CHef Orchid - His previous venture, Soup & Stew, didn't showcase his talents.

If you visit Venezia with no prior knowledge of Moha Orchid's culinary capabilities, you needn't wait until the food arrives to learn. Playing in a continuous loop on a dining room television is a tape of Orchid's more noteworthy public appearances. Chief among them is a particularly entertaining segment where the chef prepares Moroccan food alongside the queen of domesticity, Martha Stewart. The clip represents a time, not very long ago, when Orchid was the toast of New York.

Moha Orchid (pronounced MWAH or-SHEED) is a garrulous self-promoter. But unlike other braggarts, Orchid isn't telling tall tales. In addition to his Martha moment, Orchid has appeared on Fox TV, in the pages of the New York Post and in glossy pubs like New York magazine. His Greenwich Village restaurant, Cookies and Couscous, was recognized in The New York Times for its flavorful Mediterranean cuisine.

A chance visit to Cleveland a few years back made a Midwesterner out this Moroccan-born chef. He soon opened his own place in the Galleria called Soup & Stew, but closed it a year later after coming to the realization that a food court may not be the best showcase for his talents. His latest project, 4-month-old Venezia, is a proper table-and-chair restaurant in Lakewood.

It would be too simplistic to pigeonhole Venezia as an Italian restaurant. While pasta plays a starring role, it is the sauces, often spiked with Moroccan spices, that are winning over the hearts of Venezia's fast-growing fan base. A perfect example is Orchid's spaghetti Bolognese ($12), a conventional-sounding Italian staple. But in this version, those svelte, al dente noodles are paired with chunky, free-formed meatballs imbued with earthy cumin and cinnamon, making them more akin to Middle Eastern kefta than an Italian pasta topper.

Orchid's backstory reads like a Hemingway travelogue. Born a Berber in southern Morocco among a stand of olive trees and date palms, he developed early on a fondness for wholesome, natural ingredients. At the age of 19, he lit out for France, where he supported his studies by working in restaurants up and down the Normandy coast. A spell picking grapes in Nantes instilled in him a passion for good wine. Stints at some of New York's top restaurants, including Union Square Café and Raoul's, further rounded out his resume.

Like the chef's heritage and travels, the menu blends cultures and cuisines in an undulating, sometimes barely perceptible fashion. Pizzas can be as straightforwardly enjoyable as the Classic ($9), with its chewy dough and traditional Italian toppings, or nudged eastward as in the Mediterranean pizza ($14), capped with roasted eggplant and chicken kebab.

It's difficult to decide what, exactly, makes the pappardelle al cinghiale so preposterously good. Is it the hearty sauce of slow-roasted pork, which is braised in a pressure cooker with herbs and spices until implausibly tender? Or is it the pappardelle supporting that sauce — wide, fat and dense egg noodles that the chef rolls out by hand? At just 15 bucks per bowl, you can determine for yourself over the course of a few meals.

Orchid is a master of merging sweet and savory. For the filling of his celebratory bastilla ($18), a Moroccan chicken pie, the chef simmers a whole chicken until it's fall-off-the-bone tender. The shredded meat is mixed with sautéed onions, almonds, raisins and scrambled eggs, and tucked into a phyllo dough crust. When the package exits the oven all hot and flaky, it is dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar. If this sounds weird, get over it: It's one of the most heavenly dishes you will likely eat this year.

Orchid picked up the art of Viennese dessert-making while apprenticing for an Austrian pastry chef in upstate New York. He makes all his own desserts, including creamy ricotta cheesecake ($6) served with homemade butter cookies. Savory and imperceptibly sweet, the cheesecake is a delicious and fitting conclusion to a meal at Venezia.

Venezia is a three-person operation: Orchid does all the cooking, and a husband-and-wife team handles all the tables. This arrangement led to some significant delays, pile-ups and unequivocal disasters early on. Four months in, the foreign-born servers are picking up speed, though the woman has an odd habit of backing out of a room. These days, those delays are limited largely to the occasional weekend walk-in crush.

My advice: Call ahead, go on a weekday, and by all means, bring a bottle or two of wine to get you through the slow patches. And if you go on a really quiet night, Orchid will have the time to tell you all about Morocco. And Martha.