A wharfside atmosphere in the heart of Winter Park serving fresh, plump oysters and good, cold beer.

Bar Harbor Seafood, one of the companies that provides fresh fish, shellfish and other goodies from the sea to area restaurants, has been serving lunch from its South Orlando warehouse space for about a year now. I only learned of it recently, and stopped in thinking it would be an obscure, sparsely attended out-of-the-way lunch spot to try out.

Well, it certainly is out of the way. But sparsely attended, no.

In fact, I haven’t seen lines this long for a counter restaurant that didn’t specialize in barbecue and have the name Rivers attached to it for quite some time.

Bar Harbor’s wholesale facility is on Premier Row, just west of South Orange Blossom Trail, in Orlando’s Central Park. Its neighbors are other warehouses and showrooms, and I’m thinking it was a lot of the workers from those other businesses that were cramming into the decidedly too small space where lunch orders are taken. (It’s the same space where the company offers retail seafood orders to those who don’t buy their fish by the tonnage.

The menu features fish and chips, Ipswich clams, sushi rolls, cod sliders and such. Most of the cooking seems to be done somewhere else on the property — one of the workers was shouting orders into a walkie talkie device — although at one point I saw someone slip a live lobster into a large pot of water boiling on a portable hot plate.

I don’t think I’d fully appreciated what a beautiful and elaborate space the Boathouse of Disney Springs is. From its expansive bar, the multiple dining rooms and the satellite open-air lounge that sits over the lagoon, it is a well-polished collection of woods, brass and early-nautical decor – even a full-size vintage Chris Craft boat – with the white tableclothed elegance of a yacht club.

I wish the food rose to the same level.

Bonefish is one of those restaurants that “gets it.” It offers a good product at a fair price in a pleasant atmosphere. Nothing fancy, nothing overblown but a consistently good dining experience. New location at 5463 Gateway Village Circle, Orlando,FL 32812 Phone: 407-816-6355.

Boston’s Fish House and I both made our Orlando debuts in the same year, 1988. The restaurant opened in February and I rode in to town in May. We didn’t meet each other until that November, but it was instant love, at least for me.

Forrest Gump, in the movie of the same name, quotes his mother as saying that life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. The movie, you see, takes place in a time before candy companies started putting maps to their assortments on the inside lid.Still, Mother Gump was wise in her way. So I can’t help but think that if she were to visit Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., a chain restaurant new to Universal’s CityWalk, her reaction might be: “Sometimes life is like a carton of frozen shrimp, you know exactly what you’re gonna get.”There’s little to recommend here, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the menu is dominated by what Bubba called “the fruit of the sea.” It isn’t quite as extensive as detailed in the movie when Bubba, in a memorable sequence, lists every possible way to cook and serve shrimp. “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Dey’s uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp Creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That- that’s about it.”He didn’t mention Lt. Dan’s drunken shrimp, which had andouille sausage in what was supposed to be a spicy bourbon sauce. It was more sweet than spicy, and there was nary a hint of boozy flavor.One of my guests had the “dumb luck” coconut shrimp, which had a nice jacket of breading and was deep-fried just right and delightfully ungreasy. They were served with a dipping sauce that was supposed to be a marmalade but which was undistinguishable. There were also fries that tasted as though they had been made quite some time before they were served.

There are few restaurants in the world that can boast an underwater view of a saltwater tank with dozens of species swimming by. The Orlando area has two (the other is Sharks Underwater Grill at SeaWorld), but neither seems to be able to offer food that matches the splendor of the view. In fact, given the ridiculously high menu prices and the lackluster quality of the food, I do not recommend Coral Reef as a restaurant. Better to view the sea life from the other side of the aquarium and fine somewhere else to sup.

The Current Seafood Counter is a clever name for a fish-focused restaurant, especially this one that opened recently in College Park. It evokes an islands in the stream image of flowing water, and the Counter part let’s you know it’s a quick-serve operation as opposed to a full-service one.

Inside the Meat House (which may or may not now be The Local), Da Kine is a mostly takeout purveyor of the Hawaiian poke, basically fresh raw fish in a bowl with other ingredients.

This latest addition to the Darden collection of premium brands is sometimes said to be the seafood equivalent of that company’s Capital Grille steakhouses. But that’s not exactly right because Eddie V’s, which does indeed to excellent seafood, also does a pretty good steak. In fact, Eddie V’s serves prime beef while Capital Grille serves USDA choice. The atmosphere is elegant, like an old-timey Manhattan supper club. It’s pricy, though, so be prepared to pay dearly for the quality.