Mayfield.

When an ambitious and tremendously good restaurant like Mayfield opens, as it did in November on the corner of Franklin Avenue and Prospect Place in Crown Heights, an ornate choreography is set in motion, no less intricate or predetermined than a tarantella or gavotte.

Aligned on one side, festooned in the pomp of the court, is the stout Old Guard. They begin by wiggling their codpieces and running in little circles shouting “Gentrification!” As they shuffle, they fan themselves with a sheaf of papers emblazoned with statistics on rising rents and evictions and excerpts of Frantz Fanon.

Facing them, bosom implored upward by a tight bodice, is Callow Youth. She shakes her tresses, coquettishly prances and squeals, “My lovelies! Have you ever heard of Crown Heights? I’ve found a new restaurant there and it is simply gorgeous!”

Through the night, the couples whirl more quickly and furiously as they wade deeper into the dance: tradition, wearing the scarlet cloak of Marxism, and naïveté, gauzy in a veil of imbecile white. Spittle flies and commingles with sweat, slicking the floor. Slips occur. By the time the last lutist leaves, the dancers will have collapsed into a multi-limbed pile.

Lost in the tumble, of course, is the food.

Prima facie, it is not difficult to see why Mayfield might set off such fury. Crown Heights is already a neighborhood in flux. After a sordid history of race-tinged strife seemingly overcome of late, it now has the Barclays Center breathing the heavy and hot winds of change down its streets.

Mayfield, where the average entrée costs $16, the walls are white tile, the brick exposed, the lighting soft, the typography custom, the men bespectacled and the women banged, might be a harbinger of what Crown Heights will be in five years time. And it’s a future that, like all futures, contains both net gains and net losses. (What with the current Nets season record, I’m betting on Net losses.)

Mayfield is named after Curtis Mayfield, the great soul funk singer whose hit album was about a cocaine dealer. It is jointly owned by a 37-year-old Upper West Side native named Lev Gewirtzman—previously employed at Tom Valenti’s shmancy Upper West Side restaurant Ouest and Stone Park Café, the Park Slope purveyor of expensive comfort food to NPR subscribers—and Jacques Belanger, a Torontonian who had worked with Mr. Gewirtzman in Mr. Valenti’s empire.

The audacity! Responding to sundry Old Guard comments on the blog I Love Franklin Avenue, Chef Gewirtzman, who has lived in Crown Heights for the last seven years, defended his restaurant’s name with an autobiographical disclosure. “I still remember when I bought the Superfly soundtrack on album from a guy selling used records when I was interning on 125th street for the NYS Division of Human Rights my junior year in high school. It’s been my dream to open a restaurant for many years. When I moved here I was immediately struck by the potential of Franklin Avenue and have been working ever since to make that happen.”

It’s hard to take issue with Mr. Gerwirtzman’s point without being horrible. Surely, we must aver, he is not confined in his naming choices to bands like Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, Phish or, in a more historical vein, Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. (Though what a surprise that no one has yet named an oyster bar Pearl Jam.) Nor can we expect him to limit the scope of his ambition to a square-block radius wherein everyone looks exactly like he does, especially when he has lived in Crown Heights for seven years. Even the Old Guard, who rail against the vanilla tide of gentrification, blush at the implications of their own argument.

Nevertheless, a white guy opening a fancy restaurant on a black block named after a black soul singer rankles. Yet one of the great pleasures of Mayfield is how quietly brilliant it reveals itself to be upon closer inspection. Mayfield might not be the type of restaurant that will be unduly buzzed about among the critical establishment. It shall never enjoy the constant Instagram flash-panning of @rapo4, @kkrader and @andrewknowlton. Mr. Gewirtzman is well-respected but neither an up-and-comer nor a superstar. His restaurant is not in itself revolutionary. Nor is it timid. Flavors, though not outlandish, are clarion clear. This clarity, more than novelty, betokens the work of a very skilled chef.

Short, goateed and bespectacled, Mr. Gewirtzman is a chef more in the mold of Eisenhower than Patton. His forte isn’t in brash flavor combinations or aggressively avant-garde technique but in the brilliant management of his legions and auxiliaries. He marshals flavors in perfect order, with discipline and skill and just enough of an element of surprise to confound expectation: a touch of yogurt in a butternut squash salad; something called Dante in the roasted Brussels sprouts (it turns out to be an aged sheep’s milk cheese from Wisconsin). The ceviche is picked with something called fresnos; celeriac remoulade accompanies the house-smoked salmon. We are not in the pantry of a quisling, demagogue or tyrant.

