Gentlemen, stop your Lamborghinis

I’VE turned into the posh Crystal Cove Promenade on Pacific Coast Highway just south of Corona del Mar, but I still don’t see it. The new Mastro’s Ocean Club Fish House, from the people behind Mastro’s steakhouses, has got to be big. And it’s got to be here. So when the stretch limo in front suddenly picks up speed, I follow. The driver turns. I turn.

And there it is, a massive modern building with bronze porpoise statues. The facade isn’t memorable -- but the scene out front is. I know the Ocean Club is hot, but this is ridiculous.

Limos, muscle cars and the biggest, most expensive imports pull up to a security checkpoint, where two gruff suits check names off against a list of reservations before waving them on to the valet. Picketers, their shift over, take down a banner that reads “Shame on Mastro’s, labor dispute,” which doesn’t seem to bother the line of would-be scene makers waiting behind a barrier for a walk-in spot at the bar.

Two identical Lamborghinis roar up to the valet, joining two others already in the parking lot. What is this, a Lamborghini convention? Just some people getting together, says the suave driver, escorting a trophy date with a purse slung over her arm that costs more than most people’s monthly mortgage.

We check in at a maitre d’ station manned by five or six hostesses who couldn’t look more bored. Our table isn’t ready yet. We were lucky to have gotten a reservation. I’d been calling for days and could only get a 9:45 (that’s p.m., boys and girls) until somebody canceled. It’s a Thursday night, the bar is standing room only, and as charged up with energy as the sports betting room at a Las Vegas casino.

While we wait, I stroll through several dining rooms with large, widely spaced tables and oversized leather banquettes. There’s an outdoor room with a fireplace, and an inner courtyard anchored by a huge tree.

Forty-five minutes later, our table is ready. “It’s worth the wait because I have a beautiful table for you,” the hostess tells us. Yeah, right, I think.

But it really is a great table, snuggled up against the huge tree in the courtyard. Over the sound system, Bobby Darrin belts out “Beyond the Sea.” We have a primo seat for observing the Thursday night ritual.

This is the night when singles go out to get their ducks in line for the weekend. Women dress up in their most provocative finery, while men go for the upscale beach bum look. There’s a lot of disposable income showing in the right labels, rocks on ladies’ fingers and body work galore. Three women in expensive jeans with elaborate embroidery take picture after picture of themselves the entire time we’re at dinner. If food or drink pass their lips, I don’t see it. But then the place is so mobbed it’s hard to see much of anything.

Mastro’s Ocean Club is doing 475 reservations on the weekends, close to 300 on weeknights and, according to our waiter, there’s never a slow night. Curiously for a seafood house, it’s selling more steaks than fish, he says. Mastro’s particular shtick is to make every one of those hundreds of customers feel like royalty. As you enter, two hosts swing open the doors. Drop a napkin, another appears. Waiters hover. Water is poured every few minutes whether you need it or not.

Because its concept is so simple, Ocean Club doesn’t need a high-end chef to execute its menu. Line cooks will do. In that sense it’s much like a steakhouse. Fish comes two ways, either braised with white wine, clarified butter and salt and pepper, or oreganata, dusted with fine bread crumbs and seasonings, basically oregano and paprika. There are no plain grilled or pan-sauteed options, making it easy for the kitchen to turn out hundreds of orders. It all goes under the broiler.

Everything on the chophouse-style menu is a la carte. Oysters sound appealing, but for a fish house the selection is meager: Quilcene or Blue Point, served a touch too warm, with a tomato-based cocktail sauce or a rip-snorting horseradish sauce (either guaranteeing you won’t be able to taste the oysters).

Dungeness crab cocktail is a generous portion of fresh-tasting crabmeat. It costs $19, so how do they get by with a dipping sauce that tastes like mayonnaise straight out of the jar? No aioli for these folks. Shrimp cocktail features firm meaty shrimp, a better match for that tongue-numbing cocktail sauce. Vanilla-battered shrimp are impressively large, but heavily battered, and the vanilla, perhaps mercifully, is elusive.

