In Villanova one day last week - one month, to be exact, after its long-delayed opening - Maia, the behemoth on the Main Line, was doing a credible, if slightly disorienting, lunch business.
The interior of the restaurant(s) and market is described in old news releases as "Natural Pacific Northwest meets Scandinavian Contemporary," meant to suggest, one presumes, a clean and fresh motif, though a staffer surveying the expanse took a stab at "SoHo Loft," which is, at least, less of a mouthful.
At first encounter, Maia can be a big bite indeed: The gourmet market alone is student-union-sized, gauzy box kites of lanterns dangling, tables sawn from long slabs of African babinga, brick ovens jetting blue flame.
Its first floor alone was, briefly, the entire layout of a FreshGrocer, the supermarket chain. And at a total of 22,000 square feet (including the fine-dining room upstairs), it is a third again larger than the indoor footprint of Table 31, Georges Perrier's tri-level whale of an eatery in the towering Comcast Center.
Maia's afternoon food choices - heavy on takeout made with local-farm produce, artisanal cheese, and bistro plates - can be just as daunting. Go in without a plan and you are confronted with daily oyster specials, and charcuterie plates of house-smoked and cured meats, or, say, oven-grilled Alsatian Tart Flambé (caramelized onions, Black Forest ham, and Gruyère), or (why not?), a Cape May Top Neck Clam Pizza.
Or soups and toasted sandwiches and craft beers and rib-eye steak frites, etc.
That's just on ground level.
Melissa Monosoff, the beverage director (formerly sommelier at the Four Seasons), said she has boiled things down. At 3 p.m. each day, she orders the same thing: a half sandwich of roasted vegetables (with Shellbark Hollow goat cheese), a half sandwich of Westphalian ham, and a freshly pulled Illy espresso from the sleek, fresh, full-service espresso-pastry bar up front.
Maia faces the parking lot on Route 30 between Villanova University and I-476 that it shares with the generic brick building's other main tenant, the office supplier Staples.
Perhaps Maia will one day answer the question: What would happen if you put an all-star team of chefs down the road from a deep-pockets Radnor corporate office center and served, among other things, the freshest day-boat scallops from Barnegat Bay?
