RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Full Palette of Tastes at Glendale’s Crocodile Cantina

The Crocodile Cantina offers diners a bright, colorful, comfortable tour of Mexican and Southwestern cuisine. English-speaking residents of Glendale can now can get dark, chocolately mole sauce, bright-red chile adobo and ceviche tostadas without facing a language barrier.

Located prominently on Central Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway, the Crocodile Cantina houses more color than you might imagine exists in all of Glendale. The walls and columns are deep purple and the napkins are bright shades of yellow, red, blue and green. The tables are turquoise, the dishes are random matings of a dozen shiny hues. Waiters and waitresses wear shirts of pink, purple and aqua and wild, fetishistic bolo ties. There’s more: a neon coyote, loads of funky fluorescent art with contempo-Southwestern motifs, wild tilework, wacky red wrought iron and three-tone tortilla chips. Even the birds in the patio are bright blue jays.

Popular from the moment it opened, the Crocodile Cantina--like its Pasadena predecessor, the Crocodile Cafe--is invariably packed. No reservations are taken, it’s all on a first-come, first-serve basis, and--except for late Sunday afternoon--every time we went we had to wait 10 to 30 minutes for a table.

The restaurant’s appeal is general and cross-generational. At lunch time, there’s a working crowd from nearby offices and lunching women; at dinner, there are dates, friends, singles and families. At a table near us one night, a teen-age girl blissfully sang along to R.E.M.’s latest hit playing on the sound system as her parents discussed the menu.

The waiters, who clearly have had hours of encyclopedic training, can and will discuss every item in full detail. The chefs were sent to study Latin American cuisine with the renowned Rick Bayless at Chicago’s Frontera Grill; the ingredients are fresh and the presentation is as explosively colorful and playful as the interior decor. The various menu entries have notations giving their region of origin: a chile relleno filled with pork and asadero cheese is (Southern), blue corn taquitos are (Southwestern), the carne asada (Oaxacan).

The flavors are genuine and therefore bound to cause some surprise (and, ideally, delight) to uninitiated palates: The chicken enchilada comes with a mole sauce that is sweet, spiked with cinnamon and dark brown with chocolate; the barbecued duck quesadilla has that rich, sweet-to-cloying taste peculiar to tamarind sauce.

I enjoyed the black bean soup and the Original Crocodile Oakwood Grilled Hamburger with curly French fries, both items basically familiar to habitues of the Pasadena Crocodile. But, after two visits, I found myself gravitating to the left side of the menu, the appetizers ( platos pequenos ) and salads, and shying away from the right hand side, the entrees ( platos grandes ) and tacos al carbon.

Of the appetizers, I found the queso fundido (Central)--melted cheese with chorizo that you wrap in fresh tortillas and douse with a good smoky green chile salsa--the most fun. I also was amused by the Caesar, wherein thin tortilla strips served as croutons and strips of grilled poblano chiles played the part of anchovies. The totopos , tiny duck tostadas and the ceviche tostadas were also quite good.

I had, as indicated, much less luck with the entrees and tacos. While the hamburger and the herb fettuccine were quite good, I found both shrimp dishes--shrimp tacos and grilled shrimp with Oaxacan green mole-- bland and disappointing. And I found myself poking disconsolately among the three diverse items ( mole enchilada, cheese and pork-stuffed relleno and barbecued duck quesadilla ) on the Crocodile Platter. The skirt steak tacos, while somewhat better-seasoned than their shrimp counterparts, have some stiff competition from many local taco trucks.

The point is, however, that the bright, super-achieving Crocodile Cantina is not a taco truck or small ethnic restaurant or classic hole-in-the-wall. Rather, the Cantina is a comfortable, cheerful, ultra-professional theme restaurant where the food is far more authentic than you have any right to expect it to be.

Crocodile Cantina, 626 N. Central Ave., Glendale, (818) 241-1114. Open seven days for lunch and dinner. All major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Valet parking. Dinner for two, food only, $18-$41.