Chef Paul McCabe was wholly prepared to take on eager consumers and food critics from the moment Kitchen 1540 opened its doors last month. During the restaurant’s much-needed transformation from J. Taylor’s – part of a $26 million makeover of its anchor property, L’Auberge Del Mar – he labored over the debut menu from a modest test kitchen in his home garage. The result is a radiant merge of haute and casual cuisine that seats McCabe among San Diego’s savviest and most innovative chefs.

While working for several months in his “two-car lab,” McCabe toyed with an enzyme that binds proteins, applying the technique to a brilliantly unusual appetizer of duck skin ahi tuna. Cubes of the raw tuna are crowned with the crisp smoky skin in seamless fashion, their tissues completely and tastefully fused, leaving you to wonder if fish and fowl are secretly mating on some moonlit beach in the wee hours of the night.

McCabe is also a longtime gardener, which means he knows precisely when to chase down specific beets, a particular squash, or as of last week, a rare supply of black kale available as a side dish. In regards to his blood-warming paprika-spiked cauliflower soup, which uses no stock, it will remain blissfully on the starter menu throughout winter.

The renovation that gave birth to Kitchen 1540 ushers in a bustle that was unimaginable in the J.Taylor’s days. A new open kitchen sends warm fiery glows over the airy dining room, which is appointed by delicate colors, a vaulted ceiling and intriguing globe lights. An army of wait staff clad in 517 Levis, logo tees and red sneakers descend on what now appears to be a patronage extending beyond resort guests. In addition, there’s a lovely outdoor patio replete with cozy cabana seating.

Our meal from the get-go was exceptional, beginning with homemade grape-rosemary ciabatta (very novel), the cauliflower soup and then a generous slab of Hudson Valley foie gras draped over a super-heated river rock. The presentation of the goose liver is rather dramatic as it sizzles not only from the hot stone, but also from a sprinkling of orange Pop Rocks. The final compliments were blood orange demi glace and black pepper toast served alongside.

Another first course, roasted giant prawns, tasted as sweet as tail meat from a Maine lobster. So what if the toasted garlic and chili oil listed in their menu description wasn’t evident. I didn’t mind. My companion, however, took pause when the plate arrived. “I don’t like food where I can see their means of locomotion,” referring to the legs (and eyes) left on the split crustaceans, and leaving me to wolf down all the flesh.

Ironically, he encroached instead on a pair of Sol Azul oysters cultivated in a Baja whale preserve. Still savoring the prawns, I passed altogether when he declared them as tasting too salty.

From a well-rounded entrée list that can put in your mouth a casual “grass-fed Palomar Mountain burger” with fries or a swanky Kurobuta pork shoulder with herbed gnocchi and Napa cabbage, we hit smooth seas and verdant land in our choices.

My companion’s May Ranch beef tenderloin cut like a warm stick of butter. The thick filet was cooked exactly medium-rare as ordered (a tough call for many kitchens), and served with Manchego cheese balls, lobster mushrooms and a snappy reduction, which if truly a “berbere” reduction, it likely incorporated dried chili peppers, allspice, coriander and berries.

The fishy edge often associated with Scottish salmon is desirably tempered by McCabe’s use of sweet-and-sour pomegranate sauce and budding spaetzle flavored with preserved lemon. All combined, the flavors were gorgeous, but you still have to like salmon to appreciate the dish.

Other entrées include dry-aged New York strip with potato-squash gratin, roasted young chicken with potato-leek risotto and seafood stew containing lobster. There’s also an item called “local vegetable tasting,” which I’ll bet can satisfy a devoted carnivore given McCabe’s eye for prime produce. Or if you just want to hang out and finger feed over wine and cocktails, look no further than the mix-and-match selection of cured meats and artisan cheeses, where you’ll find air dried beef (bresaola), smoked duck, homemade pate and un-homogenized Irish blue cheese.

Kitchen’s veteran pastry chef, McKaelle Schmitt, breathes new life into hackneyed dessert menus with a nutritionally safe red velvet cake that relies on beets instead of food dye to achieve its austere ruby coloring. And the cream cheese frosting is faintly sugared, allowing the sweet milky flavor of the curds to play their magic with the cake. She also bangs out a sugar cookie capped by a gel-like paste of passion fruit that was bright, powerful and easy to polish off.

But then again, so was everything we ate. McCabe and his team return to their digs all shiny and new with a knack for instilling chic into casual without alienating our taste buds.