Appetite

"Everything all right?" I asked.

He nodded towards the view. "How big do you think those windows are?"

I watched in horror as he withdrew a retractable tape measure from his pocket and clambered onto a sill, smiling apologetically at the elderly Midwestern couple seated nearby.

It’s surprising that more patrons don’t cling like tree frogs to the 68-inch-tall, unadorned windows at the Lighthouse. The view of Port Sanibel Marina—the red and purple sunset, the yachts and the lone brown pelican skimming the water—is compelling indoors and out.

You can find the Lighthouse by land or by sea; the dock address is Green Marker 11. We imagined happy souls gliding up on Sea Rays. By contrast, we lurched through traffic on Summerlin in our Honda Civic, swearing like pirates.

Server Mike Nadeau, a native Bostonian, got us to trade our eye patches for wine: a St. Francis Sonoma chardonnay ($7 per glass, $27 per bottle); a Santa Margherita Alto Adige pinot grigio ($10.50, $41); the Erath Oregon pinot noir ($10.50, $41); and a shiraz from Mark Davidson’s "featured vineyard" ($6.75, $26). My Depression-era father always orders the least expensive wine, telling servers, "There can’t be any bad wines in a restaurant of this quality." Here, he’d be right. Tom took a sip of the pinot noir and offered, "Light, yet substantial." Good call.

We had starved ourselves all day, so we devoured our warm French bread and cinnamon butter. We attacked the appetizers with equal ferocity, sampling sherried lobster bisque ($5.95 a cup, $7.95 a bowl), Lighthouse bruschetta ($6.95), deep-fried calamari ($9.95), and pan-fried sesame oysters over seaweed ($9.95). I lingered over the bisque; its chunks of lobster were worth impending cholesterol doom. Although Tom pledged to just "taste" the calamari, when I looked up, all that remained was a spent lemon wedge.

Don’t get too distracted by the appetizers. You will want to get right to the point at the Lighthouse: the slow-roasted prime rib, available in queen and king cuts ($23 and $27). It seemed to us that the queen cut would satisfy most kings, too, with the possible exception of Henry VIII. Tom sliced through the meat with his fork, grabbed my arm, and said, "This is way tender."

"Is it your PWD?" I asked, referring to our secret critic’s code for the Pester-Worthy Dish of the evening. Certain dishes leave us pestering each other to return for encore visits.

Tom hooked a protective forearm around the beef, which came with a mild au jus sauce, buttery potatoes, assorted veggies and a horseradish sauce especially prepared for us by our server. Chef Brad Kilburn cooks his prime rib for 15 hours: eight hours at 150 degrees, seven more at a reduced temperature, with 10 pounds of rock salt for "kosherizing."

The Lighthouse embodies a solid, American ethos—a guitarist strumming King of the Road, ESPN in the bar, and Midwestern families and older couples dressed in pastels photographing each other against the backdrop of boats and mangroves.

Kilburn has spent the last two years expanding the menu, which reminded us of the left and right brain divide between logic and creativity. The left side features staples like the prime rib; the right highlights more experimental dishes, where Kilburn flexes his muscles. Popular new dishes can move from right to left, where we found a recent immigrant in bourbon shrimp capellini ($21.95).

Mike demanded that we order one of Kilburn’s creations: the almond-encrusted fillet of snapper in hazelnut beurre blanc. "Everyone loves it," he assured us. I proved as fickle as Florida weather as soon as the snapper hit my tongue.

"Hold on," I said. "I change my vote for PWD." Kilburn recreated the scales of the fish with almond slices, and a tart berry chutney offset the sweetness of the beurre blanc. "They could serve this at [sweet shops like] Kilwin’s!"

The petite osso bucco ($19.95) was tender but pedestrian. The crab cakes ($22.95) fell short, too, but I feel compelled to disclose here that I grew up an hour’s drive from the Chesapeake Bay and have known mostly disappointment in my subsequent crab cake wanderings. Finally, the garden salad seemed to have traveled poorly from its point of origin, and the plastic tub of dressing was an insult to the prime rib.

At $7 each, the desserts sealed our determination to return to the Lighthouse. Mike suggested we start with the house specialty, bananas foster, a luxurious concoction that spilled out of a candy shell reminiscent of my grandmother’s oatmeal lace cookies. Patrons who select the berry basket will enjoy the same means of conveyance. From the Key lime pie onward, you’ll find most of the usual suspects done well, along with dessert martinis such as the Creamsicle.

