Sometimes a restaurant relocates—as Dahlia Lounge did in 1999, and Sitka and Spruce did in 2010, and Joule did in 2013.

Sometimes it trades up in swank, like when Farestart moved into its airy two-level quarters on Seventh, or when Osteria La Spiga moved from a plain corner of Capitol Hill to its gloriously raftered current home on 12^th.

But one thing is sure in this world where change is the only constant: When a restaurant moves, the address is almost never the biggest change.

Gastropod, the diminutive SoDo showplace for gifted chef Travis Kukull, recently moved uptown to become Mollusk, in genuinely gorgeous quarters off Dexter. Only in the bigger and shinier new place, as I write in this month’s review, its countercultural creative soul was suddenly tasked with the quotidian commercial responsibilities of filling a restaurant and pleasing a crowd. There’s a disconnect now that didn’t exist when it was a boutique property, small enough to fulfill its idiosyncratic creative vision.

So despite its aesthetic improvements, to my mind, Mollusk suffered from its move. In this it’s hardly alone, however; since I’ve been reviewing I’ve seen Wild Ginger move from unique independent to sprawling tourist pleaser, Mistral from intimate chef-driven innovator to happy hour emporium, the Herbfarm from winsome refashioned herb shed to overdecorated denizen of AnySuburb USA. If the food is still good in these places—as it assuredly can be—the move altered something essential about their souls.

Sometimes it works. Island Soul lost nothing in its move. Ditto Marjorie and Dahlia and Flying Fish. Some even get better—by which I mean more essentially themselves than they were able to be in their old digs. Into that category I’d place Joule, Nate’s Wings and Waffles, Sitka and Spruce (remember the cramped Eastlake original?), and the outright glorious new Lark.

Who else changed in a move?