IT'S A good time for Mexican seafood in Southern California, if you know where to look. Three seemingly modest restaurants, Mariscos los Arcos in Canoga Park, Mariscos el Rey in Lynwood and El Puerto Escondido in Hawthorne are worth seeking out for their pristinely fresh ingredients and their beautifully prepared seafood appetizers, soups and entrees.
These three marisquerias, as Mexican seafood specialty houses are called, serve the West Coast-style dishes of Mexico's Pacific beach towns.
Unlike the cuisines of the interior, where the food of each region has a distinct character, or Mexico's East Coast, where Mayan or Spanish influences prevail, menus and preparations on the Pacific coast vary little from Puerto Angel in the far south to Guaymas, more than 1,000 miles north.
Dishes are fairly straightforward, so success is primarily about careful sourcing and the attention to detail you find at these three spots.
At Mariscos los Arcos, an order of camarones ahogados (drowned shrimp) compares favorably with dishes you might find at a tony sushi bar. A ceviche-like creation of citrus-marinated raw shrimp that glisten under a speckled cloak of fresh green chile sauce, it's a refreshing and piquant appetizer. The restaurant, whose decor runs to comfortable upholstered booths, makes a great spicy fish soup called "Costa Brava" and mixed seafood campechana, the Mexican-style mixed seafood cocktail, which it presents in a giant conch shell.
Mariscos el Rey, on the second floor of a graceful Spanish-Colonial-style building in Lynwood's Plaza Mexico, may be just a walk-up window with outdoor seating, but its tiny kitchen prepares dishes that would be completely at home in more formal surroundings. For its version of camarones ahogados, shrimp are butterflied to better highlight a fiery habanero chile marinade.
Follow the intense heat of that appetizer with callitos de lobina, a ceviche of strips of delicate large-mouth bass laid out on a plate like a Latin American crudo. It's a style many prefer to diced or minced ceviche.
Soups here are exemplary too. A simple caldo de pescado, clear tomato and fish broth with a gentle oregano finish, is filled with tender skinless catfish chunks. In the caldo de pulpo (the octopus version), the meat is almost velvety in its tenderness. It's customary to squeeze a little fresh lime juice into the broth and add chopped cilantro and onion to the soup, which adds layers of flavors.
