Sue Mihalyi didn't so much choose catering as it chose her. She'd always been interested in food and gardening, and when she ran out of money in school, she was offered a job in a respite care program in Rapid City, South Dakota. That job involved cooking, among other things, and led to her starting a restaurant, Sprouts House, in Rapid City.

Vegetarian in South Dakota? "At first it was," Mihalyi says, "but I added chicken after a while." Still, she tells stories of dyed-in-the-wool carnivores coming to love veggie pockets. She might not have converted them, but at least she led them to a new trough.

Originally from the North Country, she returned to New York State after a family tragedy, working in environmental activism in Syracuse. Through that work she met Alison Clark, then working locally with Politics of Food, and came to work on sustainable agriculture issues in Rochester.

All the while, she cooked. One friend says, "When Sue Mihalyi invites you to dinner, you go." In Rochester, she has worked for Susan Plunkett's catering business for a decade. She calls Plunkett a mentor, and she could do much worse. The political jobs had trouble generating income, and while Mihalyi knew that food service was hard work, the work was there, and so she catered.

A few years back, a friend had a friend with a degenerative disease. "It's such a hard thing," Mihalyi said, "knowing there's no cure. My friend wanted to do something, so she asked me to bring a meal a week." And so it went. A woman asked for two weeks of meals after hip surgery and became a regular customer. People bought dinners for friends who had babies. The Eclectic Café brings you Dinner @ Home was born.

Here's how it works: Mihalyi sends a menu via e-mail every weekend. Each day, Monday through Thursday, features an entreé with side and starch, plus an optional salad. You e-mail or call in your order, and on the appointed day, your dinner shows up at your door, hot and in a lovely presentation.

My first meal was Baltimore-style fish cakes with steamed vegetables and sweet potato puffs. The fish cakes were outstanding, mostly tilapia (not primarily batter), sauteéd (not fried), subtly spiced, and light. The veggies were plain but handled with care. The puffs were tasty, but lost some crispness during the trip to my home.

The second meal was luxurious chicken paprika (Mihalyi's grandfather was Hungarian). Its strength wasn't so much a family secret as the care Mihalyi put into making a true stock from the chicken bones and skin. This imparts what she calls "the necessary lusciousness." It came atop wonderful dumplings (like a large version of spaetzle). Green beans were the side.

Both dishes were $13 per serving (including starch and side). And at both meals, we added salads ($4 each). Both the vinaigrette with the crab cakes and the caraway vinaigrette with the chicken complemented the mains nicely.

Eclectic Café is an appropriate name, as a list of recent dinners attests: whiskey-glazed pork chops, pasta Bolognese, Moroccan kabobs, buttermilk friend chicken, ropa vieja (Cuban beef stew), shrimp etouffé, crêpes Florentine, and on and on. Her system allows her to be creative, probably to a greater extent than a restaurant can afford, and she takes advantage. The foods tend to be homey, just from a global perspective.

She's not religious about it, but Mihalyi tries to serve local ingredients. In season, she uses produce from her own garden. She'll use organic and whole foods whenever she can. She's also adept at catering to dietary restrictions, easily handling vegetarians and vegans, as well as people who need to avoid gluten, lactose, or anything else.

Meals are generally $12-$14, salads $4, and delivery is $3 per meal or 50 cents a mile (whichever is more), making a full meal about $20 per person. That's about the same as going out to a moderately priced restaurant, but the excellent meals come right to your table, ready to go. As Mihalyi says, it's for those times "when you want to go out to eat, but you don't want to go out to eat." Many of us know that feeling.

Eclectic Café, (585) 271-7713, suemihalyi@frontiernet.net. Dinners Monday through Thursday.