Lobster Goes Grand

If only I could find my old copy of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” to look up “The Fisherman and His Wife.” The Lobster, once a modest seafood shack at the foot of Santa Monica Pier, is back, and it’s as if the greedy fisherman’s wife of the story had demanded a palace--or at least a mansion--to replace the original restaurant as one of her wishes.

On my first visit, I’m puzzled. The entrance looks as if it’s meant to have a bar, but there’s nobody behind the sleek wood and marble counter. There are, however, a dinner and a lunch menu set out side by side. One of my guests glances at them and notes that many of the lunch items are just five cents less than the dinner items. Too clever by far.

If your table isn’t ready (and it usually isn’t, as I’ve found on subsequent visits), you can wait upstairs on a deck outside the bar and take in the view of the palm trees along the palisades. The crowd seems to be mostly Bermuda shorts-wearing tourists with a few locals sprinkled in. The noise level is horrendous. During one visit, a woman emerges from the dining room and announces: “It’s like war in there.”

The place is incredibly popular. The beach just doesn’t have enough good seafood restaurants, and this one has a superb location, one that architect Howard Laks exploits by cantilevering the structure out toward the pier, giving diners a 180-degree view of the oceanfront. Past the mobbed bar (please note the painting of the original Lobster just outside the kitchen doors) is the single dining room. Windows without glass let the sea breeze in. It looks like a loft with rough wood beams overhead. Booths can squeeze six--just. Aside from the view, the most noticeable thing about the room is the racket. Maybe it’s those flavored martinis or icy margaritas, but everybody here is talking at maximum volume, with every syllable bouncing off the walls, which makes getting a table on the deck even more attractive, but very hard to come by.

The chef is Allyson Thurber, previously executive chef at Water Grill in downtown L.A. At the Lobster, she has opted more for classic seafood dishes than the over-the-top California cuisine she indulged in at Water Grill.

Starters are stronger than main courses. For her appealing lobster salad, Thurber takes chunks of steamed lobster and marches them down the center of fluffy little sweet corn cakes. Her lobster cocktail preens in a martini glass, the lobster lightly cloaked in lemon tarragon aioli. Crab cakes (which can be ordered either as appetizer or main course) are fat golden orbs of lightly bound lump crab meat with a citrus-drenched sour cream and a fresh corn salad (on one occasion, made with tired, starchy corn). Crunchy calamari dipped in lemon-spiked tartar sauce becomes positively addictive. Juicy, piping hot fried oysters are scattered over a romaine and endive salad to enticing effect. And glossy steamed black mussels come in a tomatoey broth redolent of applewood-smoked bacon.

As for main courses, look around the room: Every other person has a bright red crustacean--and a sizable one at that--in front of them. They’re wearing those silly plastic bibs and have been outfitted with shellfish crackers and narrow forks to pluck out every last morsel. Drawn butter comes on the side, along with red-skinned potatoes and steamed asparagus. What could be better? The lobster, unfortunately. It may be live Maine lobster, but every time I’ve ordered it (four times), it’s been tough and lacking in that ineffable East Coast lobster flavor. The grilled Aussie tail that is doctored with garlic and herbs is actually better (but still far from tender). Considering that your lobster may cost more than $50, it’s a big disappointment.

If not lobster, then what?

Try the crab cakes. Or the spicy Louisiana prawns. Charred with heads on, they’re as fresh as can be, served on a bed of “dirty” rice with red beans and a jolt of hot pepper. Grilled wild king salmon is sadly overcooked one night, right on the mark on another, set off by a beautiful green sauce flecked with sorrel and herbs. Even seared rare ahi with warm tomato vinaigrette and an anchovy aioli has more flavor than most.

Though I very much doubt that the chef’s mother invented banana betty, as one waiter tried to tell us (I thought my mother did, quipped my guest), this warm, buttery concoction is everything you want in a homey dessert just yards from the beach. And if the idea of fruit and granola appeals, there’s a warm berry crisp with good strawberry ice cream melting in the middle. Chocolate ice cream piled in a stemmed glass is the color of milk chocolate, dense and deliciously not too sweet. Devil’s food cake, however, is more frosting than cake, something you’d expect to find spinning around and around in a deli pastry case.

The new Lobster may not have the unpretentious charm of the original, or its egalitarian prices. Still, if you want to eat seafood a stone’s throw from the ocean and can tolerate the noise and the crowd, it can be fun. The food is a big step up from the other restaurants with a view along this part of the coast.

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The Lobster

Cuisine: American seafood. AMBIENCE: The lobster shack goes upscale with views of Santa Monica Pier, an upscale beach crowd and noise level that’s higher than the surf. BEST DISHES: Lobster cocktail, steamed mussels, lobster salad, jumbo lump crab cakes, spicy Louisiana prawns, chocolate ice cream. WINE PICKS: 1997 Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc, Sonoma; 1997 Flora Springs Barrel Fermented Chardonnay, Napa. FACTS: 1602 Ocean Ave. (at the Santa Monica Pier), Santa Monica; (310) 458-9294. Lunch and dinner daily. Appetizers, $6 to $14. Main courses, $13 to $26. Lobster, market price. Corkage, free, but $10 if wine is on wine list. Valet parking as well as nearby public lots.