Most of your traditional food and comfort cravings will be fulfilled at the Lighthouse, while a few new ones might be ignited.

The Lighthouse Waterfront Restaurant 14301 Port Comfort Road, Port Sanibel Marina, Fort Myers; (239) 489-0770 or www.lighthousewaterfrontrestaurant.com. Open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for lunch, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Sunday brunch, 4–7 p.m. for happy hour, 5–10 p.m. for dinner seven days a week. Reservations recommended. Free parking in lot. Credit cards accepted. Handicap accessible.

In style and substance, Aura Restaurant & Bar is as far from the Lighthouse Waterfront as the Baltic Sea is from Lake Erie. We arrived flummoxed after yet another misadventure behind an overheated dump truck on I-75, but a dark-haired beauty with a Zsa Zsa Gabor accent said, "You’re right on time." We were actually 20 minutes late and grateful for the warmth of our welcome.

Aura is staffed with many well-trained Eastern Europeans with astonishing blue eyes. LXR Luxury Resorts recently effected a design coup at the old Registry Resort, transforming it into the sleek Naples Grande Resort & Club. The lobby has been designed to immerse its visitors in Feng Shui. The five elements of fire, water, sky, earth and metal all have representation, with the staff acting as the high priests and priestesses of relaxation.

Past a giant water wheel, we came upon the dramatic lines and angles of a white and black restaurant. Aura’s atmosphere seems very high-end South Beach, except that the techno music pulsing through the bar, dining area and "chill out" lounge played not to supermodels and wealthy Bolivians but young, blonde families on vacation and tanned local boomers in art gallery jewelry.

Everything—chairs, tables, etc.—comes to a point at Aura for balance and harmony. All points seem to line up with chef Stephen Delaney’s angular eyebrows, beneath which dark eyes convey intense focus and determination. In preparation for the 2007 opening of the Golden Door spa, the Naples Grande recruited Delaney to create a menu as stylish, pleasing and light as a spa treatment. Delaney found the blueprint for Aura attractive enough to leave his gig as chef de cuisine at Naples’ Ritz-Carlton Grill Room.

"One year, my UPS bill alone at the Ritz came to $100,000," the Johnson & Wales culinary grad confided, so great was his latitude to order "the best of everything no matter the cost."

"Will you have that sort of budget here at Aura?" I asked.

"Not quite, but I like a challenge. I gotta take my game higher," he said. Several of his sous-chefs decamped with him, so that a brief tour of the kitchen displayed four young, toque-wearing Ritz alumni. I almost lost Tom, who fell into a trance watching someone blowtorch the homemade marshmallow in a dessert cheekily named the Sm’Aura ($8).

After our initiation at the Lighthouse, we felt confident enough to order, but dashing Romanian server Robert Tereoasa smoothly took the matter in hand. "What I bring for you," he said, "you will find very nice, very good."

Our bread basket offered seven varieties of slices and sticks, including a remarkably soft tomato foccacia and a ramekin of dry chili spices with olive oil to mix to our tastes. We nibbled happily and eyed a series of opaque windows backlit with an endlessly shifting array of colors.

"Cool lava-lamp windows," Tom remarked. (After the tape measure debacle, I was privately relieved to see that they were beyond his reach.)

Within moments, we were sampling lightly fried calamari arranged on a bed of cantaloupe and cucumber to draw away residual oil. The effect was miraculous.

Robert told us to expect a shot glass with the next course, so we thought the fun with booze was starting. Aura’s playful wine list has sections for "adventurous" whites and reds, and every dish on the menu has been paired with a libation, so that we knew the praiseworthy "adventurous white" known as the 2004 Huber grüner veltliner "Hugo" from Austria ($10 per glass, $39 per bottle) would bring out the best in our calamari. However, the shot glass to which Robert referred was an exotic, fizzy cucumber juice concoction that rode the same dish as our fabulous Asian-style tuna "crudo," a plate of flash-seared sashimi with an avocado, ginger, tuna and soy tartare ($13). "The shot is like a sorbet. Use it to cleanse the palate and soul," Robert said. Out of 90 dishes, Aura only uses butter and cream in two. Robert and Tom urged me to chug the shot as if it were tequila, but I preferred to sip it.