The first thing you notice about the food at Pearl Provisions + Tipples in Mystic: It looks exquisitely artistic.

For the mango mascarpone tres leches dessert, thin slices of mango are wrapped in circular form, creating a blossom.

In the fluke crudo, the pieces of fluke are curled up and placed just so in the dish, along with orange leche de tigre and avocado mousse. Jalapeno and edible blossoms serve as vivid garnishes.

Then you experience the flavor: delectable, powered by fresh, complementary flavors.

So it goes at Pearl, the newest restaurant in downtown Mystic.

The venue at 7 Water St. opened in June, and it offers New American cuisine “focusing on elevated, locally sourced fare,” as its website notes.

In creating Pearl, Moses Laboy, who owns the restaurant with wife Lauren Wells, said, “We wanted to give the town something modern, something that had a New York City vibe but still staying true to the town’s feel — not to be so over-the-top that it felt unapproachable. I think that people who walk in here are really wowed by what we put together.”

The team behind Pearl is a pretty diverse group, he noted, and they wanted that to be reflected in the food and beverages.

“When you say New American, you really allow yourself to explore because New American can mean many things. It can mean Dominican food, Puerto Rican food, Irish food, English food. It can mean anything. It’s a melting pot,” he said.

The menu ranges from fried plantains (with the plantains cut into coins, fried, smashed, then refried, turning them into crispy, savory, salty slices) to Memo’s Lobster Mashed Potatoes ($36), which features a quarter pound of lobster and chive oil; the latter is based on Wells’ mother’s recipe. Wells noted that there are also classics like a lobster roll “but with a refined edge.”

Mystic connections

While the folks running Pearl have worked a great deal in New York, Wells and Laboy also have deep ties to Mystic.

Wells grew up in Washington, D.C., but she has been coming to Mystic since she was a child because her extended family lived here. Her great-uncle owned for 35 years the house on Park Place that her parents have now owned for the past eight years. Her parents also have a cottage in Old Lyme, by White Sands beach, that has been in the family for decades.

“For this (the opening of Pearl) to happen, it just felt like this full circle,” Wells said.

Laboy has been visiting the region during holidays and the summer since he and Wells began dating 15 years ago.

“Coming back here, Connecticut was always a second home, especially this part of Connecticut,” he said.

The building that Pearl is in used to be the home for Pizetta. A friend of the Wells family, Sally Vail, told Laboy about the spot and connected him with the building’s owners.

Pearl is a bit of a family affair. The venue features paintings created by Wells’ mother, Maureen O’Brien. Her father, Jeff Sandmann, was gardening around the exterior on a recent day and had previously sanded and finished the downstairs bar at Pearl and stained the wood on the nearby columns.

The team

The Pearl team features chef Nisorin Paulino, general manager Naeem Lama and manager Brent McCarty. McCarty ran Pizetta for seven years.

Laboy’s resume ranges from being named a top mixologist in New York City by Timeout NY to appearing on “Chopped.” Before opening Pearl, he was the corporate beverage director for the Gerber Group, which is owned by Rande Gerber — who started the Casamigos tequila company with George Clooney — and Gerber’s brother Scott, who “is a big nightlife guy in New York,” Laboy noted. Laboy ran their business in New York, D.C., and Atlanta over the last four years.

Paulino has cooked for such Michelin-starred venues in New York City as L'Atelier De Joel Robuchon and Le Pavillon.

He said working at Pearl is very collaborative. Laboy comes from a restaurant background and so knows what good food is, Paulino said.

“Then where I come in is, OK, you have this vision, let me see if I can use my experience to think of something better than what you imagined,” Paulino said.

Laboy calls Lama his right-hand man; Lama runs service, menu and beverage at Pearl.

Laboy and Lama met when Laboy helped open Wild Ink at the Hudson Yards in New York City. Laboy brought Lama with him when they opened a restaurant called Moon in Greenwich, which is where they met Paulino. But it was in the middle of the pandemic, and Moon didn’t last. They went in different directions before joining up again for Pearl.

“I’m very proud to have friends who are willing to come back to a project like this and lend a hand,” Laboy said.

