Change is the one constant at Chef Mavro. The menu is reinvented seasonally and the restaurant has been upgraded annually (one year, this took the form of bringing in a practitioner to check the space's feng shui). Only one dish — Lilikoi Malasadas — has been retained throughout the restaurant's 7 1/2 years, the result of outright begging by regulars. But James Beard Award-winning chef-owner George "Mavro" Mavrothalassitis periodically threatens to banish this fixture, too.

For this year's renovation project, completed in April, Mavro asked interior decorator Mary Philpotts to find a way to create more private dining spaces in the main dining room, because customers preferred the banquette tables around the restaurant's perimeter to the table-and-chair arrangement in the center. The result is a T-shaped high banquette of warm wood, upholstered in plummy-rosy tones, with free-standing tables that accommodate different-sized parties.

Also new is a brightly colored blown-glass wall sculpture by Geoff Lee, a focal point in the upper room; and custom-designed tangerine-colored glass vases by Edward Clark. The added elements juxtapose seemlessly with the restaurant's established feeling of dignified Hawaiiana, and the bright colors banish any white-tablecloth starchiness.

Chef Mavro's unique approach — multicourse set menus, all matched with specific wines, no wine list and no bar — has been tweaked as well. The a la carte menu has vanished in favor of three different sets: three courses ($65; $98 with 5-ounce wine pours); four courses ($71; $117 with 4-ounce wine pours); and the chef's tasting menu (six courses, smaller servings; $102; $149 with 2.5-ounce wine pours). However, diners are free to substitute courses if a selection is not to their taste or if they want to try something new.

And if it's an evening for excess, you can select the one remaining a la carte dish: Golden Osetra Caviar from the Caspian Sea with blinis and creme fraiche and a glass of champagne ($170 for a perfect little ounce). Our party of three chose two six-course menus and one four-course.

I say this every time I eat at Chef Mavro, but with his summer menu, Mavro has outdone himself. Again. I even enjoyed the lobster. (I know, I'm crazy, but I've never understood what the lobster fuss was all about — perhaps because so few cooks know how to keep from turning this delicate seafood into fishy rubber.)

If I had room for a book here, I could give each course the same exacting attention as is accorded it by Mavro and his assistants. Each dish is a harmonic family of preparations, as layered as puff pastry. We stayed three hours at the table, sipping and savoring.

Among the dishes: Marbled Tako, sliced octopus with ponzu sauce, salmon roe, green papaya salad; Hudson Valley foie gras with poha berries, spiced kabocha bread, braised leeks and balsamic-foie gras glaze; Day-Boat Catch Bourride, hapu'upu'u sea bass with glazed vegetables, garlic emulsion and fried garlic; onaga filet marinated with fennel, tomatoes, vegetables a la Greque and sauce raite (red wine, capers, anchovies); Keahole Lobster a la Coque in star-anise-tamarind seafood broth with spring vegetables and taro croquette; roast lamb with mushroom dust, sauteed tabbouleh, confit tomatoes and saffron jus; Big Island Goat Cheese Tatin; and, finally, Chilled Chocolate Banania.

Given my space constraints, let the Marbled Tako stand as a metaphor for a meal that showcased Chef Mavro's style and skills. The dish begins with a classic Provencal technique: The whole fresh octopus is bundled into a cheesecloth bag and poached in fish broth in which a cork is immersed; by some alchemy, the cork helps to tenderize the octopus. When the octopus, still in the bag, is fully poached, "we press and press and press," Mavro explained in one of his periodic table visits, until the flesh is "almost gelatine." For Marbled Tako, the octopus is then sliced paper-thin, laid out on the plate with its white and magenta flesh forming a mosaic, drizzled with citrusy essence, decorated with briny salmon roe and paired with a refreshing Asian-style papaya salad. It was haute poke, with a fragrance of the sweet, clean sea and pleasing, toothy but not tough in texture.

This dish characterizes the interplay of flavors and textures, of classic technique and startling innovation, of East and West that is a Chef Mavro creation. I never thought I'd leave a restaurant raving about tako, another seafood whose appeal I generally find limited.

So much else worked equally well: the exquisite, rich broth with the lobster; the warm goat cheese with li hing mui caramelized apples; the meaty onaga with its brightly flavored Mediterranean accompaniments; the well-flavored lamb. I generally have little patience with so-called molecular gastronomy, but even the garlic foam on the hapu'upu'u added an element of taste and texture that made sense.

I am not qualified to say much about the wines. I only know what I like, and I know that I approved of all the matches — although at one point, our waiter brought an alternative over and suggested we try it with one of the dishes, and it was even better. One innovation on this menu is the addition of an optional super-premium match for the lamb. We opted to try both the chateauneuf-du-pape that is the standard match and the pomerol that cost an extra $5.50. They were, someone remarked, as the wood is to the green shoots; both worked, but in different ways, and the comparison revealed once again how different wines can call forth different flavors in the same food.

The only false note of the evening came from the "banania" dessert — a bit glutinous on the tongue, like a shake aspiring to become a mousse but not quite making it. Far better the free chocolates and jellies that see you out.

And, yes, that old favorite, the Lilikoi Malasadas.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.