First off, the old La Barca was festooned with colored-paper banners, and the noise level at noon was usually slightly less than a 747 at takeoff. If you didn't like what was on your plate, you could go outside to one of the center's many Korean joints, across the parking lot for great Thai food at Lotus of Siam or dip your fork into some birria de chivo, or goat-meat stew, at Birreria Jalisco, a one-note but memorable Mexican restaurant next door. The intersection of Eastern and Warm Springs is, in sharp contrast, home to an Einstein Brothers Bagels, an El Pollo Loco and other similarly inspired restaurants.
To say that the new La Barca has lost touches of that old Vegas character would be an understatement. But that wouldn't matter if the food and ambience could muster the pizzazz to make you forget the setting. So far this new incarnation of La Barca is best described as a work in progress.
It's certainly a handsome enough room: walls sponge-painted in pastel colors, one done in a map of Mexico, another in a huge Aztec-themed fresco, and lovely booths with artisanal fabrics that look as if they were made by Oaxacan craftsmen.
On Friday and Saturday evenings, there are norteños, similar to mariachis, and a lively bar scene. I ate here during a quiet weekday lunch, when tame Latino music played faintly on the sound system, and most of the people were eating in a circumspect manner, minding their own business and nearly whispering.
I started with ceviche, a Peruvian dish that gained popularity in Mexico and is generally associated with the Mexican resort towns that brought it to the American table.
Ceviche is marinated raw seafood mixed with tomato, onion and chile, and in Mexico often with optional avocado, a touch I like. La Barca does ceviche with fish, clams, shrimp and octopus, separately or mixed. I tried them all, and they were on the dry side, not at all like what I remember in Mexican beach towns.
The seafood cocktails here, done in a rich red cocktail sauce, fared better, especially ones with oysters and scallops. One day I had an appetizer called camarones Costa Azul, large shrimp wrapped in bacon and stuffed with cheese, a dish that tasted more like Costa Mesa than Costa Azul. Flautas—corn tortillas rolled with beef, topped with guacamole and sour cream—fared better than most of the seafood dishes, despite a landlocked pedigree.
Fideo, a hearty Mexican noodle soup served in a birdbath-size bowl, had a sour, unappealing broth, and we left most of it. Among three entrees we tried —beef in green chile sauce, pork in red chile sauce and a fried whole "tilapia" called mojarra frita entero—the meats outshone the fish by a wide margin.
Mojarra is actually perch, and that's what you get in many Mexican restaurants. Tilapia is farm-raised and doesn't have much flavor. This one is served with the bones on, and you dig the meat out; well, the outside is nicely crunchy, anyway. And I like what the kitchen serves with entrees. These refried beans, for example, are made with demon lard, manteca in Spanish, which gives them an authentic, down-home taste. The Spanish rice is nice, too, fluffy and piquant.
It wasn't until I tasted the two meat entrees that I grasped what is missing here. Both the meats had that dry, dusky flavor reminiscent of border towns in northern Mexican states such as Chihuahua, Sonora and Durango. The pork was tender, the red sauce a delight and the beef even better, tasting slow-simmered, like a grandmother's dish. That's when I inquired as to the origins of the men in the kitchen. "I'll ask," said our bi-lingual waitress, and when she returned, she said, "Durango." And there's the rub. These guys are from the north, like the musicians, and, I suspect, the owners. They're good with the meat, but if you want good Mexican seafood, I say, get some chefs from Jalisco or Veracruz, coastal states with a tradition of cooking these dishes.