact-disc-size corn tortillas.

Film geeks will recognize the latter dish as the one whose greatness inspired Johnny Depp to go on a countrywide execution spree in Robert Rodriguez's "Once Upon a Time in Mexico." All I can say of The Saint's delicious take on this traditional favorite is that it would make Depp's character dangerously excited. It's that good, and at happy hour -- 4 to 6 nightly -- it's half-price, as are all the food items on The Saint's menu. Next time, I may order two plates and assure the kitchen that all I intend to fire in their direction are compliments.

The place itself is perfection. Even if I weren't completely partial to its food and the notion of becoming a tequila lush, I'd love hanging out at this split-level, triangle-shaped lounge, studying the photographs of famous matadors that hang on the walls (they've got quite a collection), and shooting the breeze with the friendly bartenders and waitstaff. They all dress in hot pink on Fridays, which I can tell you from experience looks pretty neat after you've had a few tequilas.

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