Provided photo.

A meal at Marcel DW, an intimate European bistro on Main Street, is one that is likely to stick with the diner. For within the walls of Marcel DW—owned and operated by best friends Jeremy Duclut and Jonathan Warfield—is more than just an ornately lit dining room. It’s a transportive experience, one with the power to take the diner outside of Sarasota and into a world of French-inspired cuisine.

Duclut and Warfield purchased the space, then home to Melange and the connected speakeasy Pangea Alchemy Lab in the spring of 2023, with a shared goal: to create an intimate, 30-40 seat restaurant where they could express full culinary control over every dish that left the kitchen. “I have run a lot of places for a lot of other people, but this is my first endeavor as an owner,” says Warfield. “Being able to do it with my best friend of over 20 years is an absolutely perfect scenario for me—I don’t have anybody else to answer to and we have the freedom to create and do what we want to do, how we want to do them. I couldn’t ask for anything else.”

The meal starts off with an unexpected bang in the form of charred green beans, cooked down in an amaretto-brown butter sauce. The dish, Warfield’s take on the French almondine, could challenge even the most devout green bean naysayers to not lick the plate clean. Slivered almonds find their way throughout the pile of charred green beans, bringing a different type of crunch to the plate. Flecks of bright yellow lemon pepper and fresh parsley anoint the dish with pops of color and flavor. While the menu at Marcel has changed with the seasons, this green bean appetizer has not. The dish is more than just an appetizer, however, it is a sign of what is to come—that every plate that comes out of the kitchen has been handled with a delicate touch.

That delicate touch extends to the sea scallops with cauliflower puree, English peas, mushrooms and truffle. The scallops—pan seared to perfection—are just one of the components of sweetness in the dish. Warfield constructed the plate to build upon layers of flavor and texture, the heartiness of the English peas holding up to the tender scallops and the silky smooth cauliflower puree. “The sweetness of the peas goes with the sweetness of the scallops and the cauliflower puree. They are all levels of sweetness that get cut with the richness of the truffles, truffle oil and the butter and cream in the puree,” says Warfield. “It’s all building and layering into something more than the individual parts.”

Marcel DW, Monday-Sunday: 4:30pm-9:30pm, 1568 Main Street, Sarasota.

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