Tasty Spot in National City : Baja-Style Lobster a Genuine Treat

Sure, it’s possible to bring Baja California-style lobster to San Diego. But is it a good idea?

It probably is, maybe.

Baja-style lobster--the succulent lard-fried specimens dished up by the thousands in Puerto Nuevo, the tiny beachfront community south of Tijuana--remains one of life’s genuine treats. Having the same type of lobster preparation available here at home is nice, if one hates to drive south of the border. But then, that brief trip down the coast seems to give the Puerto Nuevo lobsters an added, ineffable flavor, in exactly the same way that distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Baja Lobster

Be that as it may, three partners (all of whom spent years working for the El Torito chain, but who seem to understand food despite this experience) have opened Baja Lobster, a clean, well-lighted place in National City with a kitchen that has a good understanding of the niceties of Mexican seafood cookery.

In style, the place is much like the really large restaurants found in Tijuana and points south, with rows of tables and high-backed, wooden chairs stretching seemingly to infinity (Baja Lobster seats more than 200). There also are a high ceiling, bright lights and a crowd that, despite the opportunity to raise a hubbub, is relatively quiet and decorous. Bright blue walls imply the Baja seascape, which certainly would be prettier than the shopping center parking lot that lies outside the windows, and canned, disco-style mariachi music plays relentlessly over the sound system.

To the hungry, the central decor element is the scene that plays constantly behind the plate-glass window that separates the kitchen from the dining room. Here, two women roll and cook an endless line of tortillas, a promise of good things to come that is fulfilled moments after guests are seated, when baskets of crisp, hot, fresh tortilla chips arrive accompanied by a pair of salsas. (Both the uncooked salsa cruda and the subtler salsa roja are hot as blazes and make fine, fiery accents for just about everything on the menu.)

Lobster dominates all departments of the menu, augmented at times by other shellfish and fin fish. (The menu mentions meat but once, in a pairing of steak and lobster that, true to its Yankee nature, is garnished with a baked potato instead of the restaurant’s usual rice and beans.)

Lobster makes its first, and in some ways most interesting, appearance as a Mexican-style cocktail, a livelier and more refreshing seafood appetizer than U.S.-style shellfish cocktails. Instead of the horseradish-chili sauce mixture generally used in this country, Baja Lobster combines fresh tomatoes, cubed avocado, cilantro, minced green chiles and lime juice into a soupy, spicy-cool bath for the generously sized lobster pieces. Crab and shrimp can be had in the same manner, as well as a whitefish ceviche, steamed clams, fried calamari and a lobster brochette brushed with garlic butter.

The menu also offers several soups, including a truly outstanding, remarkably tasty concoction called siete mares (seven seas) that, unfortunately, is served in so huge a portion that most guests would be hard-pressed to follow this soup with an entree. A thick, opaque, orange-tinted broth hides clams (still in their shells), unpeeled giant shrimp, and bits of crab, fish and squid. The flavor of the broth is wonderfully rich and briny, and it tastes like a French Mediterranean fish soup sparked with Mexican seasonings.

The one sensible way (for most guests, at least) to follow the siete mares would be with the Caesar salad, made the Tijuana way with whole, tender Romaine leaves moistened with a dressing of bland (as in this case it should be) oil spiked with lemon juice and crushed anchovy filets. Croutons made from slices of garlic-rubbed bolillo bread, and the merest suspicion of grated Parmesan cheese, complete what ranks as one of the finer Caesar salads in the county.

What’s most interesting about the lobster dinners is that the restaurant is using fresh lobsters currently available from our own waters. (After the season ends in March, frozen will of necessity be substituted.) Dinners include good Mexican-style rice and rather timid frijoles refritos (both passed in bowls, family-style), as well as baskets of the fresh, inimitable flour tortillas.

However, Baja Lobster’s best efforts simply aren’t as good as those of Puerto Nuevo’s leading practitioners, of which the prime example is the small but superlative Tona’s. Baja Lobster’s lard-fried specimens aren’t bad, to be sure, but they lack the fullness and super-succulence found at the south-of-the-border places, where so many lobsters have been immersed in the same fat through the day that it has become a rich emulsion composed more of lobster juices than lard.

The broiled lobster, though in some ways tamer, is perhaps the better choice because it is plumper and juicier. This was true of at least one handsome creature, in any case.

Baja Lobster serves lobster Thermidor (it was not sampled, however), and offers a lobster Newburg that, while not very like the classic, is very good. The serving obviously had been prepared fresh-to-order, and the lobster chunks, coated with a creamy sauce and replaced in the shell, were beautifully plump.

Besides lobster, the menu offers grilled halibut and sea bass, squid in wine sauce, shrimp in herbed garlic butter, and camarones a la Mexicana, a very pleasant dish that is a kind of Mexican shrimp creole. Fat, juicy prawns are served in a suave, buttery sauce of tomatoes, onions, garlic and green peppers, with enough minced green chiles to give the dish a hot, delicious bite. (Cayenne, chiles and other allied hot seasonings often work wonders in emphasizing the flavors of seafood.) Both this dish and the lobster Newburg rose well above the restaurant’s star offering (the Baja-style lobster) in terms of genuine satisfaction.

The restaurant naturally offers flan for dessert (it would not be Latin without this dish), and goes this common caramel custard one better by adding toasted almonds to the blend of eggs, milk and sugar.

Baja Lobster overall is most enjoyable, but one hopes that the management will relax a bit and learn that it is the style of the Baja California restaurants, as much as their lobsters, that gives them charm. The food arrived with altogether too much alacrity, even though the server had been instructed that a slowly paced meal was preferred. And on one occasion, the waitress approached the table, gave her name and said, “I will be your server tonight,” just as they do at El Torito. Please, please, please spare us this odious Southern California custom, which is generally disliked but which managers seem to believe is de rigueur.

Plain lobster dishes cost $10.95, while the Thermidor and Newburg run $12.95. Other entrees cost $8.95 to $14.95 (for the surf ‘n’ turf extravaganza).

BAJA LOBSTER

1430 E. Plaza Boulevard, National City

477-0711

Lunch and dinner served daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of house wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $50.