March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Rainbow Seafood Restaurant on Hong Kong's outlying Lamma Island teems with diners almost every night from April to October. The restaurant runs a fleet of speedboats ferrying customers seeking to escape the city.

Compared with bustling Hong Kong Island, Lamma Island's Sok Kwu Wan, a fishing village fringed by waterfront seafood- restaurants, exudes calm. Among shops selling homemade shrimp- paste and bunches of dried fish, storekeepers slouch in plastic chairs with their feet up. Touts from Rainbow's rival waterfront eateries approach potential diners with menus, promising ``very special prices'' and ``big dinners with big discounts.'' Most ignore them and head for Rainbow.

The food needs to be better to be worth the 30-minute ride. After negotiating floating oilrigs, tankers and junk boats, my guests and I expected a meal unrivaled by the seafood restaurants on Hong Kong Island: Instead, one humdrum dish trailed another.

The melted cheese that cloaked the baked lobster was rubbery, its tangy taste overpowering the sweetness of the shellfish; lobsters came with limp egg noodles and a bland cream sauce; scallops, steamed in their shells and served with glass noodles, were as plain as rice-puddings. The kitchen, helmed by Chef Chan Ho Keung, churns out dishes that appear hastily made, perhaps by a staff struggling to keep food and drinks flowing for 600 diners.

Top Honors

The food isn't bad; it just fell short of expectations. Surely a restaurant that won top honors in recent years at local competitions could at least ensure dishes were properly seasoned and garnished before leaving the kitchen?

Some dishes arrived with wet slips of paper -- kitchen instructions -- stuck on the rims of the plates. Each was decorated with a single carnation.

The dining area, looking out over the fishing boats moored in Sok Kwu Wan cove, was nearly full by 7 p.m. A table of about 15 Chinese tourists studied the menu in silent reverence as their Hong Kong tour-guide, a lady with false eyelashes and a head of dyed spiral curls, placed orders. Nearby, eyes glazed over at a table of expatriates in their 30s listening to their local host explain the intricacies of each dish.

Lobster Baiting

About eight waiters, wearing royal-blue windcheaters, tended to diners at the turquoise-and-pink tables, suggesting dishes, taking orders, and ushering guests to the tanks of live fish to pick their dinner. A man with hair gelled into spikes pointed at a fish. Kitchen staff in flip-flops scooped it out and hurled it into a blue plastic pail, tail thrashing.

Tanks were filled with groupers, mantis prawns, abalone. The lobster container was a favorite with a group of kids, who pulled the crustaceans' long feeler-antennae when they thought their parents weren't looking.

Another diner chose one of two, four-pound (1.8-kilogram) squids undulating in a shallow tank. A chef pushed the blades of a pair of scissors into the creature, which squirted ink and wrapped its tentacles around his arm.

A few dishes we ordered saved the evening. Rainbow's Symbol of the Vegetable deftly displayed different Cantonese cooking techniques in a single dish -- steamed baby bok choy lightly seasoned with sesame-seed oil, stir-fried mushrooms cradled in deep-fried taro that was crispy on the outside and moist within.

Soybean Sauce

The 1.5-pound grouper we picked from the tank was perfectly steamed, doused with soybean sauce and rice-wine and topped with shredded spring onions and ginger that emphasized the freshness of the fish.

One guest, a Hong Kong woman who claims to be a seafood connoisseur, enjoyed the grouper so much she asked if she could have the head. She could indeed.

What sets Rainbow apart is the freshness and quality of the seafood, said Chan Wai Ming, owner of the restaurant and the son of a Lamma Island fisherman who as a child used to help his father sort the day's catch. Still, even Chan said he would only give Rainbow 75 marks out of 100 because the restaurant ``needs to improve on its cooking.'' He's right.

The Bloomberg Questions

How much? The set menu for two is HK$320 ($41.2) -- HK$380

Sound levels? Moderate to noisy as the evening progresses.

Business meetings? To entertain out-of-town colleagues.

Date place? Not if you want a romantic dinner.

Best table: Ask for the tables that overlook the cove.

Special feature: Laid-back Lamma Island.

Will I go back? No.

Address: 16-20, 23-24, First St. Sok Kwu Wan, Lamma Island, Hong Kong. Tel: (852) 29828100; Fax: (852) 29828398; http://www.rainbowrest.com.hk Reservations are recommended. Business hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m.

To contact the reporter for this story: Le-Min Lim in Hong Kong at lmlim@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 29, 2006 23:22 EST