But Consistency Is Lacking : La Playa Grill Serves Up a Touch of Class

At La Jolla’s new La Playa Grill, there is salsa on the sound system and salsa on the table. The first is hot, the second cruda ; both hit the appropriate spots nicely.

Everything else being equal, the recorded Latin music played at this handsome, comfortable place probably is more likely to provoke an urge to dance than is the cuisine, although some of the simple Mexican dishes can be rather good. La Playa Grill is one of those eateries at which some dishes are quite enjoyable, others quite mediocre, with the underlying reason behind this spread in quality remaining unclear.

There are points in the restaurant’s favor, especially its appearance and mood (granted, one can eat neither of these, but they often enhance the enjoyment of otherwise average food).

La Playa Grill is the fourth restaurant to occupy these downstairs quarters in the attractive Coast Walk shopping structure in recent years; the most recent tenant served Cajun food and was widely ignored; an Ethiopian eatery and the jazzy Blue Parrot preceded it. Thus the restaurant has just had another face lift, and the operation was a successful.

The most pleasant section is the outdoor terrace, which offers a view of La Jolla Cove and has been a most enjoyable place to dine on recent mild evenings. The indoor rooms have been redecorated with some taste, as well as a sense of humor; the Mexican motif comes through nicely with both the peach-colored stucco walls, and the clever windows painted on them. (The front room offers real windows, which also look down on the Cove.) Well-chosen artworks and artifacts lend a classy note to the surroundings.

If one chooses a meal with equal care, it also can be at least moderately classy. The menu emphasizes seafood to a certain degree, due no doubt to its affiliation with the neighboring El Crab Catcher, but few enough of the appetizers are oriented to the briny deep. There is a shrimp cocktail, to be sure, as well as the obligatory ceviche, but the crab-stuffed chile peppers were avoided because of a previous, unfortunate experience with one of La Playa Grill’s crab entrees. The spicy oyster shooters should appeal to those who like such things, and cost about $1 each (to be cute, the menu lists the price of these as 690 pesos).

The chicken fajitas sticks make a rather successful first course. These differ little from any of the various chicken skewers or shish kebabs produced by half the world’s cuisines, except perhaps in the spicing, but the meat is charred in a way that keeps the interior juicy, and the peppers and onions spaced between the bits of meat also are quite agreeable. The charred baby back ribs mexicana similarly are meaty and moist, although the sauce with which they are basted seems far too timid to justify its mexicana label. When sampled, these were at no more than room temperature, and they certainly would have been better hot.

Some entrees include the choice of soup or salad, and since neither category includes a particularly outstanding contestant, no one needs to feel like Solomon when deciding which to order. By and large, the chicken and rice soup seems the most satisfactory of the lot, but be warned that it is filling.

The entree list mentions such commonplaces as tacos, enchiladas and burritos (the restaurant is in a tourist mecca, after all) before passing on to such more sophisticated entries as the fish of the day broiled over mesquite, pollo or carne asada, carnitas, chili colorado and chilaquiles verde con huevos. (This last is a much-ignored but rather pleasant dish of corn tortillas, cooked in tomatillo sauce and garnished with fried eggs. It quite possibly falls into the category of Mexican soul food.)

The carne asada was relatively restrained but nicely done, the thin steak grilled through but still tender, the flavor hinting at lime and gentle seasonings. The chili colorado fudged somewhat, in that the meat appeared to have been grilled first, and sauced only after it had been arranged on the plate, but the sauce was nicely hot and fairly subtle, and the meat had the requisite tenderness. (An authentic chili colorado calls for the meat to be slowly and lengthily stewed in a sauce of some power.)

The most pleasing dish probably was the plate of carnitas, or chunks of slowly cooked and lightly browned pork that the diner rolls inside tortillas with such condiments as salsa, lime juice, cilantro and onions. Although not quite the equal in excess to the sybaritically porcine carnitas served at Tijuana’s Carnitas Uruapan (there, the meat is boiled slowly in lard, a kind of double whammy that produces intense flavors), the chunks of pork were rich and juicy, and generously garnished with all the requisite condiments. The carnitas plate, like the other entrees mentioned, also included servings of good rice and beans, and it must be mentioned that the plates were attractively arranged, rather than obnoxiously heaped as at so many of San Diego’s Mexican restaurants.

It probably is not reasonable to expect much of a crab enchilada that costs $6.95, given the astronomical cost of crab these days. It might be better simply to delete such an item from the menu, however, rather than prepare it with unsatisfactory, commercially processed crab, as does this kitchen. This was a most unpleasing dish, one that tasted slightly fishy and was in most respects ill-made; the flour tortilla in which it was wrapped, for example, was stale, and thus quite like cardboard.

The kitchen prepares several desserts, including one called a “toasted coconut flan” that turns out to be an ordinary caramel custard sprinkled with toasted coconut. It was fine, but what was expected--and what might have been extremely interesting--was a sweet in which the coconut had been used as a flavoring agent and had been added to the custard before baking.

Cocktails rarely belong in a discussion of a meal because their role, in any case less common these days, ends before the commencement of the dinner. However, La Playa Grill justly prides itself on its “hand-made” Margaritas, which are mixed, shaken and strained by a genuine bartender who actually does the work by hand, using fresh lime juice and quality liquors. These are the genuine article, frosty, tart and potent, and quite unlike the spurious, blender-mixed calamities prepared in bulk by less scrupulous restaurants. These slurries frequently are served in immense glasses, but are little more than crushed ice flavored with sweet, concentrated citrus juices and just a few drops of tequila.

LA PLAYA GRILL

1298 Prospect St. (in Coast Walk), La Jolla

454-9033

Lunch and dinner served daily.

Credit cards accepted.

A meal for two with one Margarita each, tax and tip, costs about $25 to $35.