Bob's Place, a small, unassuming hangout on Central Avenue, serves good, no-frills meals in a storefront setting full of framed circus photographs. But on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, Bob's magically morphs into Ray's, an intimate café of candlelight and decorous drapes where the chef serves a fixed-price supper of four courses for $34. He can accommodate only 30 people, so reservations are essential.

Dinner at Ray's is an adventure, and it works best for a group of four or six, because a large part of the fun is talking about the food, the wine and the whole unique approach to this funky shared space. Also, the place is so small that if you don't bring friends, you'll have to make friends with the people on either side of you.

You choose between two appetizers. The salad is the chef's choice. Select between two entrées (usually a seafood and a meat) and then you have a choice of two desserts. Bring your own wine. If you don't want what's on the menu, chef usually has a steak choice off the menu.

Behind this concept is Raymond Schilcher, who grew up in the hotel business in New York, graduated from France's prestigious Cordon Bleu culinary school and for the last 25 years has cooked at restaurants such as Feasts, Café Luna and Water on Martha's Vineyard. Now he and his partner, Melanie Haddock, have settled on Siesta Key (they have a three-month-old baby, Grace) and are determined to bring Schilcher's twist on coastal cuisine to the Rosemary District.

Schilcher layers many flavors to achieve unique versions of standards such as ribs, steak, even swordfish, which he glazes with wasabi mayonnaise. (He says that was one of Dan Aykroyd's favorites on the Vineyard.) If a recipe calls for a flavored oil, Schilcher uses two or three different ones, always looking for complexity and depth. He'll pair foie gras with pineapple slices in a rich reduction, steam local red snapper in coconut milk and lobster broth and then serve it with a combination of puréed yucca and sweet potato, garnishing it with a crispy wisp of plantain.

Schilcher says he's challenged himself never to repeat the same menu. And he presents the food beautifully, with color and thoughtful architecture, on oversized white bistro plates. If you want to know what the menu will be so you can bring the perfect wine, Schilcher will fax you the weekend menu if you phone him early in the week. Remember to bring cash or a checkbook, because he is not a man of plastic.

Ray's at Bob's Place

600 Central Ave., Sarasota

(941) 346-0683

Dinner: Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Two seatings, 6 and 8 p.m.

No bar or cellar. Bring your own wine, $5 corkage fee.

Reservations essential

No credit cards. Pay with cash or personal check

Street parking

Wheelchair access

Afternoon Delight

Now that the seasonal visitors have had their fill of the Columbia Restaurant, it's time for you and me to reclaim this St. Armands institution, prized for a premier comfort-food lunch of a Cuban sandwich and the 1905 salad, or the black bean soup and the sandwich, or the salad and the garbanzo bean and sausage soup. Decisions, decisions.

This restaurant, which exudes the maximum of Old World ambience, offers a wide-ranging menu of traditional Spanish and Cuban favorites, many quite fancy in their presentation and complicated in the cooking, such as two versions of paella, the red snapper Alicante or the Columbia's famous pompano en papillot, which is fish baked in a bag. But for a soul-satisfying lunch it's hard to surpass the simple joys of soup, salad or the Cuban sandwich served up Columbia-style.

The 1905 salad commemorates the year that Casimiro Hernandez Sr. opened his Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City, Tampa. In years following, after sons-in-law came to the family business, the Gonzmart name became prominent. Today there are seven Columbias throughout the state; the St. Armands one was the second to come online, in 1959. At the helm today are Richard and Casey Gonzmart of the fourth generation.

The 1905 salad is so central to this restaurant that it's trademarked. The garlic-charged chopped mélange includes iceberg lettuce, strips of ham, tomato, olives, Swiss cheese and grated Romano cheese. It's assembled and dressed (and, oh, that dressing!) tableside by a courtly server in formal attire. The servers are so comfortable in this art that their amazing dexterity seems playful and offhand.

There are four soup choices, but the two you want to choose between at lunch are the vegetarian black bean and white rice (which you can enhance with a little clump of chopped white onion) or the Spanish bean, made with garbanzo beans, chunks of potato, chorizo sausage and smoked ham along with savory spices simmered in a ham/chicken broth. You get a cup of either when you order a combination plate. The Cuban sandwich is composed of smoked ham, pork, salami, mustard and dill pickle on hot, fresh and crusty Cuban bread that comes to the table wrapped in butcher paper.