One of the Courses Is Geography : Huge Menu of Grand Nostrum Mare Travels the Globe, From Appetizers to Desserts

It was innovative--even daring--of the folks at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange to redo the menu at Dover’s and change the name of the restaurant to Nostrum Mare. That doesn’t mean it was a bright idea.

Hotel restaurants have to please a broad spectrum of guests, but this concept, ambitious to a fault, is probably more than any one kitchen can be expected to handle.

Nostrum Mare means literally “our sea,” the name the ancient Romans gave to the Mediterranean (actually, they usually said mare nostrum ). Now, the Doubletree and chef Jim Boring have put together a huge menu of dishes from such Mediterranean countries as France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Greece and Portugal. (Psst, people--that’s the Atlantic over there by Portugal.)

Please do not infer that Nostrum Mare is without its charms. The rectangular, atrium-type dining room is distinguished by a ceiling close to three stories high, with one wall serving as a showcase for an enormous Art Nouveau tapestry. The boundaries of the room are framed by gigantic indoor palms and huge urn-like vases, so there’s a powerful sense of grandeur in here. Add soft, romantic lighting and nearly perfect acoustics, and you have hotel dining in the grand manner.

But a restaurant is more than a big, pretty place to dine. There are other important elements, such as service, and unfortunately the service here is tentative and confused. Not that we should blame the waiters; you almost need to be a philologist to make sense of this multilingual menu, let alone to serve or explain it. My waiters were either too busy or too befuddled to describe any of these dishes in any detail (in fairness, the menu makes a valiant attempt to do so).

Guests are greeted with a pleasant basket of olive bread and various cracker breads, accompanied by not one but four Mediterranean spreads: sun-dried tomatoes with goat cheese, chopped eggplant, a cumin-spiked garbanzo bean puree and a ball of sweet butter. Yep, you could make a meal of this stuff, and believe me, it’s tempting.

The dinner menu informs you that these appetizers are various tapas, antipastos and mezzeh , the words for the bite-size foods of Spain, Italy and the Near East, respectively. The first two dishes listed, arnikeftedes and saganaki , are Greek. Call them hors d’oeuvres, call them mezedakia (the Greek form of the word)--hey, call them canapes if that’s your pleasure. Where is that pocket translator when we need it?

The arnikeftedes are billed as petite lamb patties, and that they are: two soft, nicely grilled burgers served with sweet onions and tzatziki (cucumber yogurt). Personally, I’d like them better with more mint and lemon in the meat mixture, the way you’d get them in a Greek restaurant. The saganaki , happily, is more to the point. It’s a chewy, pungent Greek cheese, flamed and sizzling in olive oil--and blessedly served without a lot of people shouting opa . (That’s the best reason to order this dish here and not in a Greek restaurant.)

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Even better is something called Moroccan-style grilled shrimp. This consists of soft, fresh prawns, slightly blackened in their shells, with a spicy tomato-and-cumin dipping sauce called charmoula.

I’m less fond of the cold appetizers. One is an insipid concoction called zeilook , which the menu tells us is Moroccan eggplant salad. Some mushy white beans with shrimp are listed as fagioli con gamberetti and blamed on Italy. Champignones de vinagre con almendra , a Spanish mouthful, turns out to be ice-cold marinated mushrooms with a few tired slices of slivered almond.

The soups are interesting. There’s a hearty minestrone alla Toscana , rather rustic thanks to an olive oil-soaked hunk of Tuscan bread and a soffrito of herbs, vegetables and pancetta bacon, all of which add flavor to the beans. Shorbat ads , which the menu describes as a spicy Turkish soup, is the usual Moroccan lentil soup, loaded with cumin, a spice this chef obviously favors.

The list of main courses couldn’t be more diverse; I just wish I had been more impressed by them. Bisteeya (more properly spelled bestila ) is a festive Moroccan filo pie filled with chicken, egg and almonds and dusted with sugar and cinnamon before serving. This is a rather coarse version, with a choppy filling more suitable to holiday turkey. Tavuk izgara is Turkish-style grilled chicken, but the bird is more flaccid than I fear any Turk would find acceptable.

Pato con peras , we learn, is Catalan-style roast duck with poached pear and a sauce of duck demi-glace , almonds, pears and brandy. Here again, the bird is less than crisp, and it doesn’t help matters much that the pear sauce is overly sweet. The one intriguing feature of the dish is a stuffing made with raisins, pears, almonds and coarsely chopped duck meat. If the bird were prepared better, this dish could turn heads.

Grilled items come off better, if only because they aren’t ersatz attempts at exotic dishes. Souvlaki is your basic lamb shish kabob, marinated and grilled with onions, tomatoes and peppers. Entrecote al ajillo is a New York steak still on the bone, basted with a barbecue sauce of garlic, onion, tomato, sherry, chilies and olive oil. In both cases, though, the meats could have been more tender.

There are many more dishes on this menu, including lunchtime’s duck confit and mechoui (Moroccan roast lamb), a dozen-odd pastas and a brace of overly fussy salads, such as the one of warm shrimp on a soggy fried potato pancake with artichoke, mushrooms, asparagus, plum tomatoes, field greens, a balsamic vinaigrette and way too much basil.

Desserts include a cloying pine nut pie, a grainy creme brulee and the inevitable tiramisu. I’d describe all three as pleasantly neutral, kind of like Switzerland in politics.

Whoops, I take that back. The Swiss don’t have any oceanfront real estate, and besides, enough already with the geography lesson.

Nostrum Mare is moderately expensive. Appetizers are $1.75 to $6.25. Main dishes are $9.95 to $19.95.

* NOSTRUM MARE

* In the Doubletree Hotel, 100 The City Drive, Orange.

* (714) 634-4500.

* Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.; dinner daily, 5 to 10 p.m.

* All major cards accepted.