Eating in view of the colorful artwork at Bluepoint is like eating in a Playboy Club as envisioned by Disney. Drawn in chalk on parchment are four leggy ladies, each wearing a teeny-weeny bikini and each hoisting what appears to be a freshly caught fish.

"We got the art from the Ernest Hemingway estate," General Manager Jamey Schwank says, responding to a question he must hear a lot. "The artist is female," he adds, as if to squelch any idea that the life-size images might be politically incorrect.

More quirky discoveries await patrons of this two-tiered, underground surf-and-turf restaurant, which opened in late August with little fanfare despite occupying some prime real estate: The office building that hides Bluepoint teems with lawyers, and the blocks that surround it include the Warner and National theaters -- potential audiences for the dining room, in other words.

Surprise No. 2: Pepper grinders on every tabletop. "We do a lot of salads at lunch," Schwank explains. Per the chef's request, however, salt shakers are absent: "He thinks they're an insult."

Surprise No. 3: A New York strip steak, thick and succulent, that can compete with what some of the big boys grill. Bluepoint, which counts three siblings in Arizona and Florida, buys good beef, wet-ages it for at least 28 days and cooks it just the way you ask for it.

Surprise No. 4: The kitchen runs out of hash browns before 7:30 on a weeknight, giving this diner an incentive to try a side dish with a twist. Served in a barge of a bowl, macaroni and cheese spiked with jalapeno peppers is mildly sassy and a pleasure to tackle.

Finally, here in what strikes me as a casual cross between the Oceanaire Seafood Room and Morton's, I learn the fate of John Harvard's Brew House, which preceded Bluepoint -- and closed (who knew?) two years ago.

--Tom Sietsema (Dec. 19, 2007)