Going way beyond the enchilada

CASA Antigua Cantina is so elegantly Mexican that when you leave, you expect to step outside into the buzz of Mexico City -- certainly not into a cluttered business strip along Wilshire Boulevard.

At the far end of the dining room, a fountain streams over an arrangement of dark urns that looks more like an art piece than a water feature. The chairs, which are rustic hand-stitched equipales, have been dressed up with slats of hammered tin. A mirror with a glittery tin frame hangs near a decorative tin spoon rack.

Apart from the back wall of luminescent glass brick, the room is painted a warm orange. The tables are covered with leather, the menus are leather-bound and the wine list comes in a hand-cut metal folder so heavy you can hardly lift it.

There’s obviously a lot of money behind this stylish restaurant, and it aims at a higher level of cookery than most Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles. This is not the place to go for enchiladas and refried beans. The kitchen prefers lightness and smart presentation, applied to the fusion of pre-Columbian and European cuisines you find not only in sophisticated Mexico City restaurants but simple cafes in Oaxaca or Puebla.

Some dishes work well, such as duo de calabaza acapulqueno -- sliced baby zucchini and squash flowers stuffed with seafood in a delicate cilantro reduction. It’s a beautiful plate.

Some fall short, but the concepts are intriguing, such as pilar de mignon y nopal: a stack of sliced Angus tenderloin and fresh cactus covered with a dark pasilla chile sauce. The heavy sauce does little for either ingredient and overpowers the cute baby vegetables scattered about the plate. When I ordered an appetizer called jaibas rellenas, I found the crab puree stuffing bland and the whole thing sloppily arranged and scorched black at the edges.

Fortunately, those were exceptions. Casa Antigua’s mole sauce, served over game hen, is sharply spicy with chiles and not very sweet. It’s the true Puebla style mole, as good as any you’ll find there.

One seafood dish, huachinango ti-kin-xic, draws on Mayan cuisine. Wrapped in a banana leaf, the red snapper is coated with a guajillo chile sauce piquant with vinegar. Fried plantain slices are on the side.

Salmon acapulqueno spills from a golden tortilla cornucopia. Slightly crisp at the edges, the grilled chunks of salmon are bathed in sweet tamarind sauce. (The bits of chile de arbol scattered in the sauce are more for looks than for heat.) A cluster of baby vegetables comes with this, also a large heap of scalloped potatoes that seems too coarse for this sort of food.

The thick, achiote-seasoned sauce that coats thin boneless pork chops -- chuletas de puerco pibil -- has fresh cactus in it, like the pilar de mignon, but is more palatable. Here the cactus is mixed with cilantro potatoes.

The three sauces that accompany a stuffed chicken breast -- red tomato, pale cheese, intense cilantro -- appear dimly to represent the red, white and green of the Mexican flag. (I say “dimly” because most of this restaurant is so dark you can hardly read the menu.) The chicken is also stuffed with three colors: spinach, carrot and cream cheese.

Appetizers include quesadillas filled with huitlacoche fungus -- fresh huitlacoche, the waiter insisted. Little masa rounds (pan de elote) are topped with chicken in a mild chipotle sauce. There’s an unusual house salad, a combination of cool greens and vegetables with warm seafood and a guajillo chile sauce. It’s big enough for a main dish.

The desserts are all good. Rice pudding (arroz con leche), looks pretty in its little casserole, half covered with ground cinnamon and sprouting cinnamon sticks.

A standout is the duo de chocolate, which is actually a chocolate quartet -- chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream and a densely chocolate brownie on a plate dusted with cocoa powder that outlines the image of two crossed spoons. Crepas de cajeta con nuez are well done, with a thick caramel sauce and chopped nuts scattered over the crepes.

If you are serious about food, ask for a table in the back, near the fountain. The front of the restaurant faces the bar, and beyond the bar is the “cantina,” which can be very noisy.

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Casa Antigua Cantina

Location: 12217 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 820-2540.

Price: Appetizers, $6 to $12; dinner entrees, $14 to $28; desserts, $6 and $7.

Best dishes: Pollito de leche en mole poblano, chuleta de puerco pibil, filete de salmon acapulqueno, ensalada Casa Antigua, crepas de cajeta.

Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday; 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday; noon to 11:30 p.m. Saturday; noon to 10:30 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Street parking. All major credit cards.