At Antartica, Tasty Cuisine Suffers the Big Chill

The new Antartica Fish and Ceviche Bar restaurant on 3rd Street is a bright green building with sheets of galvanized tin roofing nailed to its roof line in a jaunty design: It looks like a seaside cantina that’s been plopped down next to the Beverly Connection. (Actually, it has been cloned from the Antartica in Studio City, created by the founder of the Gaucho Grill chain, who uses the Argentine spelling for that chilly continent.)

The menu says that this restaurant “emerges from the South Pole as a new gastronomical idea,” but anyone who has spent any time on the beaches of Southern California and/or Mexico might have other associations.

A tape about penguins in Antarctica plays on a video monitor in Antartica’s bar; the infinite white expanses, dramatic skies and vast congregations of formally attired birds bear no obvious relation to this place, where the dining areas are painted in bright colors and festooned with old pieces of fish net and fat ducting that looks partly like what’s found on a submarine and partly like the waving arms of a giant octopus.

Old gaff hooks, anchors and oars serve as wall decor. Raw burlap curtains hang in the windows. Cuban pop music and reggae blare. Corona beers crowned with lime wedges sail past. The clientele is casually dressed, the servers young and cheerful. On the small patio, one easily imagines that, beyond the yellow walls, surf instead of traffic surges.

On the menu, Antartica’s stated philosophy is given: To set “an example for a responsible approach to a better relation between humans and Planet Earth with the environment in mind and an alternative diet.” This alternative diet is composed of “fish, seafood, vegetables and rice,” plus a few chicken dishes, and no red meat at all. Prices are quite reasonable, which may be Antartica’s main virtue.

Ceviche is raw fish (snapper, shrimp, squid and/or octopus, alone or in combination) that is cured in citrus juice until it achieves the attributes of cooked fish: opacity, a certain degree of firmness. Few foods are more refreshing on a hot day. Antartica’s ceviche comes in two basic styles: One, “vuelve la vida,” is a soupy mix of the cured fish plus onion, garlic, chile, cilantro, tomato and tomato sauce; the other, “ceviche Lima,” is Peruvian-style ceviche without tomato and served with boiled potatoes: I prefer its sharper, less cluttered character.

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Appetizers include a credible fried calamari served with a pink tartar sauce. Tuna empanadas taste just like hot, deep-fried tuna sandwiches. Baja soup, a salty tomato-enhanced broth with shrimp, one mussel and cubes of salmon would have been much better if actually heated and not merely lukewarm.

Shrimp served al mojo de ajo are rolled in butter and enough chopped, strong garlic to cure any ailment except, it seems, the peculiar flavorlessness of the shrimp.

While mildness is a virtue in fish and seafood, a peculiar flavorless-ness seems rampant in many of the dishes here. Charbroiled salmon tastes only of its cooking method: a faint whiff of hot oil. An enormous portion of meaty ahi tuna is so mild, I begin to imagine something has deadened my taste buds.

Any trace of flavor in the shrimp on the “paraiso” salad is extinguished by the Thousand Island dressing. Swordfish in a tomatillo sauce is also vague in flavor but ambrosial compared to the red snapper on my fish taco platter: These translucent filets taste exactly like meat formed from tap water. This dearth of any flavor, let alone interesting flavor, is so consistent as to be remarkable; one can only speculate that the kitchen has devised some technique to leach any possible taste from all edible forms of aquatic life.

A few dishes do survive this peculiar fate. Blackened thresher shark has enough hot, charred spices to stimulate the palate. And the seafood salad, with lemon-cured silken scallops, calamari and flavorless shrimp on good baby greens with a sprightly lemon vinaigrette, is satisfying.

No matter what you had for dinner, the dense, cool coconut flan will leave a good taste in your mouth. And the check, when it comes, is often so low you’re tempted to temper any complaints.

* Antartica Fish and Ceviche Bar, 8445 3rd St., Los Angeles, (213) 658-7066. Open seven days for lunch and dinner. Beer and wine served. Dinner for two, food only, $24-$44.