The “Mojo Chef,” Rob Beasley, will work his Cajun “black magic” in the kitchen when opens his new restaurant this week on Friday the 13th.

Mojos on 86th, located in the former Foxboro Grill in Johnston, will feature food that is “fresh, bold and innovative.” The menu will include several original items and traditional food with a twist. Beasley’s Louisiana heritage will shine through in many of the flavors.

“You’ll notice a lot of Southwest and a Cajun influence,” Beasley said. “It’s not all hot and spicy. It’s bold and flavorful.”

Two of several original dishes Beasley will serve are a Cajun chile relleno appetizer made from fire-roasted Anaheim peppers and filled with crab and lobster stuffing and a Bourbon Street beef entrée with smashed potatoes and a crawfish Asiago cream sauce.

He plans to serve a fresh fish of the day, and the menu will rotate often to feature locally grown products from organic farmers. Sheeder Farms free-range chickens, Niman Ranch pork and cheeses Northern Prairie Chevre are a few of the local flavors incorporated into several of the dishes.

“I’ve found that the flavors of a lot of the producers I use are superior to other products,” he said, “and I’m a huge proponent of sustainable agriculture and supporting local commerce.”

The restaurant will be “upper casual,” Beasley said, and “upscale, but not uptight.” “We’ll keep it fun and funky, a bit on the contemporary side, with bright artwork.”

Beasley is no stranger to the restaurant business. Cooking has been in his blood since he was a child growing up in the South, where “food was a way of life.”

“My mom has pictures of my standing at the stove, frying an egg when I was only 3 years old,” he said. “All I ever wanted to do was cook.”

Beasley studied cooking at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N. Y., and after graduation spent several years working for restaurants in Dallas and New Orleans. Then in 1994, he moved to Iowa to open Adam & Abby’s in Cumming. He sold that restaurant in 2000, worked briefly at Fratello’s on Eighth in West Des Moines and went on to be part-owner and chef at the Varsity Café in Des Moines. After leaving the Varsity, which has since closed, he became head chef at the Gilded Emporium in Adel, where he worked until last February.

Last spring, while doing catering work on his own, he was approached by the owners of the Foxboro Grill with a request for his help to turn the business around. He recommended that the owners close down the grill, remodel and start over with a new restaurant. Beasley got his wish, and he started remodeling the building shortly after Thanksgiving.

Kristin Morrow, former proprietor of Forty-Three Restaurant and Wine Bar and other eateries in Des Moines, will serve as the restaurant’s manager. Real estate developer Randy Walters and Lori Bosley, two of the owners of the Foxboro Grill, own Mojos. After a year, they may sell the restaurant to Morrow and Beasley.

Mojos will be a smoke-free restaurant that will seat 96. It will also have a full-bar area that seats 20. It will be open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday for lunch and Monday through Saturday 5 to 10 p.m. for dinner. Lunch prices will range from $8 to $10, and dinner will cost between $14 and $24. The bar will be open at 4 p.m.

“We wanted this to be a place where people came once a week, not once a month,” Beasley said. “At the Varsity, we saw a lot of the same people again and again, but they would come less often because the prices were a little higher.”

Beasley said people who are familiar with his cooking will be glad to see the return of his cold-smoked steaks during the last weekend of every month, a tradition he started at Adam & Abby’s.

“I’ve been serving my cold-smoked steaks since 1994, and it has almost a cultlike following,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy.”

He prepares the steaks by rubbing them with olive oil and seasonings and putting them in a smoker where the smoke passes through pans of ice so the meat stays cold. The meat is then cooked to order and topped with chipotle and green chile butter.

“When people ask a us a lot of times where all the flavor in our food comes from, we say, ‘We put a little bit of love in everything,’” Beasley said. “I’m incredibly passionate about cooking, and I try to share that passion with everybody.”

Mojos on 86th is located at 6163 N.W. 86th St., Suite 4. Call 334-3699 for more information.