A breezy window at the pier

THE Lobster, that boxy white seafood house set at the foot of the Santa Monica Pier, is so utterly likable that you can almost forgive the kitchen for not being able to properly cook a lobster.

There’s nothing tricky about the technique: Boil salted water, drop in a lobster, set the timer for 12 minutes, and ding! Your 1 1/2 -pound lobster’s ready to be pulled out and served. You can rely on the result: meat that’s tender and moist. A squeeze of lemon, a dip of drawn butter and you’re in business. Do it right, and your customer probably won’t mind being charged $42.

In three visits over the past month, the Lobster gets it wrong every time. Steamed Maine lobsters on two occasions are overcooked, the meat tough and dry. And a grilled Maine lobster -- a bit trickier, no doubt -- arrives at the table undercooked. How bizarre that a restaurant named after the bug and in business for seven years can’t reliably execute either one. You don’t need a chef to steam lobsters; any line cook should be able to do it -- so it’s even beside the point that chef Allyson Thurber is allergic to them. (No joke.)

But the Lobster has a wonderful feeling, with its 180-degree-plus views of the ocean and Palisades Park, and those floor-to-ceiling windows open to catch that lovely sea breeze. If you’re looking for someplace great to dine at the beach, there are woefully few contenders up and down L.A. County’s stretch of coast. So now that full-on summer has arrived, it feels like a good time to rediscover the place that was first opened in 1923, and has been in its current incarnation since 1999.

And there’s a lot to like. The cocktails are great -- especially the Negroni Sbagliato, translated on the menu as “Wrong Negroni” and made with sparkling wine, Campari and red vermouth, poured on the rocks. The menu reads great, so there’s always that promise of fun ahead, the wine list has lots of decently priced interesting bottles, the diners are exuberant and the wait staff uncommonly professional and eager to please.

When we send back an order of Kumamoto oysters on the half shell because they’re spawning, our waiter rises to the occasion, not only happily taking them back, but also asking us, with genuine interest, how one can tell they’re spawning. Clearly he doesn’t want to repeat the mistake.

So when I see my friend picking at her undercooked, $75, 2 1/2 -pound herb-grilled lobster, I insist we send it back. The waiter whisks it away with an attitude that assures us that we’ve done the right thing, and when it comes back a few quick minutes later, it’s perfectly done, delicious -- succulent and sweet and smoky.

Starters are some of the best bets. Sweet corn pancakes topped with a lively lobster salad go well with a mild, chive-tarragon aioli. Fried calamari come nicely crisp and tender.

There are a few off notes, though. A warm gratin of crab, spinach and artichoke served with tortilla chips tastes like a bad, early-’70s flashback. Sweet white corn soup has a weird ocher color; it tastes like corn that has been roasted too long, with none of the freshness of sweet white corn.

Somewhere in the middle are the seafood cocktails, which are served in silver-toned cocktail glasses, the bottom filled with shredded iceberg lettuce. The meat in the lobster cocktail is perfectly cooked, and sweeter than either of the steamed lobsters. It’s served with lemon tarragon aioli for dipping. The jumbo wild Mexican shrimp are some of the best I’ve tasted lately, with straight-ahead cocktail sauce gently spiked with horseradish.

The Dungeness crab “Louis” is by far the best of the three seafood cocktails: The big pieces of crabmeat are perfectly cooked and terrifically sweet and flavorful. Weirdly, they’re crammed into their tiny cocktail glass with a sliced, half an avocado, wedges of hard-boiled egg, fat slices of cucumber and a couple of tomato wedges. The ingredients don’t dance together, as they would in a true Louis; instead, they’re lonely wallflowers, all with a decent Louis dressing for dipping.

You might be tempted to simply linger in the bar taking in the view (if you can get a seat -- it ain’t easy any day of the week), ordering a glass of Albarino and appetizers.

