Maia

It isn't often a restaurant feels compelled to provide a map and bullet-point directory to help navigate its inner workings. Then again, it isn't often that the shell of a former supermarket is transformed into a maze of gastronomic ambition the size of Maia.

So I found it handy to study the poster-size flow chart near the entrance titled, "Maia is many things. . . ."

To the left is the cafe with mod yellow chairs where students from nearby Villanova and I-476 commuters fuel up on Illy lattes and house-baked pastries. To the right is the eat-in market, with 200 craft beers in the fridge, glass cases brimming with house-cured salamis and artisan breads, and long communal tables shaved from African babinga trees where Main Line matrons graze on morel pizzas, panini, and slices of guinea hen terrine. To the far left behind tall framed-glass doors, meanwhile, is the bistro, a thrumming vortex of exposed-brick noise and well-coiffed humanity wrapped around a stainless steel bar ("Cougar Central," grrr-ed my companion, peering up from our pizza topped with tender and briny clams.)

Maia is many things, indeed - and that's just the ground floor. The upstairs portion alone could have been an event for the local eating scene, with a sprawling fine-dining room for two star chefs, brothers Patrick and Terence Feury, to conjure one of the area's most thrilling new contemporary seafood menus.

Up here, the "smoked" tuna sashimi is actually still smoking when it comes to the table in a bowl of swirling hickory mist. The big prawns have two heads. And succulent lobster comes in myriad masterful ways - gently steeped in butter over fresh peas and wild mushrooms; wrapped in herbed tortellini beneath preserved lemon and artichokes; roasted beneath a truffled froth over white asparagus and purple potatoes. Even the pre-meal freebies - warm little gougeres puffs filled with Shellbark Farms goat cheese - were memorable.

And yet, this complex is far bigger than any one part. This is fine dining big-box style, with 20,000 square feet and nearly 400 seats in all. So Maia's many proprietors, including the Feurys, Nectar owners Scott Morrison and Michael Wei, Northeast sausage-meister Walter Rieker, and landlord-partners Richard Caruso and Jerry Holtz, are hedging their $8 million bet with the multi-concept approach.