Great Bay angles to be a seafood destination

Boston needs another seafood restaurant about as much as television needs another talent show. But as with the talent shows, what difference will one more make? Great Bay, in Kenmore Square, is a contestant that's determined to swim upstream. The third collaboration between manager-designer Chris Myers and haute-cuisine star chef Michael Schlow is vaguely reminiscent of their first, the downtown hotspot Radius.

But whereas Radius is a second-nature destination where you can loosen the tie and lose the blazer once the market closes and court's done for the day, Great Bay seems destined to be the joint for under-21s to take the folks for Parents Weekend. That's a fate most places in Kenmore Square would kill for. But Great Bay is decidedly not most places, and it's a safe bet that in venturing into crustaceans and fish, Myers and Schlow weren't angling for Legal Seafoods' territory.

Nestled on Commonwealth Avenue in the spot that International House of Pancakes once called home, the space that houses Great Bay is so spanking new that you can still smell the paint and freshly laid carpet that wafts in from the Commonwealth Hotel lobby next door like hardware-store perfume. A patch of undulating scales is projected onto the back wall of a room that could safely pass for a sparsely decorated aquarium. The high ceilings feature tentacle light fixtures; a smaller room to the right is draped with panels meant to reinforce aquatica: shells, nautiluses, and that sort of thing. After a while, it all starts to seem floral.

If the decor initially seems redundant, it demands that Great Bay be enjoyed with irony and humor. Cocktail waitresses walk around in maroon blouses with mini-capes and cleavage-flattering fronts; our waitress wore a glorified tunic over black pants, and the male servers were trapped in large black jackets that flatter nothing. Everybody looked like they'd wandered off the pages of Margaret Atwood's ''The Handmaid's Tale.''

The food, however, was no laughing matter. Schlow has gone nouvelle on fish. The menu is as vast and as deep as the ocean of your choice, and the meals come in dense, architectural portions with exploratory flourishes, suggesting that Schlow fancies himself the kitchen's Jacques Cousteau. Kingfish is seared and topped with cilantro and macadamia nuts. Grilled Scottish salmon is served with an armada of Vidalia onions. The black bass is tastefully married to a family of shiitake mushrooms. And, waiter, there's grilled squid in our curry soup.

The mussels on the starter menu have been steamed, plucked from their shells, and soaked in a pool of tomatoes, parsley, and garlic; and the crab cakes that are served with apple have been infused with red curry. The food is wonderfully discreet. The one true indulgence appears to be dessert. The butterscotch pudding, for instance, is richer than Donald Trump, arriving in a tall, thin glass, stacked between layers of whipped cream and pecans.

Our perch, in the smaller side room, gave us front-row seats to all the hot wait-staff action - furtive whispers, unavoidable collisions, etc.; it made us nervous, too. A staircase on the back wall (beneath the scales) leads to the kitchen, and the staff has to brave it to retrieve every meal. Those on less-than-thrilling dates should tune in for potential mishaps, although we were spared any service accidents.

We did suffer the raucous antics of a group of 20 behind us. They sat at a long bank of tables pushed together. Everybody was crisp and gelled. They said they were investment bankers. As the group thinned out and the night wore on, drinks were spilled and obscenities exchanged: Things got downright fratty.

Just then, an international-looking pack of nine or 10 men and women were seated nearby. Clad in black with lots of exposed flesh, they wore uncertain expressions that seemed to ask, `Are we in the right place?' But unlike the financial multitude nearby, this chic posse quickly blended in with the surroundings. The women, highly fashionable, wore faces that were blank in a fascinating, undernourished sort of way. The entire group spent the first few minutes crouched around a single man in a ''Family Feud'' huddle. Survey said: ''Ladies, please. Eat.''

When their meals arrived, one woman planted a finger in her plate and then put it in her mouth. Her confusion evaporated. She even laughed out loud, eagerly passed the plate around, and, upon its return, immediately picked up a fork and chowed down. Whatever she was having must have tasted like heaven.