Landmark pays attention to both presentation, flavor

The Landmark caters to Old Orchard Beach visitors and locals, who return when the traffic dies down. All could enjoy a lobster added to any entre for just $5.95 in the first week of October.

You can rely on the Landmark too for dependable, creamy lobster stew. Creaminess and crunch are the motifs of the meals, from lacquered duck and fried "Bang Bang Shrimp," an appetizer that should actually have been crunchier, to chicken with Asiago cream sauce. And for the most part, the Landmark makes those popular textures work.

But wine by the glass was overpriced.

Eileen and Rick Payette own this restaurant inside a 1910 Victorian former rooming house, to which Payettes added a porch and outdoor patio. This is their 15th year in business.

I dined inside a deep red room that overlooks the enclosed porch, also full of tables for dining, and most seats were filled on a Tuesday night. Set against the walls in the red room were paintings by the chef, Rick Payette, several beautifully set off with a wide painted band of gold making a frame around gem-colored landscapes.

That decorative sensibility endowed our plates with color from diced red peppers and green beans paired with julienned beets.

We started with the lobster stew ($11.50), a wide shallow bowl filled with densely creamy but not flour-thickened soup infused with the good flavor of lobster and filled with chunks of lobster meat. Crunchy, hot bread spread with Cabot butter was the perfect accompaniment to that stew, and it appeased our hunger for a somewhat long spell before the stew appeared.

Bang Bang shrimp ($9.50), Maine shrimp swathed in puffy batter, had been fried a golden brown and were really good, their mild, slightly oily coatings enlivened by a sweet plum sauce and a dash of chili oil. Perhaps a dose of steam was to blame, but the shrimp coating had little crunch by the time it was served, unlike the nest of fried rice noodles under them – a product that was all crunch and no flavor at all.

A glass of Writer's Block Zinfandel, a modest red wine from California, was $9.50, a price quite a lot higher then I typically encounter in restaurants like the Landmark.

Mont Gras Cabernet Franc, a Chilean red, was $8.50 by the glass, $34 by the bottle. Five reds range from $8.50 to $9.50 a glass, and seven whites, including Salneval Albarino from Spain ($8.50), are priced from $8 to $10.

The baked French onion soup ($7.50) is topped with Gruyre and puff pastry. Mussels, beet and goat cheese salad and Caesar are also on the short appetizer list.

Surf and Turf ($26.95), a special, featured Maine shrimp sauted with black olives, tomato and garlic, a delightful alternative to the curled tail of a lobster. But while large, the hunk of sirloin steak on the plate was cooked slightly more than the medium rare requested. For that reason, perhaps, it was also tough.

Wonderful mashed potatoes accompanied this meal, and those tender, pretty green beans with thin-cut beets were also an excellent side dish.

Linguini and mussels aglio e olio ($19.50) satisfied a craving for garlicky pasta with shellfish, the tiny, abundant Prince Edward Island mussels opened up on top of a big shallow bowl of pasta cooked al dente, and enlivened with Kalamata olives, red pepper, onion and tomatoes. The slippery noodles did their thing, arousing appetite with their sauce of garlicky olive oil.

Lacquered duck ($21.50) is a house specialty, on the menu for at least the last three or four years and often requested by customers, Eileen Payette said. Half a duck is basted with honey, lime, and ginger, and served with rice.

Macadamia scallops ($21.50) and Parmesan haddock ($19.50) are two more seafood dishes on the menu. Early dinner specials served from 5 to 6 include five dishes, among them shrimp and scallop scampi, rosemary chicken, and mussels aglio e olio. You can add soup of the day and a salad for $6.

Desserts like Key lime pie ($7.50) – "the real thing," the menu proclaimed – were admirably served with real whipped cream. A mouthful of that stuff is a delight – there is nothing good about the taste of the canned stuff. The creamy tart filling of the Key lime filling tasted perfectly right too.

Chocolate terrine ($7.50) did a lot exactly right as well, from the proper proportions, a small slice, to the texture of rich, creamy bittersweet chocolate, with some good chopped pecans on the bottom. The whipped cream, mild and slightly sweet, matched textures while nicely contrasting in flavors with the slightly bitter chocolate. But pomegranate sauce swimming around the bottom of the plate was both too sweet and too bitter.

The desserts change often, with maple creme brule one night and chocolate chip another, Rick Payette said; you might not find pecans in the chocolate terrine the next time he puts one together.

N.L. English is a Portland freelance writer and the author of "Chow Maine: The Best Restaurants, Cafes, Lobster Shacks and Markets on the Coast." Visit English's Web site, www.chowmaineguide.com.

The Landmark Fine Dining