It’s a chef’s conundrum. Do you create a big menu with a lot of variety and daring, change it often and work your darndest to make all the dishes sing? Or do you go smaller, have fewer and less challenging dishes, and scrutinize every plate that leaves the kitchen?

From all appearances, chef/owner Stephanie Brown at Seagrass Bistro in Yarmouth has chosen the latter, and on the night we visit, it’s a strategy for great success.

Additional Photos

Seagrass Bistro in Yarmouth moved from an office park to a new location on Route 1 in late February. Photos by John Ewing/Staff Photographer

The moderate menu includes five appetizers, two salads, five entrees and three desserts. Among those selections, there is much to enjoy.

Moreover, the chef maintains a calm and noticeable presence in the house, making you feel that she cares about every aspect of the dining experience and her community of diners.

A giant portion of herb-marinated beef tenderloin ($25) topped with hollandaise, seared nicely and as easily sliced as cold butter, is an entree hit. The grilled pork braciolettini ($24), the meat rolled and stuffed with prosciutto and pecorino, is less successful; it’s a little dry.

Eight pan-seared scallops, nicely crusted outside and tender inside, surround braised fennel, all placed atop a piquant tomato sauce ($24). It’s a simple dish that’s beautifully prepared.

In fact, every dish at Seagrass is artfully presented with symmetry and color, and framed by the margins of broad plates. The braciolettini is shaped like a star, the scallops a circle, the tenderloin a tier of fingerling potatoes and grilled asparagus atop the meat.

Entrees come after a succulent and tasty appetizer of local mussels ($10), 20 to the bowl, in a sun-dried tomato and wine sauce. Two of them taste “off,” according to my dining companion, and naturally he finds that detracts. Mussels can be tricky. Yet that sauce — it’s so good, you just want to lick it off the shells.

Crab flan appetizer ($10) is a creamy light custard, dusted with Romano and very light on crab, which is something our server explains ahead of time. Crab cravers be advised.

A salad of grilled frisee with shaved beets, mandarin oranges, goat cheese and balsamic shallot dressing is a dish I expect to dazzle, but for me, the grilled greens taste too charred. True to their fire-pit roots, the men in our party particularly like it.

We all agree that the extraordinary appetizer of the night is the pizette of figs, blue cheese and roasted red peppers ($9) — the crust delicate, golden and crispy and the topping a chunky mix of sharpness and sweet. Splendid.

Bread service is crunchy homemade breadsticks, just a little something to take the edge off hunger.

The restaurant has a varied, international and mostly mid-priced wine list that’s soon to expand to 150 bottles, Brown says.

By-the-glass wines, numbering six to eight choices, change seasonally, sometimes weekly. Fortunately, our server knows and describes what’s being poured that evening. (Just don’t get set in your ways, by-the-glass people.)

The lemon mousse dessert ($8) is a pure white cloud of delight. A curled, vanilla-rich tuille leans in the cup like a miniature tower of Pisa, the cookie more pliant than crisp but still quite good.

Service at Seagrass is the best of the seven spots I’ve dined at so far for this column, which says a lot. Our waitress explains the menu with a confident and natural demeanor. She anticipates flatware, and plates and allots them unobtrusively, just a step ahead of food’s arrival. Courses are timed perfectly, despite an almost-full dining room.

Twice, the chef delivers items to our table when our server is otherwise occupied. Seamless teamwork is evident.

In fact, the front and back of the house are hardly separate, with a lot of food preparation done while facing diners. When the kitchen slows down, Brown mingles and chats with diners, many of them regulars.

In February, Seagrass Bistro moved from a nondescript office park to a new location on the main road. Although it’s still a work in progress, the boxy space has been admirably redone with black wood tables, warm-colored walls and soft lighting, a bar and an open kitchen. It’s one large room without nooks, and a bit cavernous right now. The best tables are along the wall.

On the night we visit, a handful of Yarmouth High School students were job-shadowing at the restaurant. Not every chef would be comfortable in this situation, much less allow the intrusion. (Four extra teenagers in the kitchen while I cook dinner? Not in my house!)

When Brown stops by to deliver dessert, we ask her about this, and she confides that it makes her a little anxious. But you’d never suspect. No sweat.

That’s how we know we are in the hands of a pro.

Nancy Heiser is an independent writer and editor who lives near Portland.

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