Blue Water Bistro & Bar

Blue Water Bistro is the brain child of owner Joseph Maneri's love of the Key West Carribean life style and his love of the beautiful blue water beaches that comprise them.  With blue water, pink sand and soulful serenity as a starting point, Blue Water Bistro then added its award winning chefs and its trained professional staff to make anyone who longs for the flavors and feeling of those gorgeous beaches an opportunity to experience them whenever they would like.

NEWSDAY REVIEW:

Festooned with color photos of palm trees, hammocks, lazy boats and the clearest sea imaginable, Blue Water Bistro & Bar is headed for the tropics.

It will take a while to get there.

More New American than Caribbean, less equatorial than equivocal, Blue Water goes in lots of directions. Have your piña colada and rigatoni alla vodka, too.

The setting for these excursions does go in for warm colors in the two-tier dining room, from the appointments to the paint job. But a bucket each of sunburst yellow and languid aquamarine wouldn't help. The theme is more like a picture frame than the art itself. Just go with it.

You could try the pan-fried "Caribbean crab cake," which is satisfactory despite the zestless "spicy" aioli. Scallop "carpaccio" also is the seared sort, generous and pretty good, although the drizzle defining it isn't exactly a "sultry lemon glaze."

A better beginning is the calamari sampler, with squid three ways, headed by the fried version with a sesame-orange accent. The sauteed "jalapeño calamari" needs a bit more heat; the "balsamic candied fried calamari," a little less sweetness.

"Six perky little neck clams topped with a zesty oreganata crust" suffer from too many adjectives and too much cooking. Instead, sample the tiger prawn cocktail, generous and to the point.

Lobster bisque has some depth; onion soup gratinee, a salt-shock kick. The "Long Island Waldorf" salad, with tangy goat cheese, bests the "Sayville Caesar," with Parmesan shavings. The ample arugula salad from nowhere includes peaches and almonds.

The kitchen prepares a diverting, East-West Alaskan cod, finished with polenta and tropical fruit sauce. The roasted salmon with chive-mashed potatoes improves on citrus-braised tuna with coconut sticky rice.

Apple-glazed pork chops show up flavorfully, accompanied by corn, Vidalia onions and chorizo sausage. The sirloin steak, however, tastes more of its sweet soy marinade than fine beef. But the garlic-whipped potatoes are all right.

Chicken Marsala, moist and restrained, also is aided by the garlicky spuds, which make another appearance with the sizable rack of lamb. Chicken or shrimp can be added to that appealing rigatoni alla vodka. Orecchiette Genovese translates into the addition of broccoli rabe, sweet sausage, roasted garlic and olive oil, not pesto. While the geography is off, the dish works.

Blue Water's most entertaining dessert is dubbed Lincoln Logs, and it's a construct of stacked cinnamon sweets with a texture between churro and doughnut. Ice cream provides the gilding.

"Ecstasy" is the title of a chocolate-chip brownie sundae that falls shy of rapture and bliss. The quartet of crèmes brûlée ranks vanilla, chocolate, raspberry and tropical, in that order. Sweet chocolate mousse is the competition.

No coconuts and no pineapples on this trip.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 11/5/06.

Hours
Dinner and lunch six days. Closed Monday.

Cuisine
Eclectic

Major Credit Cards Accepted
All major cards.

Notable dishes
Prawn cocktail, lobster bisque, pork chops, chicken Marsala, "Lincoln Logs."

Price Range
Expensive ($25-$50), Moderate ($15-$25)

Wheelchair Access
Ramp near entrance.