Part of the appeal, as it is throughout the Mandarin Oriental, is design. Cafe Sambal is down a vast central staircase from Azul, the stairs mounted in a shimmering pool filled with glistening black rocks that defines the restaurant's center. Seashells are embedded in the terrazzo floor; giant bowls of red and green apples add color.

Outside, there is a covered terrace and an open patio; both have plush sofas and chairs and a breezy Brickell Key view of the bay. On a cool winter day, there might be no better lunchtime option than sitting on the terrace and sipping tea. Think about that next time we have one.

Open since November under the eye of executive chef Christian Schmidt, Cafe Sambal has had a polyglot menu that leaned toward Asian but also included some American dishes. Not for long. The concept will be exclusively Asian in a month or so, as soon as all the dishes are developed and tested. After all, the name comes from sambal, a chili paste developed in India but particularly popular in Indonesia.

You'll start with an assortment of excellent breads and crackers, served with flowerets of butter. Appetizer menu is not gigantic, but a handful of pizzas (at least for now) are an excellent option. We tried a pizza with crab sausage, shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onion and a mix of fontina, mozzarella and romano ($10.75), made to order on homemade dough. The pizza is cooked and then drizzled with an Asian pesto flavored with cilantro and sesame oil rather than basil and olive oil. Sausage is homemade, with crab, onions, peppers and curry. It's a fascinating pizza with a crisp crust.

A baby spinach salad ($7.50) is good but small, not really enough to share. It does benefit from homemade candied pecans, Asian pears, radicchio and a crumble of cambozola, a cheese that's about halfway between blue cheese and brie. A homemade balsamic vinaigrette is the finisher here.

Best appetizer we tried was she-crab soup ($8.25), a glorious mix of homemade clam broth and heavy cream flavored with shallots, Hungarian paprika and sherry, flecked with bits oflump blue crab meat. It's lovingly garnished with crme fraiche and a tablespoon of bright-red salmon caviar and chopped chives, an excellent touch.

Entrees include much seafood. Many of the dishes currently on the menu will change or disappear in the coming months, but the quality of cooking should endure. Macadamia nut sea bass ($18) is a fat fillet crusted with Japanese panko bread crumbs and crushed macadamias and pan-seared, then finished in the oven. It's served with a tropical fruit salsa of mango, papaya, pineapple, peppers and cilantro, plus jasmine rice. All is drizzled with a Thai coconut red curry with garlic, shallots and galanga, red curry paste, coconut milk and lime leaf, cilantro and lemon grass.

The wok station is where you'll find the most interesting Asian dishes here, including the Malaysian specialty nasi goreng ($24.50). It's a sampler platter of fairly pedestrian shrimp fried rice with soy and sesame, garlic and shallots, cabbage and egg. There's also a lush coconut beef stew, with lemon grass, coconut and lime leaf and Malaysian spice mix flavoring tender beef. There's a giant drumette of curry chicken, plus two massive tiger prawns, head on, cooked in sambal. Plantains and shrimp crackers finish off this interesting plate.

Cafe Sambal dancing shrimp ($25.75) is the surf 'n' turf here, a six-ounce fillet, grilled and then oven-roasted and arrayed with two giant tempura prawns on a bed of sautéed watercress with glazed carrots. Sauce is a classic sabayon flavored with minced ginger and miso paste, and there's a drizzle of port balsamic reduction with peppercorns, bay leaf and Asian spices, a flavorful foil for the tender, meaty filet.

A tray of 15 desserts is brought with plenty of fanfare. Most are $8.50; we tried two: chocolate mousse with Chinese five-spice covered with chocolate ganache, a small but utterly dense piece of glory, and rice pudding with coconut milk sealed with a brlé of meringue and dotted with the day's best fresh fruit.