Charro-Broiled

Here we are, at the Mexican steakhouse La Parrilla, on the newly renamed Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, once Brooklyn, in East L.A. And here come the mariachis, the sixth or seventh crew within a couple of hours, crossing the street from a set at El Apetito, looking for some customers who might buy a song or two.

The leader of the trio, handsome in his charro vest, nods a hello to an itinerant stuffed-animal salesman as he enters the restaurant; then he groans. At the moment, the place is populated mostly with non-Mexicans, who are rarely in the market for his songs or, almost as bad, request things like “La Bamba” or “Guantanamera,” which he sometimes has to play more than 10 times a night.

We in the restaurant, though, are happy to see him. Usually, the bands are wonderful--sweet close-harmony crooners or piercing trumpet-led trios, ready to play almost anything from the last century of Mexican music for a $5 donation. But the previous band, a ragged quartet, featured perhaps the worst saxophone player on the planet, a man whose entire repertoire consisted of a single descending scale that he felt appropriate to just about any open space in any song his colleagues played.

La Parrilla is a wonderful place, with smooth, cool guacamole mashed to order in giant stone mortars, with Mexican beer served so cold that it crusts over with ice crystals on a hot afternoon. The restaurant, like El Chamizal in Huntington Park, specializes in marinated, charcoal-grilled meats--thin beef fillets, pork coated in a ruddy chile paste, chorizo sausage, sweetly sauced spare ribs, and chicken served in various combinations. If you order a parrillada al brasero , the meat comes to the table piled on a little grill. There are hand-patted corn tortillas unless they’ve run out. Combinations are served with rice, grilled scallions and little bowls of spicy charro beans made smoky with bacon, and mostly the grilled meat is very good.

Beyond grilled meat, La Parrilla serves the usual sort of upscale Mexican entrees, chicken in a wan pumpkin-seed-based pipian sauce, dry-ish grilled Cornish game hen, bland chicken mole , most of them prepared to more or less chain-restaurant standards. Better are the many dishes based around grilled beef: puntas de filete (grilled chunks of steak tossed with pickled jalapenos and topped with melted cheese); fillet in a smoky sauce of chipotle chiles; fillet in a spicy Veracruz-style tomato sauce.

And between Norteno ballads, the waitresses are likely to push something called molcajete Azteca , a large granite mortar heated to a ferocious temperature, then filled with, among other things, bits of steak, grilled cactus paddles, chicken, a thin smoked-chile salsa and a big slab of panela cheese that bubbles and smokes where it touches the hot stone. It might seem peculiar, this Mexican variant of the Korean bibimbap , and you might wish for a longer fork, better to avoid scorching your wrist, but the molcajete is a delicious bowl of food.

“Sing something sweet,” the man at the next table asks the leader of the trio. “Something for my wife.”

The leader smiles and strums the opening chords of “Agua Dulce” on his guitar. Suddenly, everyone here is happy.

* La Parrilla

2126 Cesar E. Chavez Ave., East Los Angeles, (213) 262-3434. Open daily, 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. Takeout. Major credit cards accepted. Other locations at 19265 Roscoe Blvd., Northridge, and 19601 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana. Dinner for two, food only, $14-$27.