Nacional 27

Nacional 27 is one of those restaurants that appears to be in a constant battle with itself. It's a grown-up restaurant, but it doesn't know what it wants to be. It features the cuisines of the 27 countries that make up Latin America, hence the the name on the door.

I am not sure what the thinking was at the time of gestation, but dealing with the varied and rollicking cuisines of 27 countries just might be a mission impossible for the kitchen.

In the beginning, when this space was called Hat Dance, seviches and seafood platters were mingled with straight-up Mexican. It was a bold and daring concept. It didn't fly too high, so changes were made. Now that the space is called Nacional 27, there is still a raft of seviches (the menu uses the alternate spelling--ceviches).

The theory behind seviche is that the raw fish is marinated in citrus juice, which suggests the idea that the juice ''cooks'' the fish. I don't buy that, but that's another story.

The one seviche that I enjoyed the most at Nacional 27 was the sushi-grade ahi tuna affair with its, yes, Asian influences, and that came from the splash of rice wine vinaigrette that was part of the marinating process.

Nacional 27 dips its toe mainly in the Nuevo Latino stream. So under the heading ''Modern Latin Appetizers,'' there are a whole lot of skewer creations. The adobo-glazed beef tenderloin skewers, though nothing magical, were quite good. Tender (marinated first, no doubt) cubes of flavorful beef on a skewer--three of them--with small shingles of bell pepper.

In a similar, very upstream kind of way, chunks of salmon got a guava barbecue glaze, and that made for some interesting moments.

On to the ''grilled fish taquitos del dia.'' The fish was tilapia (aka South American perch). It was grilled, cut into chunks and piled into a crispy corn taco shell along with black beans and assorted chopped vegetables.

Tilapia was also the ''Baja catch of the day,'' which I managed to interpret, after some pretty deft probing, as being pan-seared. And seared it was, quite nicely, but unless you love the mild flavor of perch, this would not be your catch of the day. Regardless, it was an enjoyable fillet on a bed of roasted new potatoes. The sauce was a spritely passion fruit butter composition.

While I find some of the dishes here quite interesting, I am also aware of more than a few shortcomings. I am baffled, for example, by what the kitchen is attempting. I see a friction that grinds uncomfortably between the concept of what should be enjoyable culinary craft and fanciful flights of inspiration, more than a few of which do not exactly pan out. It is my assessment that the folks at Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises might want to expand on the meat offerings and back away from the seafood a bit.

I say that with a sense of confidence, since two of the steak dishes sampled were excellent in every way. It was obvious after but one bite that I was going to polish off the skirt steak. Certainly skirt steak is not the best cut of beef around, but in its simplicity there is unflagging enjoyment. Tender, flavorful, juicy, the steak got an accompaniment of mashed boniato (a type of potato) with a tangy avocado salsa adding an extra kick of flavor.

Similarly, the filet mignon was quality through and through (and served perfectly medium rare). The three-potato hash studded with chunks of chorizo really upped the enjoyment.

Going back to the grilled salmon ''barbacoa,'' was like dropping from the peak of a mountain into a deep canyon. It was not great fish; the ''barbacoa'' part totally flavorless. The promise was a mango barbecue sauce, so where was the mango flavor? Also, the five-potato hash with the fish was basically flavorless.

Chicken. ''Roasted organic chicken Cubano, black beans, saffron rice'' was not all that great. The chicken portion was quite good, though not exciting. However, I was totally put off by the two-layer puck combination of black beans and saffron rice (the beans atop the rice). The beans tasted swampy, the rice tasted medicinal (saffron can have that effect when not used properly).

As for dessert, I can state with a great deal of confidence that the pineapple and banana combo is the way to go. Chunks of grilled pineapple and caramelized bananas were arranged around scoops of tres leches ice cream and whipped cream, a drizzle of chocolate sauce and a sprinkling of brazil nuts. Plenty there for two to share. Something sweet, but a bit more sensible, would be the tres leches cake, a rum-soaked sponge cake with banana ice cream. And an even more appropriate meal-ending treat would be a scoop each of guava and mango ice cream.