reviewed by Colin Sargent July 2002
If you just want to drop in for a casual five-star meal, be sure not to miss the Sea Star Grille in Kennebunk’s Lower Village. This is summer at its best. Its season is short – they’re only open till September 5 ã so we say absolutely get there as fast as you can. It’s breezy, has a great little bar, features raw oysters with a raw bar, and the local fish and seafood is so fresh it momentarily crosses your mind that maybe you’ve never really had fresh fish before. We actually saw a lobster crawling across chef Eric How ton’s counter as he adroitly tossed a slew of mussels into the air while flames licked scallops and other fruit de mer from his open, theatre-like grille.
Howton was chef at the Ogunquit Hurricane for 5-6 years before opening the Kennebunkport Hurricane last year.
Since grilling is his specialty, we naturally went for the grilled apple and pear salad on field greens ($7), lightly dressed, while we took in the low barn-board ceiling with a fresh-scrubbed look and hurricane lanterns. Evervthing looked fresh scrubbed, as if cleaned with sand and seawater, including our large oak table.
How delighted we were when the waitress plopped down enormous white pottery bowls filled with our entrees! Our salmon and swordfish were absolutely perfectly cooked – the two-inch sword-fish steak ($18) cooked moistly throughout and seared by the grill on the outside – not an easy task. The salmon ($18) was slightly crispy on the outside, perfectly moist and tender on the inside-we couldn’t believe how good it was. “This is truly the best-cooked salmon I’ve ever had,” my guest burst out. Beside her was a diner with a big bowl of mussels and grilled bread to soak up the beautiful juices. The diner didn’t look up. He was devouring the mussels so fast lie didn’t have time.
Incomprehensibly, this is a place where someone could drift in in black tie or with a sunburn in flip-flops and comfortably read a newspaper while drinking a crisp glass of white wine from tlie full bar. It’s a five-star beach restaurant without the beach, almost Caribbean in its unstudied simplicity – without any kitsch or fake grunge [like you have to wade through in many barbecue spots.
And it’s not just the fish that’s fresh – the breeze is incredible, too, creating the feeling of being half outdoors. You can imagine this restaurant in Antigua with this breeze, gorgeous fish just tossed into tlie bowls, with big white fluffv towels in lieu of napkins to wipe your mouth.
Which is all the more remarkable when you consider Sea Star Grille is so easy to miss, tucked into “The Yellow House” between the Kennebunk/Kennebunkport Chamber of Commerce and H.B. Provisioners (nee Meserve’s)
The vegetables – grilled potatoes, grilled tomatoes, and long, grilled carrots decoratively presented with the entrees in the large bowls, are worth writing home about, too. Don’t miss tlie homemade wild Maine blueberrypie ($5) with handmade whipped cream, and don’t miss Sea Star Grille. The five course specials are just $29. Reservations are recommended, but the service is so friendly this is not the kind of restaurant where they ask you if you have them just to make you feel intimidated.
tel# 967-1198
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