Sublime Finds

The new Café Lurçat should do the same good things for its end of Fifth Avenue South in Naples that Campiello has done for its corner of Third Street South. Located in the Moorish building that formerly housed Annabelle's, the place has been gutted and reconstructed as a modern bistro, with woven leather chairs upstairs in a room dominated by enormous white lampshades suspended from the ceiling. Downstairs the atmosphere is breezy and comfortable, with white sofas in the lounge and molded chairs in sherbet shades on the porch.

The D'Amico family, which operates food-service businesses in Minnesota and this part of Florida, owns both Campiello and Café Lurçat. Lurçat has a lot in common with a D'Amico enterprise in Minneapolis-same name, similar décor and a fresh attitude toward a bar-lunch menu that specializes in small plates so you can nibble light or mix-and-match items to fill out a full meal. The restaurant is named for a French 20th-century painter and tapestry designer, Jean Lurçat (1892-1966), whose work Richard D'Amico admires.

The food at Lurçat is contemporary American, which means you'll find hamburgers, but created with flair. A white rectangular plate arrives with two side-by-side three-and-a-half-ounce oniony burgers between warm, pillowy buns. You receive two white crocks, one of ketchup and the other containing béarnaise sauce. If you order a side of French fries (crisp outside, cloud light on the inside and not ashamed to be tastefully greasy), they come mounded in a silver-tone metal pot with heart-shaped handles. The twin burgers are $6.50, French fries an additional $5.50. A presentation of five varieties of cheeses could tempt as either a lunch or dessert, and the pulled-pork sandwich with barbecue sauce at $8.50 is a hungry-man lunch, whether it's called a small plate or not.

Café Lurçat likes to serve food in cookware. At night in the upstairs dining room, the vegetable sous chef arranges his braised artichokes, roasted cauliflower, carrots, or sautéed Brussels sprouts in shiny copper cookware. The presentation is enough to send you straight to Williams-Sonoma for pots and pans to use as sexy serving pieces. The executive chef at Café Lurçat is Andrew Wicklander, until recently the chef at Campiello.

Some of the evening meals upstairs, such as the sea bass marinated with miso ($23), are available downstairs in the lounge or out on the porch as small plates (where the sea bass costs $13.50). The flat iron steak is available both up and down, as are the tuna tartare, duck terrine, smoked Kentucky ham and raw oysters.

I am looking forward to eating my way through the dinner menu because it starts with modern bistro fare-prime rib, salmon, New Zealand lamb rack, seared ahi or shrimp-and then reaches higher. How about roasted sweetbreads with winter root vegetables ($12) or braised pork belly with Vermont cheddar grits ($9)? You might want to investigate the fried beef and cabbage salad or the veal breast with sage and lemon ($18). The kitchen excels in ordinary foods paired in interesting ways, such as the buckwheat crepe with brie, smoked ham and figs.

Café Lurçat's wine list numbers 250 bottles, with 29 available by the glass. Additionally, the bar will compose flights of wine so you can sample three or four with dinner. Each pour is about two ounces, and the cost ranges from $3 to $10 for each. This is an efficient and pleasurable way to try new food-friendly labels you've heard about but not tasted. The cocktail menu includes all the trend drinks, which means you can order a mojito, but you might also sample a Naples Sunset, which combines Absolut kurant, chambord and cava. It's garnished with a lemon twist and sells for $8.50. And because every new posh café needs a signature martini, Lurçat has one, too. Its riff on the classic is made with Ketel One vodka and garnished with a pickled watermelon rind.

The signature dessert is a plate of small warm cinnamon-sugar doughnuts ($5). This trend, initiated at some of the more chichi New York restaurants, has caught on in several regions of the country. Makes you realize that doughnuts are an anytime food. In fact, they might be your sole choice at Café Lurçat. If you want to sit with the newspaper on the lovely gallery porch under the ceiling fans and eat your share of guilty pleasures while observing the pretty people on Fifth Avenue and listening to snippets of conversation floating by, this restaurant is the absolutely perfect spot. Suddenly, you're part of café society.

