An evening at Mei starts with cool, damp hand towels and a warm welcome.
You’ll likely get the restaurant’s introductory spiel: a thoughtful summary of the menu with an emphasis on the spot’s focus on fermentation, foraging and sustainability. If you’re in the mood for wine, a sommelier will quickly appear, eager to help guide the selection — something from the Loire Valley, perhaps? And when the first dish arrives, a server will gently hover nearby while slowly pouring a bright strawberry vinaigrette over delicate slices of Japanese seabream.
If, at this point, you find yourself thinking: “Wait, this is St. Petersburg?” Well, you wouldn’t be the only one.
Who would have thought a space that until recently housed a fast-casual Asian chain would become something this swanky and upscale? But Mei, the new restaurant from the Orlando-based Omei Restaurant Group, has stepped up the fine dining game from inside the confines of what was once a Bento Asian Kitchen + Sushi on St. Petersburg’s Third St. South.
The restaurant, named for executive chef Alex Chamberlain’s sister, opened in June, sporting an elevated — and pricey — menu loosely pitched as French, Nordic and Japanese. Since then, Chamberlain has changed his tune slightly, referring to the elegant dishes that exit his kitchen as French-inspired, but with Japanese ingredients and sensibility.
Omei Restaurant Group owners Johnny and Jimmy Tung (who are also behind Florida’s Bento empire and several notable Orlando restaurants) are backing the new spot, and also run Tampa’s Japanese restaurant Kosen, its adjoining cocktail bar Tanto and the soon-to-open rooftop bar and izakaya Tokyo Swim Club in Ybor City.
For their latest endeavor, the team looked to St. Petersburg, which arguably hasn’t seen a debut this flashy in years. It’s an ambitious approach, though the restaurant has been rolling things out at a slowish pace. Following roughly two months of soft-opening, which featured the standard a la carte menu, the team also recently launched a $175-per-person tasting menu. Next up? The restaurant plans to roll out a five-course prix-fixe menu for diners looking for something in between.
Overall, the restaurant is off to an exciting start, but there’s still a lot in flux.
It’s hard to believe this was once a Bento: Mei occupies a beautiful space, outfitted with walnut brown wooden tables and accents, sage green chairs and plenty of (albeit, fake) plants and greenery throughout. Off-white, gauzy curtains manage to block the harsh early evening sun while the rest of the dining room is enveloped in a soft, golden light.
To the left of the dining room, an open kitchen faces a long chef’s counter, an eight-seat bar from which the separate, 10-course menu is served on the weekends. Chamberlain sources locally where he can and frequently from Japan, particularly fish.
To start, there are crowd-pleasing dishes like fluffy Japanese milk bread ($9), which arrives lacquered in brown butter and a beautiful bowl of crudites ($15). It’s an attempt at a deconstructed salad: Red Gem lettuce is wrapped around cucumbers, carrots and shiso leaves before getting tied together in a little bundle with a chive. Dip one of the crunchy little bouquets into a sunflower seed Green Goddess dressing and repeat.
There’s always a crudo in flux, which on one visit featured a beautiful madai (Japanese sea bream) coupled with jalapenos, strawberries and a citrus kosho; and another that highlighted planks of buri (Japanese yellowtail) paired with compressed honeydew melon (both priced $25). I particularly loved a dish of Smokey Bay oysters from British Columbia ($24 for six), which arrived raw on the half-shell swimming in a bright, slightly sweet tomato dashi.
Mei’s menu changes seasonally and consists of just 13 dishes on most evenings. There are more frequent switch-ups, depending on ingredient availability, including the aforementioned crudo swaps. Early on, an excellent pork chop ($42) that’s since left the menu arrived with a French-leaning almondine preparation — tucked beneath a buttery cluster of slivered almonds alongside a snappy salad of fennel and green beans.
Most of the dishes feel appropriate to share, including a standout beef tartare ($22) that features a New York strip steak dry-aged in-house, swathed in a creamy garlic confit peppercorn aioli. A dish of scallops that was once $42 is now $52, after the kitchen opted to swap in Japanese-sourced Hokkaido scallops, which are, admittedly, an upgrade. It’s still a steep price for the portion size, which feels more apt to split as a starter than as a main.
Some of the restaurant’s most successful dishes can be found on the entree portion of the menu. There’s a particularly winning dry-aged duck breast ($54) that Chamberlain sources from Joe Jurgielewicz & Son, a Pennsylvania-based duck farm run by father-and-son veterinarians (read: hormone-and-antibiotic-free birds that receive high-quality care). The duck arrives with crispy, rendered skin, glazed with a peppery cherry gastrique and paired with Swiss chard and cherries. It’s a dish that’s deep, dark and rich with the requisite hits of bright fruit and acid.
A gorgeous Australian wagyu ribeye ($75) is charred until medium rare and in need of nothing but a quick dunk in the accompanying black garlic sabayon and maybe a nibble of celery root. Also very good are the Australian lamb chops ($56), which are marinated in a bagna cauda-esque anchovy and garlic combo before getting a good sear on the grill and served alongside smashed, pan-fried potatoes and summer squash.
Dessert still appears to be a work in progress. An early visit featured an ill-fated corn waffle ($12), served alongside corn ice cream and blueberries. The flavor was there, but the execution — which included a very dry waffle — didn’t quite cut it. On a more recent evening, a spin on the classic French pastry Paris-Brest ($12) was much more successful, filled with a white chocolate cremeaux and a sugary snap and crackle from caramel corn.
Service, like the menu, has also evolved, with some evenings more successful than others. But overall, the restaurant’s approach has been friendly and finessed. When on one evening the aforementioned lamb chops were delivered under the temperature my dining companion requested, they were promptly returned to the kitchen and corrected.
There’s still some room for improvement. While the restaurant touts its high-level technique and approach, diners don’t hear much about it after the opening pitch. Steaks and some fish are dry-aged in lockers, but that isn’t mentioned at the table. And though fermentation, foraging and local sourcing are hit hard in the server’s preamble, it can be difficult to tell which dishes feature any of those elements or techniques by just glancing at the menu, which describes items in the style of “protein, ingredient, ingredient,” so common at restaurants right now.
This is selling the kitchen team short at Mei, who deserve kudos for the advanced skill and technique on display, but also the diners, who deserve — and in most cases, want — to know more about the very expensive food they’re consuming. Chatting with Chamberlain recently, it became clear that some of this might be better articulated to diners at the chef’s counter, but I’d argue that everyone in the dining room should receive the same treatment.
Overall, Mei is a great — and very welcome —addition to St. Pete’s budding upscale dining scene. I can’t wait to see where it eventually lands.
If you go to Mei
Where: 320 3rd St. S, St. Petersburg. mei-restaurant.com
Hours: Dinner, Wednesday through Sunday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: Starters, $9 to $28; Entrees, $33 to $75.
Don’t skip: Oysters, beef tartare, duck.
Details: Wine, beer and sake served. No liquor. There is a 20% service charge included. Reservations recommended. A $175 tasting menu at the chef’s counter is served Friday through Sunday.
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