Southwestern Merchandising

Ten years ago, there was Mexican-American food: enchilada-taco combo platters with plenty of bright orange cheese. These days, there are “Southwestern-style” fajita platters and blue-corn enchiladas instead. You can even get the stuff at Taco Bell.

The Southwestern formula has been especially successful for David Wilhelm, an Orange County restaurateur who runs five restaurants in Irvine, Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, and who is largely responsible for the Southwestern-for-the-masses food of the revitalized El Torito Grill.

At his latest spot, Kachina Grill, a collaboration with Roxbury’s Elie Samaha, Wilhelm is trying his luck in Los Angeles County. As at his other restaurants, beans are likely to be black instead of brown, rice might just as easily be replaced with polenta and margaritas are made with trendier (and pricier) brand-name tequila.

Meat loaf gets a sort of painted-desert treatment with waves of brick-red and sand-white sauce. Chicken is fried with a chile-spiked batter (hey, it works for Popeye’s) and comes with mashed potatoes and a sneaky-hot chile gravy. Caesar salad is tossed with corn nuts instead of croutons. Nothing is as sublime as John Sedlar’s haute Southwestern cooking at St. Estephe, but Kachina serves pleasant, interesting food that’s reasonably priced.

Anyway, Wilhelm and company seem more interested in successful merchandising than in pleasing fussy critics: Kachina Grill sweat shirts and T-shirts are listed on the menu along with the entrees. And each table is set with a Kachina Grill memo pad--at lunch you could jot notes during a business lunch; at dinner you might pass your phone number to an interesting neighbor.

* Kachina Grill, Wells Fargo building, 330 S. Hope St., Los Angeles, (213) 506-2554. Dinner for two, food only, $14-$50.