When they unveiled the façade of the Hotel Commonwealth, the City of Boston hollered, "Stingy!" and the developers scrambled to upgrade. But inside, they had everything covered by turning the restaurant (and even room service!) over to the top-ticket Radius team of Michael Schlow and Christopher Myers. Since the hotel is near BU, and parental visitors to Boston expect seafood, they picked that theme — and a Maine-raised California chef, Jeremy Sewell — to cover both coasts. Their best decision, however, was to set the tone a little below Radius and the similarly seafood-in-hotel-themed Azure. By stepping back from the cutting edge, the Great Bay team has reduced risk and opened the upscale seafood room that Bostonians and visitors are always seeking. There are things still to fix at Great Bay, though my perceptions were colored by having recently reviewed Meritage — a fully accomplished top-ticket hotel dining room that walks the cutting edge without bleeding a drop.

Great Bay’s main room has a high, rounded ceiling that’s supposed to evoke the keel of a ship, but reminded me of another Navy structure, a Quonset hut. Colors are kelp ochre, teal, and aquamarine, placing you under the sea (or subtly evoking the old fisherman’s platter at Howard Johnson’s). The tables are blue-and-coppery glass, or covered with linen in the slightly more formal dining room to the back, which is hung with silken scrims of the same colors. The wavy effect makes you feel more like a mermaid than a sailor.

Food begins with a very light, sweet brioche roll with a little coarse salt on the outside, presented with tongs from a basket, and a ramekin of sweet butter. The roll is somewhat addictive and frequently replaced, so remember to save room for dessert. Appetizers are spins on the familiar rather than startling experiments. My favorite was crisp Duxbury oysters ($14), five dandy oysters fried in some cornmeal for crunch, each dotted with a "toasted-mustard aioli" mayonnaise, and a micro-salad of "anchocress." I also liked the Great Bay chowder ($10), despite its outlandish presentation. You start with a huge bowl containing a small heap of clams, potato, and bacon. A waiter pours the creamy soup out of an iron Japanese teapot. All this ensures that the chowder is warm, not hot, but the clam flavor is excellent.

Steamed mussels ($11) are also served in a giant bowl, but the shellfish are out of the shell, in a buttery broth with some well-cooked tomato. I especially liked them on the triangles of grilled flatbread provided. Somewhat-more-elaborate appetizers are listed under "From the Island," the island being a sort of raw bar in the middle of the room. I don’t think the staff has quite caught up to the architect on this island concept, as on both my visits the raw bar was filled with crushed ice, preserving ... empty sea-scallop shells! But the appetizer we tried, spicy halibut tacos ($12), was excellent. It features four two-bite mini-tacos filled with a kind of ceviche of halibut, along with avocado salsa and plenty of cilantro. A separate side-dish salsa made from finely diced papaya is good enough to eat with a spoon.

The most cutting-edge appetizer at Great Bay may be the summer fruits ($11). This is small piles — very California nouvelle — of sliced ripe white peach, pickled black plum, fresh apricot, figs, chopped toasted almonds, and a bit of arugula salad. It also makes a Zone-perfect dessert.

The entrées walk a nice line with local and airmail seafood. Cousin Mark’s Dayboat Lobster ($39) is a very good job; it’s sort of baked and stuffed, but has been deconstructed by placing the stuffing (bread and vegetables) as a cylinder at the base, and piling up split-tail sections topped with claws out of the shell. A tarragon-butter sauce clings to every piece, to very good effect. Baby asparagus, beans, and pearl onions are scattered around the plate.

Moving to the Pacific, grilled ivory salmon ($25) is a revelation — a lean, wild salmon with white flesh, almost as light as halibut, but better flavored — with sliced potatoes and sweet, wheat-shaped wild asparagus. But a comparison of the whole Mediterranean sea bass ($27) and the wild striped bass ($26) favors the local fish. The Euro-farmed bass is done in a Chinese style, fried and presented in swimming position with an underlying sauce of julienne vegetables and a little soy and ginger. But the meat was white, dull, and slightly overcooked. The American entrant is a simple slab of baked fish, but it has deep flavor and stands up to porcini mushrooms and fingerling potatoes in a vinegar-soy sauce.

A daily special on soft-shell crabs ($30) will have expired by the time you read this, but it gave the kitchen another opportunity to demonstrate its expertise with the deep fryer. The token steak Diane ($30) is going to make a lot of visiting Iowans very happy. The 12-ounce fillet is superb beef, the modernized sauce Diane works out to taste just like salty fried mushrooms and onions, and the puréed potatoes are glorious. A side dish of spinach ($7) is real baby spinach, lightly sautéed with not quite enough garlic, and served in a copper saucepan.

Great Bay has a fine wine list, but not enough beers. A glass of Schlumberger gewürztraminer ($9/glass) is an Alsatian classic — spicy and floral, yet bone-dry and acidic enough for even the halibut tacos. Drouhin Brouilly 2000 ($30/bottle) is a similarly classic Beaujolais, a red wine sprightly enough for the darker fish. Coffee and decaf ($3.25) are good, but not overpowering. The "wuwai" tea ($3.75) is an interesting blend of apple and spicy flavors over chamomile.

Desserts share a style I don’t entirely approve of: crusts and cookies are under-baked to be served hot and juicy. It’s decently good on the cookies and chocolate milk ($9), a demitasse of milk with pairs of chocolate-chip, oatmeal-raisin, and mixed-macadamia cookies, but these cookies seem to have melted before they reach your mouth. I found it wrong on the chocolate tart ($9), in which the hot pudding filling of the flat tart wanted to be cold, and on both the free-form blueberry tart ($7) and the strawberry shortcake ($8), where the hot bread or biscuity flavors seemed to overwhelm the fruit flavor. This is a style more than an error, and one can always (or at least often) have the butterscotch pudding ($9), which comes in a tall glass with whipped cream. It too could be colder and thicker, but I am getting ready to nominate butterscotch for trend of the year, and a good one.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com