Popular dishes

Lama talked about how Paulino has taken comfort food and elevated it.

“I tell everyone, try our French fries. Because we’re not just frying potatoes and salting them. No, Chef Niso wants to take that extra care and make sure that even that has a seasoning to it. These are OUR special French fries,” Lama said.

Among the most popular Pearl dishes so far have been the Pan Seared Black Sea Bass, with charred corn, cilantro lime rice, pickled onions and Poblano crema ($29), and the Paella De Mariscos, with saffron red pepper rice, shrimp, scallops, loligo, mussels and clams ($74 for a portion that serves two).

Examples of other prices: The fluke crudo appetizer mentioned earlier is $16. The crispy maitake, with chimichurri, avocado crema, chive oil and jalapeño, is $14. The toasted tomato pizza with arugula, roasted garlic, tomato compote, herb spiked EVOO and balsamic pearls is $17.

A Wazowski cocktail

The cocktails are creative concoctions, too. They include vegetable cocktails, made with zucchini water in one case, carrot juice in another.

“The Bloody Marys need to step out the way,” Lama said with a laugh. “We’re going into vegetable cocktails now. It makes it so much more fun.”

The Mr. Wazowski ($16), for instance, consists of Fords gin, zucchini water, elderflower, lemon and cucumber. In honor of the green, one-eyed character Wazowski from “Monsters, Inc.,” a thin slice of cucumber is rolled up, skewered and placed on the glass, like an olive.

Getting the look

Wells, who was an interior designer before moving into event design and marketing, used her talents on the interior design for Pearl. She said that the goal was for it to feel “classy, fresh, inviting … It’s not too casual, but it’s also not too proper” — in other words, it reflects the menu.

“I wanted to custom create colors (for the interior walls) that weren’t like, ‘Oh, this is Benjamin Moore 2680.’ I had a lot of fun with this color, based off some tones of an English company I really love. The area, obviously, we’re on the water. It has such a personality around being on the water.”

But she didn’t want to do blue. The shade she ended up with feels almost like a neutral but with elements of greens and grays.

Wells said she also had fun with, among other elements, choosing the light fixtures with brass accents and painting the ceiling beams black.

“One of the things we fell in love with this space is, no matter where you are, there is either a great view or a great nook or a great feeling,” she said. Visitors can sit on the front porch, with a fan going overhead, and people-watch on Water Street. Head in the other direction, and they can get a river view from the deck. Go downstairs, and they can experience a speakeasy vibe.

What’s in a name?

About the name Pearl: One day, Laboy told Wells that he wanted the venue to be the pearl of Mystic. Wells got a little choked up because Pearl was her mother’s secret nickname for her sister, who died at age 55. “She was like the pearl of our family, always the one who was there and happy,” Well said. “When I came up (to visit), she was one of the people I would be with.”

Great things happening in Mystic

While Laboy has opened other restaurants (he had a small stake in Moon and a restaurant/bar several years ago named Bottle & Bine), this is the first one that is 100 percent his and Wells’ investment.

“The New York City market has become so outrageous that it’s just unsustainable, in my opinion, unless you’re part of a larger group. It’s unsustainable to open up a place by yourself these days,” he said.

For a mom-and-pop shop in New York right now, it’s a “big roll of the dice,” he said.

In Mystic, Pearl is in the midst of some great restaurants. Most famously, of course, David Standridge, executive chef for The Shipwright’s Daughter, won a James Beard Award earlier this year, and Renee Touponce, the executive chef for Port of Call and the Oyster Club, has been a finalist for a James Beard Award for the past two years.

“You have a lot of culinary stuff happening here. We’re just looking to add to that or be a part of it,” Laboy said. “We just want to be part of that culinary landscape. Because I think there are great things happening here, on this bank (of the Mystic River) alone. I like to think of it as the left and right bank of Bordeaux.”

If you go

What: Pearl Provisions + Tipples

Where: 7 Water St., Mystic

Hours: 4-10 p.m. Mon., 4-11 p.m. Wed., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5- 11 p.m. Thurs.-Sun.; closed Tues.

For more info: (860) 415-9393, pearlmystic.com