It is Boston, they famously say, that is the home of the bean and the cod/where Lowells talk only to Cabots/and Cabots talk only to God. It is also the home of the spiny lobster, also known as the Maine lobster, once so plentiful that early American settlers ground them up to fertilize their fields.

They do no longer. Lobstermen now fly their live catch 12,800 kilometers in seemingly inexhaustible numbers from Boston to Hong Kong and other Asian ports of call by 747 freighter aircraft and sell them, presumably for enough money to send their children to nearby Harvard College so that they can catch up with the Lowells and the Cabots.

At The Bostonian in the Langham Hotel in Kowloon, the average lobster dish will set you back HK$560, although that can rise higher with bigger lobsters.

For all that, lobster is a notoriously difficult dish to improve on. Probably the best way to eat the crustacean is to plunge it into salted water, let it boil for seven to eight minutes and serve it with lemon and little else. Maybe some melted butter.

There has been much damage done in the name of trying to add unnecessary gravitas to what is probably the tastiest, most richly textured seafood in existence. Lobster thermidor, for instance, goes back at least 100 years and involves smothering freshly cooked lobster in bechamel sauce and slathering it in parmesan cheese. It is probably rough justice that lobster thermidor was one of the last meals served aboard the RMS Titanic when it went down with 1,503 passengers in 1912.

Christopher Christie, the executive chef at The Bostonian, is a Canadian who has worked his way nearly around the Pacific Rim, running restaurants in Shanghai, Seoul, Manila and Hong Kong. He has incorporated occasional Asian influences including fresh seafood with a mango salad, as well as Californian ones too, with a lobster medallion salad with avocado, a citrus vinaigrette and greens.

Mainly, Christie has set out to do things with lobster that keep it edible while enhancing the taste, although lobster thermidor is still on the menu.

He has succeeded with several dishes that make it worth the foodie's while to descend into the bowels of the Langham basement to look for it.

The restaurant itself isn't particularly memorable, if the lobster is. It is a relatively undistinguished room, opened in 1993 when the hotel was still the Ramada Renaissance. Situated as it is in the hotel's basement, The Bostonian could probably use a makeover to bring it into line with more modern Hong Kong tastes - especially with spectacular venues like Spoon and Felix and Hutong/Aqua scattered nearby in Kowloon.

But then there's the lobster. First is an appetizer, a galette of lobster chunks mixed with a bit of dill, a pomelo vinaigrette and the lobster tomalley (sometimes called coral), which is then folded into a spring roll wrapper and baked in the oven.

He serves the galette atop greens mixed with shredded pomelo and the vinaigrette. The pomelo, a wholly underused citrus by all but a tiny minority of chefs, imparts a clean taste that is tangy without being overwhelming and fits with the lobster very well.

There is a warm ``lobster jelly,'' as Christie calls it, an aspic-like soup that features a sea urchin royale and lobster with tomalley, thickened with egg yolks, as well as a lobster and scallop bisque flavored with cognac to augment the usual sherry.

The best is a lobster ravioli with a truffle oil emulsion in which Christie poaches the lobster in heavily salted stock flavored with thyme, dill and the tomalley, then puts the lobster into what may be the biggest ravioli ever, made of an extremely light rice dough. It is a single ravioli that covers half the plate. He then mixes truffle oil with white wine and reduces it to make an emulsion, then pours it over the ravioli and tops it with caviar.

It is a dramatic and flavorsome dish, although one wonders if it might be better served in smaller, individual ravioli skins. Whether that's true or not, it remains a dish worth going to Kowloon for.

A variety of other lobster dishes are on the menu, including one fricaseed with vermouth cream, char-grilled lobster with hot chillies, and poached lobster served with pickled ginger - those Asian influences again.

There are no beans and no cod on The Bostonian menu, which otherwise is a bit of this and that, in a hotel that caters to a lot of westerners, particularly Americans. The aforementioned beans and cod notwithstanding, there isn't a serious Boston tinge to the menu. Beyond the fresh seafood available in New England's wintry ports, traditional cuisine tended towards dishes like Yankee pot roast and utilized root crops that kept a long time over the winter.

``It's really a steak and seafood restaurant with American overtones, using a lot of French techniques, which is really what we want,'' Christie says. ``It isn't fine dining, but it's upscale, in a good setting. It's the lobster that brings it alive.''

There is an extensive seafood section beyond the lobster, however, including fresh oysters, king crab legs, yabbies, mussels and prawns stuck into a vast bed of crushed ice.

There is a very nice scallop and asparagus ragout, finished with Noilly Prat and chervil cream, and a risotto with sea scallops and prawns that is flavored with mint, a favorite Christie herb that is very easy to misuse in the wrong hands.

The Bostonian has a relatively complete wine list that won't wreck one's pocketbook. In a nice touch, presumably because the hotel has so many business travelers who don't want a full bottle of wine, the wine list includes a small but serviceable list of half-bottles of whites, including a particularly tasty Duckhorn sauvignon blanc from California, that is crisp enough to go down well with the lobster ravioli.