Washed Out
One balmy evening, I stepped out of the Baja 600 restaurant and crossed Ward Parkway to get to my parked car. Looking down into the muddy water of Brush Creek, I saw the floating Mark Cordes cow sculpture, “Cowdolier,” tipped over and nearly two-thirds underwater. It was a fine metaphor for my second surreal night in Baja 600. Brush Creek is neither the Pacific Ocean nor the Sea of Cortez. Kansas City is not on the Baja peninsula. And Baja 600 is not a cozy beachfront restaurant packed with buff, bronzed surfers and beach bunnies. If only it were.
In fact, the upscale clientele who frequented Japengo, the venue’s former incarnation, must have fled for the season, because most of the customers I saw were tourist-class. One chatty quartet sat behind our table, eating chips and talking at the same time. The dialogue was slightly garbled (it’s hard to chat and eat chips simultaneously), but the loudest among them favorably compared Baja 600’s attractive interior — designer Hal Swanson recently gave the place a cabana-style redo — to the more spartan décor of their other favorite Mexican eatery, Taco Via.
Not that Baja 600 is specifically a Mexican restaurant, like its Plaza neighbor Mi Cocina (or even Southwest/Mexican, like the Canyon Café on the other side of 47th Street). “Mi Cocina does very traditional Mexican,” says Baja 600’s personable owner, Stu Stram. “This menu is much more diverse, with much more variety.”
And it’s a classy-looking place, although the building’s interior has never quite recovered from the makeover that transformed the old Parkway 600 into Japengo. That rehab turned the restaurant’s central “dome room” (now done up like a spacious tent, with painted stripes of pumpkin-orange, avocado, sunflower-gold and brown) into an awkward combination of bar and waiting area; Baja 600 still uses it as a frazzled holding tank for really busy nights.
On those nights, which are mostly Fridays and Saturdays, the restaurant is packed with customers younger than the diners who went to Japengo (who were as sedate as that restaurant’s snooty formal service) or even the suits who piled into Parkway 600’s clubby, steak-and-martini scene. Under-thirty patrons like Baja 600’s reasonable prices, smooth, friendly service and breathlessly hip menu, which dubs house specialties “Baja Cool.”
The menu may have a groove quotient, but something gets lost in the translation between the page, where every item sounds perfectly delicious, and the kitchen. Stram told me that Ed Gieselman, who owns several suburban Mexican restaurants, was “a consultant” on the Baja 600 project, but there’s no executive chef on staff. Maybe there should be.
One of the signature dishes of Baja peninsula restaurants is fish tacos, and I was excited by the idea of seared fresh marlin wrapped in a soft flour tortilla with sour cream lime sauce, pico de gallo and asiago cheese. I’ve loved the delicacy in other restaurants and I’m a fan of the tangy, meaty quality of freshly cooked marlin. Fish tacos at Baja 600, however, were well beyond tangy. The chunks of marlin had a disturbingly pungent scent and a vaguely sour flavor that the citrusy cream sauce couldn’t mask. After three bites, I pushed the plate away.
And the dinner had started with such promise! A willowy, Lithuanian-born waitress, as stunning as any runway model, took our order for guacamole and promptly sent over a minion in a red shirt: the guacamole boy. His cart was heaped with fresh cilantro, salt, onion, peppers, garlic and chopped tomato. In the center of the cart was a molcajete, a heavy lava-stone mortar. Without a word, he began grinding the ingredients and, before our eyes, peeled two buttery avocados, squeezed them with fresh lime juice and mixed it all together for an intensely flavorful guacamole.
[page]
“I adore tableside service, don’t you?” my friend Brenda asked, a cynical note to her voice. She dipped a crunchy corn chip into the pale green concoction. “It’s kind of like dinner theater.”
The guacamole presentation was as theatrical as Baja 600 got, although I considered giving an ovation to the Sizzling Shrimp Diablo appetizer, which arrived with no fanfare but a terrific medley of flavors: fat shrimp nestled in a blanket of garlic, scallions, tomatoes, biting habañero chiles and good olive oil. But the kitchen had been stingy with the tortillas, leaving us to fight over the last one.
That was followed by my ill-fated fish tacos. And Brenda rolled her eyes after two bites of an enchilada made with fresh spinach, jalapeño cheese and a white wine cream sauce. “It sounded sexy, but it’s totally ho-hum,” she complained. Bob, however, who’s usually the fussiest eater in the room, fell in love with a plate of fajitas made with marinated chicken and steak, brought out freshly grilled and sizzling on a platter. He folded the meat into tortillas loaded with peppers, red onion, sour cream and roasted potatoes — but since he’d already hogged most of the guacamole, he was full after only a few bites and started packing up the rest to take home. That was when we noticed our friend Amy, who actually once was a model, gliding through the dining room to make a brief stop at our booth.
“They don’t serve dessert here,” she whispered, looking around furtively. “I find that very strange, don’t you?”
Brenda didn’t find that nearly as strange as the fact that Amy even cared about dessert. I did, however, and was crestfallen. At my next visit, I asked our genial young server about Amy’s story.
“Oh, we have dessert,” he said unenthusiastically. “Fried ice cream and sopapillas.”
I demanded that my dining companions, Bob, Louise and Queen Bey, save room for something sweet. Again we insisted on the guacamole show (it was performed with far more panache this time) and sampled a quesadilla made with thick slices of tasteless portabella mushroom and dull melted cheese.
Dinner was barely more exciting. My Enchiladas Mercedes came smothered in a mildly piquant mole sauce and a jumble of salty feta, which should have dazzled up a basic pair of chicken enchiladas — but didn’t. Queen picked at her ground-beef burrito, which turned out to be no different from any other local version. And Bob — having greedily attacked the guacamole again — packed up his fajita burrito quickly, even after declaring that it “wasn’t very good.”
Louise, however, scored with a pan-seared salmon, its delicately crisp surface lightly drizzled with a sweetly tart orange and tequila glaze. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with the accompanying mashed-potato-and-black-bean patty, though. After a bite, she moved it to the far side of her plate. It was her way of making room for dessert, she said.
A rock-hard ball of “fried” ice cream in a cinnamon-dusted tortilla bowl finally arrived, dappled with defrosted strawberry bits. We all plunged our spoons into the crunchy sphere once, took a heaping taste, then set down our spoons. Every time I order fried ice cream, I realize it’s the second most boring dessert ever invented (tapioca pudding being the first) and kick myself for thinking it could be otherwise.
[page]
But at Blah Blah 600, the evening’s finale was yet another example of the kind of culinary blandness that keeps diners like me heading north for Mexican fare, to Southwest Boulevard’s far less glamorous — but honest — joints.
And if I want a cabana, I’ll go to the beach.
