Marjorie
2331 Second Ave (Belltown), 441-9842
Tues-Sun 5-10 pm; bar menu 10 pm-1 am.

Every report I'd gotten back from friends who had eaten at Marjorie, the revamp of Belltown's Lush Life, involved the word "eclectic," and I wasn't absolutely sure what my friends were getting at. A menu like Marjorie's remains true to the Greek meaning of eclectic ("picking out, selecting"), with one dish plucked from Singapore, another from North Africa, and another from Kerala, India... but "eclectic" has also become faint praise to damn a place with: something to say when you have nothing to say about a restaurant but there's both fish sauce and mango salsa on the menu.

Inside, Marjorie is styled--eclectically--in an upscale hippie manner: The walls are Vishnu blue, the tables are lined with Chinese joss papers, and up on the ceiling, a patchwork of colorful Thai silk pads helps soften the noise. It's a familiar look, especially for yoga fans, but the long dark room accurately strikes a sexy-friendly vibe.

I thought I'd try to impose some order on the free-ranging menu and coaxed my companions into ordering regionally: One of us would take an appetizer and entrée from Southeast Asia, one from Italy, one from France, and so on. But my friends are organized dish sharers: They don't just offer small bites to one another, but pass whole plates counterclockwise around the table at regular intervals, so my strategy kind of fell apart. Our waitress smiled approvingly when she saw us passing plates: Clearly Marjorie is made for the rush of sampling. The point of a meal here is an aggregation of flavors, not progression through dinner.

Even on a single plate, flavors stood out on their own rather than working together. Berber Wild Salmon ($25) was a nicely cooked portion of salmon atop some absolutely delicious spicy garbanzo beans. Somewhere on the same plate were some fragrant cucumbers and the pickley stab of preserved lemon bits. Every element on the plate was good, but I remember them distinctly, not as one dish. A milder fish might have helped pull the stray elements together or, simpler yet, more vegetables, stewed together with the chickpeas.

There are lots of promising dishes. Jamaican jerk pork ($7) could have used the punctuation of some more hot chilies, but the pork itself was tender and fragrant, with sweet Caribbean spices like allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg. A slightly overdressed salad ($7) was still a bright tasty thing: green as could be with a cilantro-tahini dressing on romaine lettuce, avocados, and candied pistachios. In the French vein, poulet aux quarante gousses d'ail ($18), roasted chicken served with irresistible long-cooked garlic cloves and green beans, was passed around the table twice. With a tarragon lilt and crispy skin, the chicken was right on the money, even if its jammy apricot confit was too sugary.

The Southeast Asian flavors seemed to falter more. Thai lettuce cups ("street stall" lettuce cups, to quote the menu; $12) had nicely tender shrimp, but their lime-ginger burn overwhelmed the delicate wrappers of butter lettuce. Both the wok and the curry powder were turned down too low to make the "wok tossed" Singaporean noodles ($15) interesting, but I did admire the fine breaded tofu that graced the noodles. Back on European turf, marjoram--a bossy herb if ever there was one--overwhelmed the mild ricotta filling of the Ravioli Verdi ($17).

Desserts were more fusion than eclectic--European and American classics sexed up with a single exotic ingredient--an approach that, used judiciously, works well. There was kaffir lime leaf scenting the chocolate pot de créme ($7), and sharp ginger in the raspberry shortcake ($7).

Clearly, "global" menus like Marjorie's are here to stay, the ultimate answer to "he wants Thai and I want pizza, what do we do?" At a lower price point, I'm happy to treat a menu like a food court and groove on the juxtaposition of food, rather than its harmony. (In fact, I returned to Marjorie for cocktails and had an excellent late-night snack: Vietnamese shrimp skewers and to-die-for onion pakoras. Somehow I'm happier with a globe-hopping menu when I've got a not-too-sweet lemon drop in my hand.) But at about $20 an entrée, I'm hoping for a meal that suggests the chef's own style, not a multicultural smorgasbord.