Kaktus Unveils New Menu That Moves Toward L.A.-Mex Classicism

Here’s a trend that doesn’t seem likely to go away: elegant Mexican restaurants where an enchilada isn’t basically mass quantities of cheese and sour cream, and where margaritas come, if at all, in glasses distinctly smaller than your head.

We needn’t be talking about anything experimental and Southwestern. The food could be just neat and refined versions of the Mexican dishes we’ve been eating all these years: nothing regional, nothing mesquite-smoked or cooked in banana leaves, nothing wild.

Nothing wild is sort of the style at Kaktus, which has been purveying neat and refined Mexican food to Beverly Hills since early last year. The whole style of the place is a little subdued. No neon, no mirrors, no murals--hardly any decor at all, except for some geometric spots of turquoise, a Day of the Dead mask here and there and a tiny potted kaktus plant at every table.

Still, things change even at Kaktus. It just got a new menu, which has moved a little bit away from the pan-nouvelle tendencies of L.A. restaurants. There’s no more attempt to serve American Heart Assn. dishes, so far as I can tell. The items that seemed like compromises with California cuisine are gone, such as chicken in ground sweet pepper sauce.

These are no great losses, at least gastronomically. On the other hand, the only tamale left is the tiny, unstuffed tamalito , a little pillow of sweet steamed corn pudding. The seafood cocktails seem to be gone, though there’s still a solid ceviche generous with green olives. I do miss one dish, roasted fish served with a mixture of red chiles and fried garlic chips.

Otherwise, much is the same. They still bring you a thin, dark green, very appetizing salsa in a pitted stone mortar. It smells largely of vinegar and cilantro, and with it comes crumbly white cheese and thick, home-style corn tortillas. Kaktus still uses no bean that is not a black bean, for instance in its frijoles refritos and its tostadas.

Of course, the black bean is the official bean of the ‘80s, as goat cheese is the official cheese, and here Kaktus is still marching with the crowd. In fact, it may be using more goat cheese than before, sometimes prompting one to wonder whether sharp, rank goat cheese should always be the queso of choice. Camarones Cancun--bacon-wrapped grilled shrimp stuffed with goat cheese--lead to such dark ruminations.

So what have we got? Chewy sopes topped with potato and the restaurant’s own chorizo, as well as beans. . . . Plump quesadillas made from small folded tortillas and excellent, subtle cheese. . . . A combo plate that includes these two plus ceviche, a couple of miniature tostadas, a tamalito and guacamole. . . . Tortilla soup, and a fresh-tasting chicken lime soup that itself has a couple of tortilla strips in it.

Whoa, this looks new: pavo Azteca , essentially turkey scaloppine in a sweet dark mole sauce that tastes as if it has honey in it. This may not be what you call a showcase for the flavor of turkey, but the delicious sauce will use up many a tortilla. Chicken breast now comes in a snappy light chipotle sauce. Or so they call it; this red-orange sauce scarcely has any of the smoky flavor of a chipotle pepper. Some other things--enchiladas, for instance--get the same pleasant, neutral, slightly hot red-orange sauce.

Pavo tequila somehow sounds like something from the old menu: duck breast in a molasses sauce (a little less sweet than it sounds) dashed with tequila. It’s an oddly sensible thing to do to duck, though a bit of raw alcohol flavor does show up in the sauce. Serape , I’m sure, is from the old menu: a filet steak pounded about as thin as a tortilla, nearly covering the dinner plate. It’s topped with a hash of fried onions with a couple of mild peppers mixed in, making this a surreal sort of steak smothered in onions.

At dessert time, the rice pudding is gone, and the range of flans is down to one: a plain one with a nice resilient texture. The crepes with toasted almonds are still around, but no longer with any claim of chocolate in the caramel sauce. They’re probably the best of the desserts, and in a crazy way the most Mexican in effect, the crepes turning soggy in the sauce as if in a sweet cousin of budin Azteca , the dish Americans turned into tamale pie. The other desserts are L.A. staples, such as a chocolate mousse like chocolate-candy filling served in slab form.

Basically, things are still unfailingly neat and refined; the only trouble on this horizon seems to be the grilled zucchini slices, which sometimes get practically blackened. Kaktus has made its culinary direction quite clear, a sort of L.A.-Mex classicism.

Recommended dishes: plato surtido (combination appetizer plate), $12.95; chicken lime soup, $4.50; pavo tequila, $18.75; crepes with toasted almonds, $5.50.

Kaktus, 400 N. Canon, Beverly Hills. (213) 271-1856. Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and for appetizers only from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday; for dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, till 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Full bar. Valet and street parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $37 to $67.