The restaurant is known for featuring California spiny lobsters when they’re in season, which will begin the first Wednesday in October and run through May. In the meantime, main course crab cakes are delicious -- fat and nicely browned, with good pure crab flavor and topped with a lovely little salad of sweet, raw white corn kernels, microgreens and roasted red peppers. The sauce is a gentle chili-citrus sour cream. Odd, though, that chef Thurber makes the crab cakes with lump crab rather than our West Coast treasure, Dungeness.

Pan-roasted Alaskan halibut comes deftly cooked, sitting atop whipped potatoes flavored with chives. It’s sauced with a sauce americaine, classically a reduction of lobster, Cognac, tomato puree, white wine and heavy cream, enriched with butter, lobster coral (roe) and tomalley (liver), but made lighter here, which is a good thing because halibut is such a delicate fish.

Seared day boat sea scallops with shrimp bisque sauce arrive perfectly cooked, but their exciting sounding garnish -- lobster home fries -- are a red herring: They’re not really home fries, but sauteed potatoes, with little evidence of lobster involved. Thai red curry lobster with incongruous diced vegetables mixed in, and served with black forbidden rice, is gloppy and a bit too sweet, really a waste of a lobster. Equally silly is the pan-roasted American lobster, very heavy in a rich Jim Beam sauce.

Meat lovers might go for the 12-ounce New York strip steak, simple and nicely grilled, with truffle-Parmesan fries and sliced heirloom tomatoes.

The Lobster is seen to its best advantage at lunch, when it feels much less chaotic, and you really feel that you’re at the beach. The service is a bit more relaxed and just as friendly, and it’s nice for a change to look around and see diners raising wine glasses at lunch, even ordering bottles. It feels festive. (For lunch or dinner, request a table by the windows when you make a reservation. It’s an as-available policy, though, and neither of my two requests netted the prize.) The menu is much the same at lunch, with the addition of a few main course salads.

Or relax with a glass of wine and a much-better-than-average sandwich. The chicken salad, made with grilled chicken and applewood smoked bacon, served on good, grilled sourdough, comes with skinny fries that outshine just about every other side on the menu, and crunchy classic cole slaw.

Desserts are not a strong suit. Profiteroles are soggy one night; a peach cobbler is overly sweet and leaden. The key lime chiffon pie is a better bet

The Lobster’s wine list is not outrageously priced; the wines are cannily chosen, so that a decent Albarino (a 2004 Burgans) seems reasonable at $28, though that’s more than a 300% markup over wholesale (the wine goes for about $10 retail).

In any case, there’s plenty to choose from at or less than $50: a number of interesting German Rieslings, a 2003 Lucien Crochet “Le Chene” Sancerre, a 2005 Domaine Tempier Bandol rose at $48. There are also enough half-bottles to find something fun.

The head bartender has done a great job with the specialty drinks menu, which offers three very well-chosen, small batch gins, as well as a Cantaloupe Martini, suggested by our waiter at lunch, and that brilliant Wrong Negroni. Next time I’ll try the Portuguese Lemonade -- white Port mixed with limes and lemonade. Sitting in the breezy outdoor portion of the bar and sipping that while watching the sun set sounds like just the ticket as the summer kicks in.

*

The Lobster

Rating: * 1/2

Location: 1602 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 458-9294; www.thelobster.com.

Ambience: Breezy, bustling, noisy seafood house at the beach.

Service: Friendly, helpful and very professional.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $8 to $18; main courses $17 to $47. Steamed lobsters, $28 per pound (from 1 1/2 pounds); grilled lobster, $30 per pound (2 1/2 - pound minimum); desserts, $8.

Best dishes: Sweet corn pancakes and lobster salad; Dungeness crab “Louis” cocktail; grilled chicken, tarragon and apple-wood-smoked bacon salad sandwich; jumbo lump crab cakes with sweet white corn salad and chili-citrus sour cream.

Wine list: Well-chosen list, not outrageously priced. Corkage fee, $15 per bottle.

Best table: Any table by the window. Make a request when you make a reservation, though it’s not often granted.

Details: Open Sunday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Full bar. Valet 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.