The fragile flavor of seared Nantucket Bay scallops ($12) is protected and offset by a sweet dumpling squash, the melancholy spice of watercress and a truffle soy butter in which, a rarity, the truffle isn’t overweening. The homemade pappardelle ($16) —quelle tendresse!—is surrounded by more hearty braised veal breast than a pedophile steer and yet is never lost in the carnivorous scrum. And enough can never be said nor written of Gewirtzman’s Berkshire pork saltimbocca ($22), a holdover from his Ouest days, which doesn’t really jump in the mouth as much as perform delightful little petits jetés across one’s tongue.

Administering to the palates of Park Slope has left Mr. Gerwirtzman with a deep bench of bourgeois comfort food—like a Cuban sandwich ($14), here made with roasted pork shoulder and ennobled by house-made pickles, a burger ($15) whose generous height is matched by its flavor and a Berkshire maple bacon BLT ($13) whose renown has already begun to spread and shall only increase.

However I still quail before the buttermilk fried quail ($20) and would ask Mr. Gewirtzman and all those who chose to substitute so petite a bird for its larger cousin, whether the deeper flavor and residual social cachet of quail offsets the skimpy meat-to-bone ratio. The quail is, happily, the only misstep on the menu.

By removing the element of heat, the small raw bar section—which when I visited consisted exclusively of oysters (MP), sweet Maine shrimp crudo ($10) and local black fish ceviche ($11)—offers Mr. Gewirtzman less to play with, thereby distilling further his excellent taste. The shrimp crudo, in which silken slices of shrimp were accompanied by fennel and crisp apple sharpened by a light lemon oil, is both exactly the sum of its parts and more.

Perhaps the most commendable aspect of Mayfield is that it could be enjoyed, if one so wishes, as just a neighborhood bar. The wine list, which like the rest of the bar is the purview of Mr. Belanger, is democratic, by-the-glass and superb. It contains well balanced, fruit-forward wines like Temperamento Bobal ($9) as well as the all too rarely seen Txacolina ($11), a fresh almost effervescent Basque wine that is to oysters what Hall is to Oates. (The wine in this case is the refreshing Hall to the brinier Oates.) The beer list is even better, drawing from far afield (a Uinta Hop Notch IPA from Salt Lake City, $6) as well as from local breweries like Kelso ($6).

There, at the wood and tile bar, with Curtis Mayfield singing “I’m your pusher man,” in the background, a member of the Old Guard can saddle up, adjust his codpiece, approach a Callow Youth, sipping her planters punch ($12), and ask, “Come here often?”

"Bonny Doon? Vin de glacière? A Muscat? Let me show you the list …. "

"No vin santo?" The young man handed back the list. "I'll have a glass of port–when I've finished my dessert, of course." He snapped off a piece of peanut brittle, dug it into the banana ice cream that accompanied the small dome of dark chocolate cake, and returned to his book.

It was only 8 o'clock, and I wasn't quite ready for port. Instead, I ordered a cosmopolitan while I waited for my husband and son to arrive. The bartender busied himself with the cocktail shaker and emptied the contents into a bucket-size martini glass. He set it down, a pink and glowing concoction, and watched as I took a sip.

"Wow!" I said. "What's in it?"

He beamed. "Fresh lemon and lime juices. And I use Cointreau instead of triple sec. Not too sweet, right?"

Even the cosmopolitans at Ouest are terrific. And when my son arrived, his eyes lit up at the chocolate cake the man was eating at the bar.

Ouest is the latest venture of chef Tom Valenti, who made his name downtown at Alison on Dominick and Cascabel before going to Butterfield 81 on the Upper East Side. His new venture, opened three months ago with partner Godfrey Polistina (of Carmine's and Virgil's), has caused great excitement in a neighborhood where the complaint for years has been the shortage of sophisticated restaurants. Designer Peter Niemitz has combined a former dry cleaner's and a coffee shop to create a bustling brasserie that's been packed since it opened.