Café Lurçat 494 Fifth Ave. S., Naples. 213-3357. Lunch: daily from 11:30 a.m. Dinner: nightly from 5-10 p.m.; untill 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Bar and light plates: until 1 a.m. (downstairs only). Credit cards. Reser-vations suggested for dinner. Street parking or public lots and garage. Wheelchair accessible.

A restaurant that capitalizes on more than exemplary food in terms of a breathtaking view and a sense of history becomes for the lucky guest genuinely special-a complete sensory experience, where what's on your plate is just the starting point for a transporting adventure. If you're up for one of those evenings, book a reservation at Olde Marco Inn on Marco Island. The food is grand but the unique pride of place will also make you glad you investigated this precious little piece of Southwest Florida archaeology.

The inn has a long and locally revered past. It was built in 1883 on an Indian shell mound by Capt. Bill Collier (no relation to county founder Barron), who offered guests lodging for a dollar a day and instructed them to bring their own meat. The inn's two-story outhouse was a regional curiosity made nationally famous by Robert LeRoy Ripley in his "Believe It or Not" column. Olde Marco has had several owners over the years; one of the more glamorous was the Ruppert family of beer, basketball and baseball fame, who drew a sports crowd to the place. But when culinary master Wilhelm Blomeier and his wife, Marion, took over in 1970, the German chef quickly elevated the quality of the food while his wife brought music to the inn.

Marcy Kruchten and her husband, Pat, bought the property five years ago. Respectful of its historic character, they have made sensitive upgrades-mostly freshening the décor. They also expanded accommodations, with 51 new two-bedroom suites and seven penthouses. But the restaurant retains its Florida-Victorian-era-aura of restrained elegance.

Chef Steve Jones came in with the new owners (he used to work at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Naples) to carry on a tradition of classical recipes. The house specialty isn't on the menu. You have to know it to request it, and if you're fond of lamb there is every reason to do just that. The rosemary-roasted rack wears a Dijon dill crust and comes with wild-berry compote.

Sesame-seed encrusted tuna spiked with wasabi and ginger is another good choice. It arrives with noodles and peanut sauce. Grand Marnier roast duck, lobster Thermidor, filet mignon, herb-infused chicken and prime rib are other options. Chef Jones varies the menu seasonally and always offers several daily specials. His blackened, grilled grouper topped with shrimp, crab meat, asparagus spears and hollandaise sauce is his version of seafood Oscar, and it works to perfection. Entreés are about $35.

The wine list, a work in progress, is expanding, most noticeably at the higher end in response to a clientele that is wine knowledgeable and eager for new grape experiences. Desserts are lavishly decadent, without apology. Chocolate soufflé with warm Kahlua sauce, ice-cream delights and old flambé favorites such as bananas Foster are concocted with pride, without so much as a nod to calorie count or fat content. For tourists there's a signature Olde Marco key lime graham torte. Desserts are $7.

One of the most pleasant features of the Olde Marco Inn is that a guest has many room choices for enjoying a meal. There are the airy upper and lower verandahs, which give you impressive views, or the library, which is cozy. The new wine cellar has just one small table for two, and anyone can reserve it for an intimate and romantic meal.

The Guy Lombardo chandelier is the centerpiece of the grand ballroom, where Sunday brunch is laid and wedding receptions and other such celebrations are staged. The chandelier, with its more than 2,500 crystal- and cranberry-glass prisms, once belonged to the band leader who, with his Royal Canadians, for decades rang in the New Year at New York's Waldorf-Astoria.

The Mrs. B. room features a grand piano where, four nights a week, the widowed Marion Blomeier, once an actress in Germany and still a chanteuse (now of a certain age but still of a sure talent), transforms that dining room into a cabaret. She's accompanied on the piano by Bobby Giddeons, who played for her when she and Chef Wilhelm owned the place. Musician friends stop in during season for informal jam sessions, and regular guests know to expect unexpected music. But they always know that the food will be fine and the beach atmosphere sublime.