Transformers

If Sarasota has become an exciting culinary destination in the last few years—and I unabashedly declare that it has—it’s in large part because of six transformative restaurants and the creative spirits that run them.

This is their story, and I’m going to start it with an unapologetic love song to my favorite of them all. It also is the newest of the six, which is no coincidence. Without the precedent-shattering, risk-taking ventures that succeeded before it opened its doors, its success would have been impossible.

The restaurant is MoZaic on Main Street downtown, and the power behind its knockout menu is a singular chef from Morocco named Dylan Elhajoui, a culinary synthesist like none we’ve seen before. When I reviewed MoZaic not long after it opened last December, I declared it to be one of the best new restaurants to open here in recent memory. The intervening year has proven that its flawless opening week was no flash in the pan.

There are many ingredients in the recipe for a stellar restaurant, but first you’ve got to have food that gets people excited. This is hardly a new idea, but Chef Dylan’s masterful, incredibly subtle, supremely harmonious blend of Mediterranean cuisines executed with French flair is. The result is a marvel of inspiration and innovation, tempered by a realist’s grasp of his customers’ appetites for adventure at table.

One of the many showpieces that have won raves from diners is the chef’s couscous. A seven-vegetable stunner graces the standing menu, but on Wednesday nights he pulls out all the stops and offers half a dozen heavenly variations on a theme. There’s couscous with duck and pears, with Cornish hen and preserved lemons, with lamb shank and prunes, with to-die-for merguez sausage and fennel, with eggplant and root veggies, and, finally, a royal version that pops duck, lamb and sausage into the same tajine.

I have two personal favorites from the core menu. One is a fabulous appetizer of sautéed quail in a richly fragrant forest mushroom coat on a grape and thyme jus accented by little cubes of chevre polenta and nibbles of the goat cheese itself. One of these days I’ll work up the nerve to ask the chef if he’ll whip up a triple batch for me. If he consents, I’ll order a bold red wine and trance out right there in the dining room. My other favorite is a trio dish starring sliced and fanned duck breast, two sumptuous little lamb chops and a beautiful white dome of blue crab flan. Take a moment to admire the composition on the plate, but only a moment. The real pleasure is in the eating.

Dishes like these, as well as a complimentary different-every-evening amuse bouche worthy of the name, are served in an atmosphere both welcoming and exhilarating by a wait staff second to none. Add in a wine list that is almost as much fun to read as it to sample—by the glass, by the bottle or in tasting flights of three-ounce pours—and you have all the major pieces in place, at least the visible ones. There’s a whole lot more going on behind the scenes, but without them the enterprise just wouldn’t gel.

To sum up: superior, utterly reliable, imaginative cooking + world-class, cordial service + inviting setting + inspired wine list = wow! It works brilliantly for MoZaic, but MoZaic didn’t spring out of the void. Somebody had to prepare the ground so we’d be ready for Chef Dylan’s artistry when it arrived.