When you first walk in, you have no inkling of the size of the place. The bar is at the entrance–a small, clubby room decorated with a large vase of white flowers–leading to a corridor lined with glass-fronted wooden wine cabinets, dark red leather booths and lanterns. You think that's it, until you turn the corner into a vast, noisy dining room done up in dark wood. From the 24-foot ceiling hang crimson and orange silk lampshades, dangling over enormous red leather booths that dot the room like islands. An open kitchen, giant mirrors and two mezzanines complete the décor of the room, which looks onto a tree-lined street that gives the illusion of a park or garden. You could be in a Parisian brasserie–except, that is, for the drably dressed people.

I'm not suggesting that Ouest's customers should look like those at Mercer Kitchen or Thom, or even Butterfield 81, but these denizens of the Upper West Side look like they're wearing the same clothes they were when they made a last-minute decision to go out for dinner instead of staying home. "Honey," says he or she, unpacking the Fairway bag, "I don't feel like cooking tonight. Let's just stick this in the fridge and go to Ouest."

It's not the strollers, it's the flip-flops and shorts, the rumpled T-shirts and leather money belts that jar the eye. Doesn't Mr. Valenti's cooking deserve a little more respect?

His food is certainly accessible, beginning with the hot, thin, crisp baguettes that arrive in a metal container, with chickpea purée on the side instead of butter. There are friendly daily specials, including Mr. Valenti's signature braised lamb shank, lamb chops, meat loaf and roast chicken for two, all served on oversized white plates. I would think it's worth changing into long pants for his amazing sweet-pea soup, an emerald pool with a delicate Parmesan-scented custard floating in the center, dotted with morels. The oyster pan roast is stellar, made with silken oysters in a sherry-and-cream broth laced with sliced Yukon Gold potatoes and trumpet mushrooms.

Since we're on Zabar's turf, it should come as no surprise that the smoked sturgeon is extraordinary, served with bacon, frisée and a poached egg that oozes into the salad when you cut it. Mr. Valenti also serves an egg with the house-smoked duck breast, which is arranged on the plate like carpaccio and crisscrossed with a mustard dressing; the egg is rolled in bread crumbs, deep-fried and placed on bitter greens. A luscious salmon gravlax is coated with mustard oil, topped with beads of salmon caviar and arranged on a chickpea pancake that gives it a nice crunch.

There are only two pastas on the menu, both ravioli. One, the agnolotti, is made with a curious (and successful) combination of foie gras, leeks, chickpeas and basil. The other ravioli are densely filled with goat cheese and topped with a thin tomato sauce and diced pancetta, which overwhelms the delicacy of the pasta.

But that's just a quibble. The sea scallops with chervil on a bed of sweet corn are my idea of the perfect summer dish. Roast pork, pink and juicy, is wrapped in bacon, the saltiness softened by the white-bean purée. Tomato adds an acidic note to the risotto served with rare slices of roast squab, cutting the richness of the meat. I don't think I've ever had better rabbit: moist chunks so tender you can cut them with a fork, on a purée of root vegetables that tastes mostly of parsnip. The lightly smoked roast salmon with fingerling potatoes and caviar remoulade is pleasant but bland. But the filet mignon, normally a poor excuse for steak, is well seasoned in a peppercorn-mushroom crust and served on a hearty bed of kale with golden pommes soufflés.

Desserts by pastry chef Michael Moorhouse (formerly of Tabla and Alison on Dominick) are wonderful. They include a creamy raspberry chibouste with a toasted sugar topping, a sensational plum crisp, and a quivery little panna cotta topped with yellow pearls of passion fruit. A compote of figs accompanies the tangy Shropshire cheese; raspberry financier comes with a citrus sauce and a scoop of tart lemon ice cream. My son opted for the chocolate cake he'd seen the man devouring at the bar. He was literally bouncing with pleasure as he ate it. "The chef must have read my mind," he said when I asked him if he liked it. And indeed, judging by the reception Tom Valenti's getting on the Upper West Side, a great many people feel he's read theirs, too.

OUEST

* *

2315 Broadway (at 84th Street)

580-8700

Dress: Casual

Noise level: Quite high

Wine list: Interesting, international, reasonably priced

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Dinner, main courses, $16 to $27

Dinner: Sunday through Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to midnight

Brunch: Saturday and Sunday (starting this month), 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor