RESTAURANT REVIEW : Horny Toad: Cute Name, Not-So-Cute Food

We all want to know about Horny Toad, I presume.

Last year two partners were going to open a restaurant named for that desert lizard that is said to be able to spit blood from its eyes. Then they had a noisy falling-out and there was a prolonged wrangle over who’d get the name. Elka Gilmore lost, but almost immediately opened a stylish and very personal sort of Tex-Mex restaurant called Tumbleweed.

Marsha Sands, who won the name, has taken until a few weeks ago to get her Horny Toad open. So after all this, what is Horny Toad?

It turns out to be a cavernous dining room adorned by paintings of horned toads (with curious smirking expressions) and a cavernous bar where the decor on one wall appears to be a mural of Pancho Villa painted with a kitchen sponge. On the other, three tall and remarkably clumsy papier-mache figures (two cowboys, one serape -cloaked Mexican) conceal air-conditioning ducts in their crotches. Horny Toad may make its own tortillas, but it looks like nothing more ambitious than a college town cerveza parlor.

However, I was presuming we all wanted to know about Horny Toad, so I went. A waiter proceeded to mess up my order and it took forever to get my “Yucatan-style” chicken tamale in its Chef Boyardee-like tomato sauce. Then came the chili (“Bozo and Red’s Extra Fancy Hot Chili”), which was astonishingly bitter and bland, possibly the worst chili anybody has ever tried to charge money for.

There was an explanation, though. A customer had recently complained that the “Hot Chili” was actually hot, and the panicky kitchen had decided to try making a chili with only mild peppers. Fortunately, Horny Toad has since regained its mind and now makes an exceptionally good chili, meaty, richly flavored with chiles, and neither bland nor poisonously hot. However, it took a good deal of confidence that we all want to know about Horny Toad to make me order it again.

The Mexican side of the menu is largely tacos, by far the best being a tart one filled with shrimp mixed with (possibly pickled) radish. In terms of interest it definitely outranks the pibil, rather tough stewed beef with citrus flavor on a fried, puffed tortilla; the steak soft taco with charred peppers; and even the not-bad chicken taco in tart tomatillo sauce.

There are also carnitas, which have an odd sweet-salty flavor, almost the taste of soy sauce, and various unconventional combo dinners including a vegetarian plate that consists of a bland potato flauta in tomatillo sauce thinned with cream, an OK quesadilla with mild peppers and a surpassingly dumb soft taco of mild peppers, mushrooms and fried onions.

The Texas side is basically barbecue, sometimes quite good, particularly the excellent hot links, which are meaty, mildly hot and wonderfully smoky. The chopped meat sandwich, however, is for some reason served in a stiff bun which makes it impossible to eat either with a knife or as a sandwich. The beef brisket, sliced nice and thin, is not bad; the beef ribs are rather fatty. All the barbecue comes in a mild, rich, remarkably well-balanced sauce.

Horny Toad may be pulling itself up, but dessert remains awful. A chocolate mousse that seems to be just chocolate pudding. An apple pie with chunks, not slices, of apple--like baked apple in a crust. The very worst is a bread pudding of really exceptional awfulness--utterly dry, just bread with creme anglaise spread around it.

I sure hope everybody wanted to know about all this.

Horny Toad, 11835 Wilshire Blvd . ; (213) 473-1696. Lunch and dinner daily. Full bar. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $26 to $40.