James Beard Award-winning chef George Mavrothalassitis missed mahimahi, steak and fries, roast chicken and tart tatin.

So he's opening a second restaurant where he can serve dishes like these — a restaurant that, short of being a plate-lunch stand, couldn't be more different from his flagship Chef Mavro, recently acclaimed as one of the Top Ten Restaurants in the World by Fodor's travel guides, based on editors' and writers' votes.

Chef Mavro is a 68-seat fine- dining restaurant where reservations are a must, a hushed, elegant room where the entire menu is wine-matched and a fixed-price dinner for two routinely runs in three figures.

Cassis Honolulu will open, likely in April, on the site of what is now Palomino Restaurant at Harbor Court, which will close soon. The site has 295 seats and a full bar.

Cassis will be a casual spot where you can have a quick business lunch or drop by for a glass of wine and a pupu after a concert at Hawai'i Theatre. A "local-style bistro," Mavrothalassitis calls it, where dinner with a glass of wine will run around $55.

Lest his regulars panic, Mavrothalassitis emphasized that Chef Mavro will continue just as it is, with seasonal menu changes and carefully matched wines for each course.

He has experience running multiple operations: He operated two busy restaurants in France and, at Halekulani, he managed all the hotel's food operations while serving as chef at La Mer.

Cassis Honolulu — which is named for a small fisherman's village near Marseille where he opened his first restaurant, La Presqu'Ile, in 1978 — will express another side of his culinary character.

"I cook at home every night, almost," said Mavrothalassitis, and he's a great fan of such cheap- eats establishments as Kapiolani Bowl and Side Street Inn. But those folksy recipes and foods he so enjoys would never do on Chef Mavro's menu.

"You do not come to Chef Mavro to spend three hours at the table to eat oxtail soup or chicken," he said, recalling that his early menus included a spin on hulihuli chicken that most customers skipped right over in favor of the foie gras, onaga and lobster.

The menu at Cassis Honolulu will be a team effort, involving the pooled ideas of Mavrothalassitis, Chef Mavro chef de cuisine Kevin Chong and Nolan West, who will move from Chef Mavro to Cassis as executive sous chef.

The fourth member of the team will be the executive chef, who has yet to be hired. This speaks to another reason that Mavrothalassitis wanted a second restaurant: to offer opportunities to his proteges. He is known for donating his time to local culinary schools and giving young chefs a first break.

The menu brainstorming has already begun, but Chong said the team won't finalize anything until the executive chef comes on board. They're talking to several candidates who, Chong said, had to fit two criteria: They had to be from here, but to have worked elsewhere, as Chong himself did.

Though Korea-born, Chong was raised in the Islands. After school, he left to work in New York, California and Mexico, coming to Chef Mavro from Le Cirque in Mexico City.

This will be the third restaurant Chong has helped to open. One of those, Pinot Bistro in Los Angeles, had a very similar vision, he said.

The born-local part is because Mavro wants to be sure everyone in the kitchen understands local tastes and ingredients.

You can see why when he and Chong describe some of the dishes they've envisioned for the menu. Instead of the classic apple tart tatin, they'll be doing li hing mui tart tatin. Their roast chicken will be served in a plum wine sauce. The steak and fries will be American Kobe beef with curried fries and Manoa lettuce salad. And to make use of the restaurant's brick oven, they'll be baking French-style breads and also a bacon and onion flatbread pie known as tarte flambe, from Alsace.

The restaurant, which will be decorated by prominent Hono-lulu designer Mary Philpotts, almost didn't come about.

Some months ago, Mavrothalassitis fell in love with a space in Chinatown but was discouraged by the cost of equipping the bare-bones location. However, the very first day he looked at that space, he just happened to run into real estate executive Andy Friedlander, of Colliers Monroe Friedlander, Inc. who later just happened to mention to the Palomino space owners that Mavrothalassitis was in the market.

"This was fate. This was feng shui," said the irrepressible Mavrothalassitis. "I love the restaurant. I think it has a sort of brasserie feeling. Of course, we are going to renovate, but I'm going to try not to destroy the feeling it has."

"I am not giving up my idea of being in Chinatown, though," he added. "You think Palomino is downtown, but (in the decor and a menu full of spices and Asian touches) we are moving it to Chinatown."

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