Boston clam chowder arrives in an elegant porcelain bowl, too elegant for the stodgy wallpaper-paste chowder -- it’s maybe the worst I have ever tasted.

Did I mention that we’re living large at Mastro’s? It’s the Cheesecake Factory aesthetic gone upscale. Every dish is gargantuan. Arctic char oreganata ($37) is a foot-long section, practically the entire fish. Now I get why so many people were walking out with what I’d like to call “kitty” bags. It is a nice piece of fish, albeit overcooked.

Overcooking seems to be the style here: Unless you specify otherwise, your fish will be cooked medium, with what the waiter describes as an “opaque flaky center.” For many fish, that would be overcooked. Fish lovers are better off specifying “rare.”

The problem isn’t as evident with my wild Alaskan salmon, so thick it stays a bit cool in the center. Big-eye tuna, though, is terrible, not just seared but cooked through an entire inch from the edge, leaving just a small red bull’s-eye in the center. It’s very much lacking in flavor.

On another visit, I invite a friend who comes hungry for a steak. The special, a bone-in rib-eye ($40), looks impressive but it’s a huge disappointment. Where’s the flavor? A New York strip at $37 is slightly better, but none of the steaks we order are anything special. How can this place pack ‘em in and charge this much for mediocre beef? It’s hard to believe it’s Prime.

I’m convinced what’s going here is a kind of sleight of hand. Portions are king-sized. The noise level is high. All the exaggerated attention soothes and pampers and distracts from the fact that, with a few exceptions, the quality of the food isn’t high.

Go easy on the sides. Thin shoestring fries piled up to resemble an Elizabethan-era thatched roof look as if they’d fill a gallon bowl. (Good thing they’re irresistible.) A special side, lobster mashed potatoes ($30), is a lobster, chopped, sauteed, then folded into mashed potatoes. It’s good, if decadent, but so rich we can’t finish it.

The wine list doesn’t make many allowances for the fact that this is supposed to be a fish restaurant. There are just as many Cabernets and other heavy-duty reds as there are whites. The focus is on well-established labels; the price for the cult Cabernet Screaming Eagle is the highest I’ve seen: $7,000 for a bottle of the 1995. Glassware is clunky; corkage is $25 per bottle.

Desserts are a disaster. A single order of warm butter cake, which would serve six or eight, tastes like something from the supermarket bakery; a single slice of excruciatingly sweet cheesecake must have a pound of gummy cream cheese in it.

Mastro’s Ocean Club Fish House must be doing something right to attract such hordes every night. Certainly the backdrop of the temporarily unattached going through their mating ritual is highly entertaining. And for those who hanker for a Rat Pack moment -- a martini and a steak, or maybe a giant lobster tail -- and don’t care that much how it tastes, well, Mastro’s Ocean Club will treat you like the Chairman of the Board.

*

Mastro’s Ocean Club Fish House

Rating: Half a star

Location: Crystal Cove Promenade, 8112 Pacific Coast Highway, Newport Beach; (949) 376-6990; www.mastrosoceanclub.com.

Ambience: Sprawling fish house from Mastro’s, the Scottsdale, Ariz., restaurant group best known for its steakhouse, Mastro’s, in Beverly Hills. The look is glitzy, about as understated as Vegas, with a crowded bar, several dining rooms with leather banquettes and widely spaced tables.

Service: Snappy and pitched to make diners feel important.

Price: Appetizers, $5.50 to $26; main courses, $20 to $40; desserts, $8 to $12. Lobster is market price.

Best dishes: Shrimp cocktail, Dungeness crab cocktail, oysters on the half shell, Arctic char oreganata, braised red snapper, wild salmon, sea salt and vinegar fries, mashed potatoes and lobster.

Wine list: Safe and unadventurous. Corkage, $25 for 750 ml, $50 for 1.5 liter.

Best table: One under the massive tree in the courtyard garden between the bar and dining room.

Details: Open 5 to 10:30 p.m. Sunday to Wednesday, 5 to 11 p.m. Thursday, 5 to 11:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Full bar. Valet, $3; also lot parking.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.