2 Cheers for 2nd Antonio’s

There’s good news for Santa Monica, sort of. The famous Antonio’s of Melrose Avenue has opened a branch on Montana that reproduces the original just about exactly.

I repeat: This is good news, sort of. Until the new wave of places such as the Border Grill and Tamayo, Antonio’s was the leading--virtually the only-- Mexican place that systematically broke out of the narrow world of enchiladas and tamales. Santa Monica could use more Mexican restaurants, and our whole area would be better off with Mexican menus that had this kind of ambition.

Like the Melrose Avenue branch, the new Antonio’s prominently features strolling serenaders, which may not be welcome to everybody. On the other hand, for some tastes the new Antonio’s will be even handsomer than the old one. It has taken over the building that once housed an Italian restaurant that insisted that an exclamation mark was part of its name (Boh!), and it resembles a miniature villa with tall mirrors and the usual restaurant-quality paintings on its yellow walls, the centerpiece being a skylight hung with plants.

Sort of good news. I have always wanted to believe in Antonio’s. The economics of running a restaurant favor dishes that can be cooked as short orders, so it’s virtually a public service when a restaurant goes beyond the obvious. In the case of Mexican food, this means, for instance, serving any stew beyond the occasional mole or birria, or on Saturday mornings that reputed hangover cure menudo. Antonio’s has a revolving menu of repeated nightly specials that take us far beyond the usual.

So I’ve been grateful, and I’ve wanted very hard to believe, but something about Antonio’s never quite lived up to the promise of this plan. So it doesn’t serve menudo --well, I guess I can forgive a restaurant for not serving tripe. But when Antonio’s makes birria, it’s with veal instead of kid. Briefly, there’s something about Antonio’s that shrinks from vividness. I’m not just talking about pepperiness (though that’s often in short supply, except for the short-tempered table salsa that will be hot enough for most people). Something is vague, fuzzy and downright tired about a distressing proportion of Antonio’s dishes.

But I’m trying to bring good news. I’m hoping to work up some excitement here. I want to boast of the glories of Antonio’s as much as I can. So let’s start brightly.

A lot of the regular menu stuff, as opposed to the nightly specials, is remarkably good. The chicken mole is not oversweet--refreshingly bittersweet, rather, like the Persian dish of chicken in pomegranate and walnut sauce. The chorizo is meaty and subtly spicy, so anything with chorizo in it will be very good, such as the cheese and chorizo enchilada. Likewise any of the usual enchilada/taquito-type snacks that mention beef, because the shredded beef is delicious, fried quite brown.

And although Antonio’s likes to boast that it represents the “light, gourmet Mexico City-style cuisine,” some of the best nightly specials are successful because they are very rich. I’m thinking of the pollo almendrado (Wednesday nights) and the pollo en pipian (Sundays), the former in an almond sauce and the latter in a pumpkin seed sauce (including also some welcome sunflower seeds, rather a novelty for this dish). Both sauces are rich and aromatic.

Fish Preparation

The fish Veracruzana (Fridays) is a cut above the astonishingly dull versions of this classic dish found in our local mariscos joints, and it gets points because the fish is not overcooked (if anything, the fish is a shade underdone, scarcely more than warmed through, but years of eating sushi should have conditioned us to accept slimy textures). On the other hand, there’s scarcely any Veracruzana sauce, just a couple of California olives and some chunks of pickled bell pepper and onion.

Chicken en chipotle and ropa vieja (Thursdays) are not terribly distinctive. One wonders how the kitchen managed so well to suppress the characteristic chipotle aroma of burning rubber tires, and though the ropa vieja is nice and meaty, it does seem strange to go to a Mexican restaurant for something so much like ordinary pot roast.

But what do you say about the Mexican stuffed cabbage (also Thursdays)? The stuffing is a bland forcemeat of ground chicken, and the dressing is a faintly garlicky sort of Velveeta cheese sauce. It made me think of convalescent food, as did the stuffed zucchini (“stuffed” by cutting a cooked zucchini open so the “stuffing” can be laid on top of it).

Several of the desserts have a mysterious boiled fruit sauce on them, something that tastes like plums, quinces and currants, but the waiter insists that it’s the chef’s secret mixture and hints at pineapple. It’s not the most exciting dessert sauce in the world, but it is pretty nice and goes well on a fried banana or a rather sweet, frosting-like cheesecake. The flan, by contrast, is a rather stiff version, probably made with extra egg yolks.

And there’s a traditional Mexican mud pie--pardon me, a muddnana (the joke has something to do with the word manana) advertised by a four-color printed stand-up board on the table.

Anyway, there is now an Antonio’s in Santa Monica. Two cheers.

Antonio’s, 1323 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. (213) 395-2815. Open for lunch Tuesday through Friday, for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Full bar. Valet or street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $28 to $50.