Go for the view

Stay for the view

By Kathy Gunst

SALTWATER GRILLE: a notch above your standard waterfront fish house.

I don’t do lines. But there I was at 5:15 on the most gorgeous Saturday night of the year, waiting to get into the just-opened Saltwater Grille in South Portland. The dozens of people in front of me don’t look like food groupies. They’re a mixture of the “eat-dinner-early-with-the-kids” set, the “early bird special” crowd, and some folks just off boats at the neighboring marina. I can’t help wondering: what am I doing here?

We are seated fairly quickly and, despite the intensity of the June sun, choose a table on the outdoor deck. The view of the bay and the Portland skyline is stunning. I imagine that even if the food is completely forgettable an evening sitting on this splendid deck is worth the wait.

The waitress arrives, casually clad in khaki shorts and white T-shirt, with an attitude so falsely chipper I’m tempted to ask for a new table. But since everyone has been seated at the exact same time there are no free tables, and it takes a while to place our order. In addition to the deck, the dining room — a massive, open, airy structure with a fish tank, a two-sided fireplace and open kitchen — is equally packed. Saltwater Grille has only been open for two weeks (that’s right, less than a month) and suddenly everyone in town has to be there. What’s going on?

Appetizers don’t answer this question. The Cracklin Calamari (described as “Lorings traditional way with balsamic, lemon, and parmesan cheese served with a side of Randy’s arabbiata) is a huge, hot, freshly fried plate of limp calamari. “Randy’s arabbiata” is a salsa-like dipping sauce made with canned tomatoes (has to be), onions, and few other innocuous flavorings. A major disappointment until I dig down and discover slivers of raw red onion, lemon juice, parmesan cheese, and balsamic vinegar lining the bottom of the plate which do a good job of waking up the poor squid. The Clams Casino is standard fare, filled with too many breadcrumbs, surrounding a lackluster pile of naked mesclun greens. The Shrimp Cocktail Martini is the most impressive — baby shrimp mixed with cucumber chunks, a horseradish cocktail sauce served in a martini glass with the requisite olives on a toothpick. Like its namesake, the dish is refreshing and satisfying.

Our waitress, smiling, winking and acting like a head cheerleader, told us we had picked “the best dinner entrees on the menu.” Great! The Potato Encrusted Local Haddock, topped with a lemon thyme butter, was delicious, but nothing sexy — a well cooked piece of fish. The accompanying red bliss potatoes were pale, slightly undercooked, just begging for a few minutes under the broiler. A raw vegetable salad made for a strange side dish.

The Saltwater Grilled Fisherman Stew was an excellent melange of colors and textures — an oversized bowl of mussels and shrimp surrounding a hunk of roasted haddock on top of linguine. A beautiful, orange-yellow, lobster-infused creamy saffron broth was poured over the whole thing. The stew was full of flavor and the fish was well cooked, but the sauce (despite the use of real saffron with its distinctive maroon strands in good evidence) was overwhelming. A pool of it sat at the bottom of the plate. And what exactly was this pasta? Broken bits of linguine? Why was each piece only an inch big?

The Lobster Marco Polo contained a Maine lobster, split down the middle, surrounded by mussels and littleneck clams, also on top of these strange little pieces of linguini with a “lobster pomodoro” — a rather uninspired tomato sauce. Again, there was way too much sauce and it nearly overpowered the delicious, well prepared lobster.

Although the menu also lists Mediterranean Chicken, Vegetarian Wok, and a New York Strip Steak, seafood is clearly the specialty here. Based on the three dishes we sampled, the quality of the catch is excellent. But why drown good seafood with such massive quantities of sauce?

Our cheerleader told us what a good job we had done with our dinners. “Wow, excellent work,” she praised and left the dirty plates to sit on our table for some 15 minutes. We had to ask the waitress twice and the bus boy once if someone could clear our table strewn with lobster carcasses, and discarded mussel and shrimp shells.

The food is so rich that when the waitress recited (sang) the dessert choices (two types of cheesecake, a fruit pie, and a few others) we were barely interested. We tried the strawberry-rhubarb pie because it’s in season, but the pastry was tough and chewy, and the filling was undistinguished. Still, the sun was waning and the Portland skyline looked as dramatic as I’ve ever seen it.

By now, the crowd was three deep at the bar (the wait for a table can be up to two hours) and our table was still dirty. The immediate and instant success of Saltwater Grille must be a thrill for its owners (who also run Walter’s in Portland and Joe’s Boat House in South Portland, just down the street), but they are clearly not ready for this degree of popularity.

Saltwater Grille has an incredible location, and if you’re lucky enough to be there on a warm summer evening you’ll be hard pressed to find a better spot to take in the city view. But the food, while definitely a notch above your standard waterfront fish house, wasn’t good enough to make me want to wait on that line again. So what’s all the hype about? Beats me.