Trio of restaurants feature fine Mexican seafood

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2000 | 9:10 a.m.

Mexican cuisine often gets the short shrift in this country, in no small part because of an endless succession of low-end taco joints and upscale chains where every second dish is inundated with lifeless, gooey cheese. Seafood in a good Mexican restaurant can be wonderful, though, as illustrated by three local places that do seafood well.

Let's remember that Mexico has two enormous coastlines, the Atlantic and Pacific. On the Pacific side, the locals eat fish tacos, seafood cocktails, the red snapper called huachinango and a variety of ceviches. Meanwhile, on Mexico's Atlantic coast, people feast on fish cooked in the style of the city of Veracruz (tomato sauce and green olives), fresh oysters and fish steamed in banana leaves.

Would you believe all these dishes and more are available in Las Vegas restaurants? They are, although you're not likely to find any of them at the nearest Taco Bell.

Here are three places to fish for these dishes instead:

La Barca 953 E. Sahara Ave.

On La Barca's website, LaBarcaLasVegas.com, there is a banner that reads "gringos welcome." That pronouncement may be tongue-in-cheek, but the fact remains that almost 75 percent of the clientele in this remarkable Commercial Center restaurant are tourists visiting Las Vegas from Mexico.

They come by the busload, because La Barca advertises heavily on Mexican television. What they come for are fresh seafood cocktails, fish tacos, the seven seas seafood soup that contains everything but the kitchen sink and a raft of other seafood items. One can feast in here for under $10 per person.

According to a manager who would identify himself only as Juan, the restaurant goes through 400 pounds of octopus alone every weekend and a whopping 1000 pounds of ceviche during the same interval.

This restaurant, open Friday through Sunday only, is Las Vegas' premier place for Mexican seafood, a super-colorful room painted with Aztec murals and hung with banners from Mexican beer companies. A full, 11-piece band of mariachis plays nearly all the time here. No wonder almost everyone is quaffing a Tecate with a wedge of lime at 11 in the morning.

The food is sublime. Shrimp, octopus, oysters and scallops are served a la Campechana (from the city of Campeche), meaning in a spicy, light tomato broth topped with fresh avocado. Excellent ceviches are served on crisp tostadas, anything from chopped clams to raw snapper. Whole fried snapper can be had with rice, tortillas and pico de gallo salsa. The fried shrimp are terrific as well.

La Barca also serves what is without doubt the best fish taco in town, $2.39 for a giant hunk of battered tilapia and all the trimmings. Ralph Rubio has made a fortune at his chain, Rubio's Fish Tacos, but he uses a far less meaty fish, Alaskan Pollock, and his fish is breaded, not battered like this one.

The taco is so successful here, in fact, that the restaurant is planning to launch a chain itself, called Mr. Fish Taco. By me, that idea can't miss.

Casa Mercado 4500 Sunset Rd.

Personable owner Jimmy Mercado has cast his restaurant in the mold of an El Torito or Acapulco, but his restaurant is more sophisticated, and his chef, Gilberto Salas, will prepare anything in his kitchen the way you want it.

This is a comfortable place decorated with serapes, Mexican crafts and solid, elegant furniture. On the menu's second page there is a salsa list, where a number of the restaurant's salsas have been assigned numerical ratings to correspond with their hotness. The mild pico de gallo is rated at two. The searing habanero salsa is a 10. Now you are on your own.

The seafoods here are excellent, and the menu contains an entire page devoted to them. The starters shrimp cocktail and shrimp ceviche differ only in that the cocktail is soupy, intended to be eaten with a spoon, and the ceviche less so, intended for dipping or to be eaten with the deliciously salty house corn chips.

Orange roughy is used for fish tacos, or eaten filleted with a chipotle pepper sauce. One of the best shrimp dishes here is camarones rancheros, where the shrimp are stir-fried with green chiles, bell peppers, tomatoes and onions.

The house specialty, though, is seafood parillada, $15.95 for one, $29.95 for two. Parilla is Spanish for grill, and this blowout is a huge amount of grilled seafood, served with the restaurant's homemade noodle soup, refried beans, Mexican rice and tortillas.

What you get here are shrimps, scallops, orange roughy and langostinos, marinated and grilled with fresh lemon, garlic and salsa quemada, a sauce made from four different types of chiles. It's the kind of dish that will put you off burritos permanently.

Cozymel 355 Hughes Center Drive

This faux rustic chain bills itself as a "Coastal Mexican Grill." It is named for the island of Cozumel, which is adjacent to the fabled coastal resort city Cancun.

There are more than a dozen Cozymel's in states such as Tennessee, Texas and California, but so far, this is the only one here. Corporate chef Beto Rodarte is a CIA (Culinary Institute of America) grad, and it shows. His food is both contemporary and creative.

This, too, is a comfortable restaurant, modeled after the Mexican hurricane shack, with lots of raw wood and galvanized metal, but also equipped with high-end chairs and booths to sink down into. It is also enormously popular; expect a wait for a table during peak hours.

Fresh seafood is delivered daily here, and you can taste it. Gulf snapper is prepared battered and served a la Veracruzana, with Veracruz sauce. The fish called dorado, which is like marlin, is served Yucateco style, steamed in a banana leaf and brushed with adobado sauce, a light honey glaze.

This is one Mexican restaurant where you can eat fresh salmon. Here it is served grilled, with a creamy sauce, Mexican style veggies and black beans. Also highly recommended is camarones al mojo de ajo, plump fresh shrimp sauteed in a heady garlic lime butter.

Take that, Taco Bell.