Natasha's Café and Boutique isn't easy to describe.

It's a "relaxed European style café" in Lexington, Ky., says its Web site. But that simply does not satisfy the curious minded. Because a few lines down the Web surfer learns that it was founded by a communist Russian Jew and an American Baptist with Buddhist tendencies.

Then there's this: "We don't believe the customer is always right."

How does one go about describing this place?

Let's start by cataloguing what Natasha's isn't.

It isn't on Southland Drive anymore, for starters. In early July, it's opening its doors downtown at 112 Esplanade, in a newly refurbish retail space. It just made sense to make the move, said Gene Williams, CEO (and husband of Natasha Williams, owner). "Downtowns are the most geographically, socially and historically democratic places to be," he explained. "They give people coming from all directions easy access and, historically, are where people go to see the new trends in fashion and culture." Plus, the Williamses needed more inventory and office space for their online business.

It isn't a psychiatrist's or a fortune-teller's office. But you can, via the Web site, ask the café's dishwasher questions regarding "therapy, solving your existential questions, or everyday problems, healing relationships and learning more about doing dishes." There's a recipe for making black holes there, too, but neither is it a resource for physicists and astronomers.

It isn't just a clothing boutique carrying romantic, adventuresome and natural fiber apparel - "wearable art," according to the owners - because the place also serves home-cooked food and international coffees.

But it isn't just a restaurant serving up savory, unusual Russian and Mediterranean dishes like zharkoe pork and foulle, because the place also sells artifacts and exotic jewelry from around the world.

Gene Williams wryly sums the place up: "It's like a kind of kooky around-the-world Cracker Barrel, but just off the Internet superhighway."

People, you can be sure of this: Cracker Barrel, it isn't.

Maybe what Natasha's Café and Boutique is, definitively, is not important. According to Natasha Williams, "We'd rather deny contradictions here in America than embrace them." She and her husband can live with the contradictory nature of their singular business, so perhaps you should, too.

What is certain is that their customers love the place. It isn't everywhere in Central Kentucky that a customer can find their foreign fare inspired by Greek, Russian, African and Middle Eastern cuisines. It isn't everywhere - anywhere - that you can find authentic slippers from China, kimonos from Japan, coffee from Turkey, a yak hat from Nepal, a donkey jawbone from Chile (for playing music, silly) or miniature Zen gardens.

As you might have guessed, theirs is a destination shopper. Most people don't accidentally drift into Natasha's, with no idea what they're getting into and purchase a yak hat - though that's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Most, however, have an explicit reason to be there. "They're not here to by an object, but a feeling," said Natasha.

Or an "existential experience," said Gene.

For instance, you spy a mask from Africa on Natasha's shelf. You like it, and you have the urge to purchase it. Then you realize you don't really need a mask from Africa. In a slight dither, your frugal conscience alerted, you then wonder Why am I here anyway? That's quite a deep quandary to have while shopping. Without recourse to the philosophical writings of Kierkegaard, Sartre, Kafka or Camus, you buy it anyway, probably oblivious to the fact that you have exercised one of the philosphers' existential tenets: You have created meaning in a sometimes crazy universe with your act of free will, and you will own up to it, whatever the consequences.

"I don't think anyone has an existential moment buying bread," quipped Gene.

OK, maybe that's a little too heavy. Try this: They've got pieces, echoes and intimations of faraway, romantic places on their shelves and in their kitchen. They tug at your "childhood dreams of travel, exotic places and pirate ships," said Natasha.

It worked on Bill Gates.

That's right, the richest person on the planet, is a Natasha's customer. Well, at least his company, Microsoft, is. They ordered 200 Zen gardens from Natasha's online store for an upcoming in-company seminar. The little wooden boxes, full of sand and polished pebbles, are supposed to bring a pacifying calm to the harried businessperson that smooths the sand with a miniature rake. "We know Bill Gates will get one, but we don't know which," said Gene. Jokingly, he added, "So we have to make each perfect."

This brush with a celebrity billionaire aside, Natasha's typical walk-in (as opposed to Internet) customer is: 30 to 40 percent of the time an out-of-towner, often a middle-aged or older woman buying "artistic, adventuresome dresses," said Natasha and mostly professionals like college professors, teachers and nurses.

This reinforces Gene's theory on business and art - a combination that some people automatically assume is incongruous. "Entertainment, food, the arts - theater, music, museums - and independent operators are the soul of a city. Look at Wilimington, N.C., Charleston, W.Va., Portland, Ore., Austin, Texas or Denver, Colo. Ask economic development people in these cities what arts and entertainment have done for them. They don't think that patronizing the arts is quaint. It's business. Art is a primary attraction for money. Always has been." Gene's point? The downtowns of these cities are booming.

And counter culturists, bohemians, druggies, vagabonds and ne'er-do-wells aren't footing the boom. Suits are down there in droves as well, dropping cash and slapping down the plastic. "You don't have to be bohemian or a free spirit, you don't have to buy into those principles. You just go to the hippest, funkiest places," said Gene.

Like Natasha's.

If you keep asking the Williamses how the store started, you'll probably finally hear Natasha confess this. "When I came here from Russia, I asked 'Where do we go?'"

To sit, eat and talk with interesting folks over coffee. They couldn't find the right place, exactly. So they started their own.

And you know, as Gene and Natasaha remind people, isn't it in the kitchen - or around a campfire - that culture happens? Isn't that where we prepare our foods, tell (and invent) our stories, engage in and honor certain customs and remember our pasts - or at least the humorous anecdote from the day before?

Welcome to Natasha's. You'll be surrounded by peculiar objects from around the world, crying out for your perusal and inspection. You'll be surrounded by scrumptious foreign food. You'll be served by one of the most congenial and eclectic group of employees - sons of owners, sons and daughters of other continents - you've ever seen.

Just know this. When you step in here for some culture, you're not in Cracker Barrel anymore.

"Definitely," the Williamses agreed, "too weird to franchise."