RESTAURANTS : Tamayo: East of the Border

Tamayo, 5300 E. Olympic Blvd., East L.A. (213) 260-4700. Open for lunch Sunday-Friday, for dinner daily. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$50.

I am sitting in one of the loveliest rooms imaginable. The painted ceiling soars above my head while works of the celebrated Mexican artist, Rufino Tamayo, stare down with all the authority of church icons. The sound of water splashing into a fountain mixes soothingly with the plucking of a harp. Above the musician’s head watery reflections dance on hand-made tiles. Flowers hang from a veranda high above. Off in a corner chickens turn on a spit in a huge fireplace, becoming more golden with every revolution as they send out their aromatic invitation.

For months I have been making pilgrimages to Tamayo. Heralded as a milestone in the revitalization of the East Los Angeles community, the restaurant is the brainchild of Dr. Stan Kandel, a dentist who was one of the founding partners of Spago, and David C. Lizarraga, President of TELACU (The East Los Angeles Community Union). The Office of Community Services gave them a $500,000 grant to acquire the building; TELACU and Kandel then put up close to a million dollars apiece before the restaurant opened. When it finally did last March, it was with much fanfare and great expectations.

Through the spring and summer I have learned that East L.A. is not as far away as it seems. It never takes more than 15 minutes to get here from my office. And I have learned to look forward to walking off of the hot dusty sidewalks into this cool oasis where the service is unfailingly gracious. I know I’ll find a basket filled with chips and wonderful chicharrones on my table, and I know I will eat far too many of them. I know too that I will pick up the menu with a feeling of anticipation, for this is the most sophisticated Mexican menu in town and reading it is sheer delight.

Unfortunately, I also know by now that it is all downhill from here. Despite menu descriptions that make the dishes sound exotically delicious, this food is relentlessly ordinary. A lot of care has gone into the making of this restaurant. It’s a pity that more care has not gone into the making of this food.

Consider the Caesar salad that is now being tossed before my very eyes. “La Original de Tijuana” trumpets the menu, adding, “prepared at your table.” But it is not being prepared at my table. Oh, the waiter has trundled an impressive cart in my direction. But he’s actually only mixing the salad and he has fiddled with this and that. The dressing that I expected to watch him prepare is sitting, pre-made, in a bowl. He adds some to the mix, tosses some more, adds a little cheese. It’s not a bad salad; it’s just not a very good one.

Or consider the meat from the rostizador. On my last visit I tried cabrito --baby goat -- which we could see spinning tantalizingly on the spit. But what appeared on the plate was a huge chunk of meat that tasted as if it had been sitting on a steam table. There was none of that textural distinction you get when meat is roasted on a spit so that the outside gets crisp and golden while the inside stays soft and tender. As for flavor, this meat tasted so little like goat that had you told me it was lamb, I would have believed you.

This time I have fallen for suckling pig. Did the waiter look dubious? Perhaps. And no wonder. This is not something fresh and crackling from the spit, but rather yesterday’s pig that has been sliced and then grilled. It’s a nice enough piece of pork, but it isn’t the vision I’d had.

All the antojitos sound wonderful. Some of them actually turn out to taste as good as they sound. Empanadas surtidas are three little empanadas, each with a slightly different filling. One comes filled with cumin-flavored beef, another with cheese, but the best is stuffed with a mixture of potatoes and chorizo. Eaten with a bit of the pico de gallo that sits on the table (along with other condiments like chopped onion, fresh oregano, diced chiles), these are a treat. But my very favorite is baked oysters that arrive sitting proudly on a bed of rock salt. The oysters have been poached and placed on nopalitos , then topped with a classy hollandaise made with chiles.

But even the antojitos cannot be counted on. Last time I ordered sopes de pato rostizado con salsa chipotle . They were thick little corn tortillas topped with lettuce, salsa and stringy roasted duck. And the tamalitos fritos de elote, fresh sweet corn tamales, were pleasant little pillows, but so sweet that they reminded me of the tiny turnovers you sometimes see served for dessert. Now I’m eating tacos filled with marinated octopus and onions. The octopus is remarkably soft and delicious, but the marinade is so greasy that the tacos are impossible to pick up. Who wants to eat a taco with a fork?

The menu will tell you that the mole sauce on the chicken is composed of 48 different ingredients. That may be so, but they somehow cancel each other out, and what I got when I ordered it was one-dimensional and disappointing. Even the whole sticks of cinnamon and the slices of dried fig couldn’t do much to perk up the dish. I’ve tried the zarzuela de mariscos too. It sounded terrific, but all the shellfish were overcooked. And the pavo en pibil --turkey breast steamed in banana leaves sounded like a good idea, but it was merely dry and rather tasteless.

The vegetables aren’t very exciting either. The steamed green rice is invariably mushy, the vegetable mixture a tired toss of zucchini, carrots, onions and the like.

Unlike the main courses, the desserts don’t sound particularly appealing. And they aren’t. I keep coming back to Kahlua flan, a flat, fairly solid disk that tastes fine but misses the whole point of flan: there is no contrast between the sweetness of the custard and the bitter edge of the caramelized sugar in which it sits. Like the mole , it has been homogenized until it becomes one dimensional.

Walking back out into the heat of East L.A., I’m beset by doubts. Should I even write about Tamayo? For almost six months I’ve been trying to find wonderful things to say about the exciting experiment that has marched so boldly into uncharted restaurant territory. But after many meals honesty compels me to say that although Tamayo is a lovely restaurant, and worth a visit, I can’t help wishing that the food were better.