Hurricane: dazzling menu, tantalizing exercise in choice
C.Z. Cramer
Audience Section, Taste & Tell Column
The Maine Sunday Telegram

June 30, 2002

Food: * * * *
Atmosphere: * * * * 1/2
Service: * * * *

The Bottom Line: Dinner at Hurricane is a real occasion. It's a handsome restaurant with a wonderful view and an exciting menu, and the staff is on the ball.

Hurricane Restaurant has choice locations in Ogunquit's Perkins Cove and in Kennebunkport's Dock Square, where we recently dined. Both spots offer panoramic water views from virtually every table.

Entering, the transition is abrupt from the dense shopping herd outside to the chic watering hole within. Well-dressed gazelles and heron bend their elegant necks to wine goblets and martini glasses at a handsome, old-fashioned wooden bar packed with stools. The bar and reception area is large enough to accommodate diners waiting for their tables and is also a destination itself. Beyond this bustling, honey-varnished, mirrored oasis, wooded booths can be spotted flanking the dining room with its pretty view of the Kennebunk River. There isn't a bad seat in the house.

Hurricane is high-end and well cared for. Walls are spotless gloss white with a border of clouds and seagulls circling the dining room. Simple wooden chairs and modern light fixtures contribute to a clean-lined atmosphere, and a burgundy carpet helps mute the sound of a hundred or more people having a good time. A platoon of wait people are (sic) dressed in white shirts and neckties and everyone seems to know what they are doing.

A commitment to wine is in evidence in the lengthy and interesting list. By the glass, there are more than two dozen each of reds and whites, including 11 chardonnays (sic) from California, Australia and France, with prices from $5 for Snoqualmie syrah and Hugel Gentil, to $7 for Sterling cabernet sauvignon and Lockwood chardonnay (sic), on up to $12 for Cambria pinot noir.

We impulsively chose a bottle of Shooting Star Zin Gris ($24), a dry, fruity California rose made from zinfandel grapes, and it turned out to be one of those perfect summer wines we'll look for again. As encyclopedic as the list is, it doesn't intimidate. The staff is knowledgeable and there are suggestions right on the list encouraging you to abandon the notion of wine rules, which you may heed or ignore as you like. Hurricane seems to urge helpfulness upon you, from the wine chat and descriptive menu to the newsletters stacked in the entryway on the glass merchandise case filled with Hurricane apparel. There is a Web site and a shop in Ogunquit. Even if all you want is dinner, it is hard to shake the feeling that you are helping to subsidize all the other stuff. The menu is not cheap.

As impressively lengthy as the wine list, the menu lists nearly two dozen soups, salads and appetizers with which to begin, many of them original twists on the traditional. Caesar salad with shredded egg and anchovy sounds good; you may further gild this lily with the addition of a Maine lobster tail ($15). Cobb salad is made with lobster meat rather than chicken ($17) and there is lobster chowder ($8). There is contrast in style, scope and culture: Steamed Penobscot Bay mussels are $9, Caspian osetra caviar is $50. A bento box of shrimp, scallop and salmon lumpia, Maine crab Rangoon and Hunan lamb (whew!) is $22. Grilled flatbread with Mediterranean toppings is $9; homemade Thai potstickers are $10. Decisions take time with this menu. While you deliberate, there are slices of delicious peasant bread - the loaves are piled on a handsome wooden sideboard in the dining room - to dip in full-bodied, extra-virgin olive oil. A jewel green bottle stands on every table.

Hurricane likes oysters - and so do we. A chalkboard in the bar indicates what's available daily. We requested a half dozen from Louisiana called Ameripures ($9). While ultra-fresh and meaty, the bivalves struck us as less briny and bright than Damariscottas.

An order of deviled lobster cakes with shrimp spring rolls made a pretty picture on a square platter. Each of the two cold spring rolls contained nothing more than a pair of cocktail shrimp and a few slim juliennes of carrot. The orange dipping sauce dressed them up a bit. Lobster cakes were a high-class relative of the Rhode Island clam cake rather than the Maryland crab cake. Which is to say these were minced bits of seafood in tender, bready, deep-fried balls rather than pan-fried patties of mostly lump meat. There were just two, walnut sized. A deep-fried spring roll wrapper formed a shell-like bowl that held sesame-tinged wasabi aioli in which to dip. This stylish looking multi-faceted dish was nice but austere for $14.

The choice of entrees is dazzling, and a new menu is printed daily. Seafood lovers will feel they have hit the jackpot, carnivores will be motivated by variety, vegetarians that night would find one dish among the 18 main courses -a luscious-sounding sweet potato gnocchi with local wild mushrooms and sage cream ($16).

The Hurricane newsletter suggests that a restaurant is as good as its treatment of chicken, and the pan-seared breast served with potato and asparagus lasagna offered that night sounded like royal treatment ($16). So did a double port chop on braised chard with pancetta and caramelized Vidalia onion ($16). Up the scale are a venison "tower" ($24), fennel-crusted rack of lamb ($26), and a chevre and pear stuffed grilled veal chop ($25). Enticing stuff, but so was the seafood. There were very creative preparations of sea bass and grouper (each $23) and halibut ($22). Lobster, boiled and served with steamed mussels is $35, and stuffed with a "rich and ritzy" mixture of scallops, crab and shrimp, is a staggering $39. These were higher prices than we have ever seen before for lobster and even sharply higher than any of the other entrees on the menu. Was this a brazen grab for the tourist dollar, or would it be the biggest, best lobster dinner in the state of Maine? We deemed the tariff too stiff to find out.

Roasted skate wing, a rare find, was both wonderful and reasonably priced ($18). This is a mild fish with natural tenderness and sweetness. Here the wing was on the bone, from which it is easily and neatly stripped. The orange butter sauce with fresh basil was perfect for the skate and the earthy potatoes smashed with chevre. A pile of home-fry style diced eggplant, squash and sweet potato was crisp and flavorful.

Pan-roasted salmon was good, fresh fish ($23). A hot pan gave the diminutive strip of choice filet a nice brown edge, but it had been cooked just past optimum juiciness. Accompanying risotto on the other had was not just al dente, it was raw-tasting and chalky, a shame because the herby chive parsley seasoning was good. The surrounding sauce was rich and buttery with nuggets of lobster meat, and a parmesan (sic) tuile rose from the plate like sculpture. Unlike the skate dish, there were no accompanying vegetables, which made this entrée seem insubstantial.

The dessert menu is another tantalizing exercise in choice. It was tough to bypass vanilla crème brulee and a selection of handmade chocolates, but we did, for the toffee-sauced banana bread pudding. This was a massive square and quite delicious, kind of a grown-up serving of childhood pleasure. All the desserts were $7. A cup of hot, fragrant espresso was $3. Our dinner with tax was $104.86.

We have not explored even the tip of the iceberg of this menu, but we found much to like about what we had sampled. And Hurricane's enchanting view and very good service capture the essence of a special occasion.