"Is everything wonderful?"

It's been five years since the waitress approached my table at the Harborside, rested her knee on a chair, pushed her long hair out of her eyes and uttered those memorable words. My best friend and I were at the newly opened McCormick & Schmick's restaurant, dining on tepid chowder and a fillet of halibut that would have been forgettable but for its sauce: a dead ringer for the goopy-sweet interior of a Hostess cherry pie.

McCormick & Schmick's Harborside **½ $$$ Seafood 1200 Westlake Ave. N., Seattle (in the AGC Building). Reservations: 206-270-9052. Hours: lunch 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday (lunch served Saturday and Sunday through the end of August); dinner 3:30 p.m.-11 p.m. daily. Prices: lunch starters $3.25-$12.90, entrees $5.95-$15.95; dinner starters $2.95-$15.70, entrees $6.95-$23.95. Parking: $2 with validation in the AGC lot. Free in adjoining upper lot. Sound: Easy conversation in the upstairs dining room; lively in the downstairs bar. Full bar / all major credit cards / smoking permitted in first-floor bar and patio only / no obstacles to access.

That server's query has since become the joking catch phrase uttered each time my pal and I share a meal. And while recent meals at the Harborside weren't exactly wonderful, they were certainly pleasurable, prompting me to attempt to dispel any disparaging images lingering from early reviews.

When McCormick & Schmick's — the 33-restaurant Portland-based chain — took to the shores of Lake Union in 1996, it veered from the company norm by offering a poorly executed, abbreviated version of the expansive seafood menu we'd come to expect from Mick & Schmick's. Today the menu reflects that of its brethren: a daily-changing roster featuring 30-some varieties of fresh seafood, headlining a vast number of items including entree-sized salads, a multitude of pastas and sandwiches and a short list of grilled meats and poultry.

Though timing can lag when the kitchen gets swamped, servers are friendly, helpful and professional. That alone — given the hit-or-miss service sorely afflicting the local restaurant scene — would be enough to bring me back.

Set marina-side in the imposing 10-story AGC Building on Lake Union's southwest shore, the Harborside is actually two restaurants with a shared menu. Downstairs is a casual bar and eatery whose patio is a popular perch in summer. Upstairs, a somewhat formal, dated-looking dining room is dressed in dark green with dark wood accents, stained-glass lighting fixtures and comfortably spaced tables. This long, glass-enclosed room provides an inviting view of Lake Union encompassing the downtown cityscape plainly viewed from the smoke-free bar.

While many dishes feature the likes of Cajun remoulade, chipotle butter or fruit salsa, don't expect artistic renderings effusing with ethnic eclecticism — and stay away from the oversweet seafood jambalaya offered at lunch ($8.95). Entrees inevitably arrive with a heap of buttery mashed potatoes and barely steamed green beans that would be at home on Granny's dining-room table — if Granny liked her beans noisy-crunchy.

These vegetable accompaniments escorted expertly grilled Hawaiian swordfish ($20.80) with a lush brandy and stone-ground mustard sauce, and partnered sautéed Alaskan halibut cheeks graced with a simple lemon- and caper-laced piccata sauce ($18.55).

Beautiful blue marlin ($14.80 lunch/$15.80 dinner) bound with macadamia nuts and crowned with sweet mango chutney rested in a tart pool of beurre blanc. Grilled too long, meaty, white-fleshed albacore tuna ($15.60) needed its vibrant mango-papaya salsa to give it a tropical lift.

I loved the moist, baked, horseradish- and panko-stuffed steelhead served at lunch ($11.80), but was bent out of shape when the Columbia River sturgeon, "oak-planked with carrot and potato puree" ($17.60), came grilled with butter sauce and sided with beans and mashers. It was devoid of the plank (and its smoky flavor) as well as the colorful carrot puree served — as advertised — to nearby diners.

Fried seafood, much of which does double duty as appetizer or main course, is invariably crisp and clean tasting — a description that extends to a pair of cakes plumped with Dungeness crab and bay shrimp. Pan-fried Malaspina yearling oysters needed only a spritz of lemon to bring them home to heaven, and everybody's favorite starter, fried calamari, is tenderly cooked and available as topping for an entree-sized Caesar.

If you've always been intrigued by oysters Rockefeller but don't eat oysters, start with the baked portobello mushroom, richly stuffed with creamy spinach and cheese ($7.65). A half-dozen oysters on the half-shell, culled from various local waters, come carefully shucked as a sampler ($9.85). They're a classic starter to a meal that might continue with a classic burger topped with Tillamook cheddar ($6.95), or a New York steak with a boysenberry demiglace ($23.95), grilled, when I tried it, a shade past its intended medium-rare.

Next time I'm in the mood for meat here, I'm requesting a double order of the tongue-tingling, Cajun-spiced, baby lamb chops offered as an appetizer ($8.95). Had my waitress asked, I would have told her: Everything about them was wonderful.

Nancy Leson can be reached at 206-464-8838 or nleson@seattletimes.com.