Food and Drinq

Chef-brothers Patrick and Terence Feury, with managing partner Scott Morrison, are looking for a May 6 rollout for Maia (789 E. Lancaster Ave., Villanova, 610-527-4888), their long-in-the-works, bi-level Euro-style restaurant, cafe, coffee bar and market. (That's Patrick Feury at left in the photo of the restaurant, with Scott Morrison in the middle and Terence Feury at right; photo by The Inquirer's Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel.)

At 22,000 square feet, Maia is one of the largest non-supermarket food operations around, and one of few with valet parking. (This is the Main Line.) Among investors are Michael Wei, Jerry Holtz and Richard Caruso, all behind Nectar, Tango, Basil Bistro and Yangming.

It'll be open daily from early morning till late night.

At Maia, you walk in past a coffee bar with baked-on-premises pastries. In the back is the market, which has a communal table made of babinga wood and what I'm told will be an enviable beer selection. The partners envision this area as a daily cocktail party.

Decor is a mix of industrial and rustic. Behind the coffee bar is the bar area with bistro seating (entrees $10 to $21). Upstairs, serving dinner only, is the restaurant proper with a second bar, underlit with fiber optics and made of white onyx. A strip of incandescent ice glows from the center of the dining room's long, dark-wood communal table. There's a fire pit out back near patio seating.

The restaurant menu (entrees $10 to $34) focuses on Western Europe, basically Germany to Scandinavia. The all-day bar menu ranges from $6 soup to $26 lobster en croute.

Patrick Feury's resume includes Le Cirque in New York, Les Olivades in Paris, Suilan at the Borgata in Atlantic City, and Nectar in Berwyn. Terence Feury worked at Le Bernardin in New York, and in Philadelphia at the Grill at the Ritz Carlton and Striped Bass. Sommelier Melissa Monosoff was recruited from the Four Seasons' Fountain.

A draft on the main dinner menu -- whose final prices are still being worked out -- includes:

+ salads: (cress, field greens, endive); soups (potato-based mussel, and vegetarian mushroom with the broth poured tableside).
+ apps: eel & foie gras; baby ravioli; linguine with lobster; peeky toe crab tortellini with braised baby artichokes; Dutch herring; double-headed prawns); a raw bar and raw fish (including sliced scallops, a terrine of raw fish, smoked tuna loin, house-smoked salmon,and cured wild striped bass).
+ entrees: halibut cooked in fata paper; citrus-cured salmon; seared scallops; lobsters with sun choke en croute; wild striped bass en crepinette; herb grilled tuna; monkfish; black sea bass; filet mignon with kobe short ribs; roasted guinea hen (from Four Story Hill Farm) and Jamison lamb.

In photos below: Morrison is at the restaurant's podium, fashioned from heavily burled walnut; Andrew Wood, who does the charcuterie (proud that his first pig arrived on April 5); and a long table in the bar in the restaurant on the second floor.