In this paper we investigate the application of the Zakharov-Shabat dressing method [Funct. Anal. Appl. 8, 226 (1974)] to (2+1)-dimensional long wave–short wave resonance interaction equation (LSRI). Using this method, we can construct the exact N-soliton solution of this equation depending on arbitrary constants. It contains both solutions which do not decay along N different directions in space infinity and “dromion” ones or localized solutions that decay exponentially in all directions.