Searsport is not the only town celebrating lobster this summer. In the spirit of seasonal eating habits, Restaurant Associates, one of the largest restaurant and food service companies in New York City, is presenting a summer Maine lobster celebration at nine of its 12 eating establishments. Through Labor Day, the participating restaurants, including the famed Brasserie in Midtown, are offering creative combination dishes with lobster.

Chef Luc Dimnet at Brasserie offers steamed lobster in a clay pot with morels, fava beans, baby corn and vine-ripened tomato water lobster broth, as well as lobster tempura in a lettuce wrap with shredded coconut. Everyone in Maine knows the pleasures of a good steamed lobster, but combined with the restaurant’s popular Perfect 10, a cocktail with gin, Campari, Citronge and lemon, and followed by a glass of Bonnezeaux, a raisiny dessert wine, the crustacean finds new expression in the company of a Thai chili mango marmalade or in a bouillabaisse.

At Cafe Centro, a French restaurant in the MetLife Building on Park Avenue, Chef Franck Deletrain has created lobster ravioli with sweet peas and chanterelles, a lobster club sandwich and lobster gratin with summer truffles and fingerling potatoes. And Chef Rad Matmati at Nick + Stef’s Steakhouse & Bar at Madison Square Garden, puts lobster on the plate with filet mignon.

The five other restaurants – Brasserie 81/2, Cucina & Co., MetLife, Naples 45, The Sea Grill and Tropica – are also bringing out the Asian, American, Caribbean, French, Italian, Thai and Spanish possibilities of lobster.

In addition to unique approaches to preparing lobster, each restaurant offers 21/4-pound lobsters steamed, grilled or boiled, usually with cosmopolitan touches such as herb butter, caper tomato butter, lemon basil butter or a Riesling sauce. This signature version of the traditional lobster dinner costs $29.

“The steamed lobster has been very popular,” said a waiter working one warm June day at the Rock Center Cafe, the outdoor eatery at Rockefeller Center. A quick glance around the sunny space proved him truthful. More than a dozen tables had patrons wearing lobster bibs and dipping thick chunks of white meat into butter. Chef Antonio Prontelli’s signature offering – a three-claw lobster dinner with a tail, slaw, tomato salad and corn on the cob – clearly reminded diners of more northerly treasures.

Theatergoers out for a late night dinner could do worse than to stop in at Brasserie, where cameras film patrons as they enter through a revolving door and their images are then projected in a continuously changing row of 15 screens above the bar. In other words, the contemporary setting – with its frosted glass tables and mod cushioned banquettes – couldn’t be less like a Maine lobster bake.

But that hasn’t stopped the state’s most iconographic – not to mention marketable – seafood from finding a home. Late on a Friday night in June, Mark Cornell, the restaurant’s friendly manager, calculated that the lobster dishes had been the top seller that night. They accounted for 10 percent of the meals ordered.

“I’m from the Midwest,” he said. “I don’t know lobsters. I don’t like lobsters. But a lot of people in New York associate lobsters with the beach. It’s beach food. And they like that even if they are in the city.”

One of his employees, Jacqueline Raymond, had another take on the lobster specials she had been serving that night.

“I’m from Fort Kent,” the waiter said. “In Maine, you grow up eating lobster with a side of french fries rather than a side of vegetables sauteed in a special sauce.”

Still, she said, seeing the lobsters reminded her of being home.

And even if most New Yorkers cannot claim the origins that Raymond has, they can revisit their favorite vacationland food this summer without ever leaving the city.

For information about summer lobster showcases at participating Restaurant Associates establishments in New York City, visit www.restaurantassociates.com.