Mexican dishes, beautifully played

FLAMBOYANT in his natty flat-topped French fireman’s cap and chef’s whites, Generoso Bahena hovers near the line cooks in his state-of-the-art open kitchen at the ambitious new haute-Mexican restaurant Malverde. He scrutinizes each plate on its way to the extravagantly designed dining room populated with young entrepreneurs and Latin entertainment industry staffers.

This smart young crowd is eager to sample Bahena’s contemporary cooking, known to some through his Chicago restaurants, Ixcapuzalco and Chilpanzingo where his refined moles turned heads with their layers of spice, heat and sweet. Before then he had worked with Mexican food guru Rick Bayless for about a dozen years, ending up as managing chef of Bayless’ more formal Chicago restaurant, Topolobampo.

The dishes on Malverde’s menu, which will change twice a month, are Bahena’s own interpretations of well-loved regional specialties, so there’ll be Oaxacan moles, Veracruz-style seafood creations and peppery dishes from Sinaloa among them. Bahena does much more than re-create traditional standbys with top-tier ingredients. His presentations are lightened, stylized and filled with quirky original touches.

Take his squash blossom soup. Bahena amps up the flavor and complexity with a handful of slightly charred flame-roasted sweet corn kernels. The smoky notes and sweetness of the corn contrast with the delicate creamy broth, creating a dish pulsating with distinct flavors.

Malverde is a compelling reason to get yourself to Lynwood’s new gentrified downtown complex, Plaza Mexico, where the restaurant opened seven weeks ago. The Plaza’s fantasy colonial setting has a zocalo, or central town square, graced with an enormous Spanish Baroque facade surrounded by shops. Stepping into Malverde feels like you’re entering a white tablecloth restaurant in a genteel old neighborhood of Mexico City.

The two-tiered room, in keeping with the multi-regional influences of the menu, incorporates art and crafts from famous craft towns and villages all over Mexico. Everywhere you look intriguing art or artifacts are woven into the decor.

Handsome copper Champagne buckets and chargers under the dinner plates are hand-wrought in Santa Clara del Cobre, the town where Spanish missionaries set up copper-working schools. On a ledge over the kitchen sits a life-size sculpture of a reclining boy blowing bubbles (they’re actually silvered hand-blown glass) realized by Guadalajaran artist Camillo Ramirez. Tall cucuchas, burnished clay vessels produced by the Purhepechas Indians of Michoacan, sit in front of a mural painted on brunido tiles, a pre-Hispanic variety from Jalisco.

If I lived nearby I would be dining at Malverde at least once a week just to eat chef Bahena’s intriguing poultry dishes. He serves bobwhite quail -- a bird esteemed for its deep flavor -- stuffed with a fruit-accented minced pork picadillo. It’s served with a lustrous inky mole composed of several chile varieties and 25 other ingredients.

An early menu offered whole free-range poussin, or young chicken, stuffed with garlicky woodland mushrooms. Its red wine and ancho chile sauce held a few roasted pumpkin seeds that popped gently beneath the teeth. A garnish of cubed sweet potatoes added a snappy flavor contrast. Duck breast, cooked medium rare, sliced and fanned over a compact cylinder of fideos, vermicelli noodles, was lightly sauced with a subtle chipotle cream. Another time the duck breast turned up in a subtle green mole of tomatillos brightened with handfuls of epazote and other fresh herbs.

The menu, which changes every few weeks, has lately included a grilled rack of baby lamb. It might rest on a supple cascabel chile sauce or be presented in a 28-ingredient mole based on chilhuacle chiles. Every last drop of these sauces seems to disappear with the aid of hand-made tortillas.

Seafood is invariably carefully handled. Moist, jumbo sea scallops are set off with a homemade sour cream sauce sparked with serrano chiles. Fresh oysters and beautiful lightly cooked shrimp fill the “compechana” seafood cocktail. For camarones aguachiles, large, butterflied shrimp are given a ceviche-like treatment and coated in a truly incendiary chile sauce. For most palates, a bite or two will probably suffice as a shared appetizer.

I’ve never had an unsuccessful dish here. And as the restaurant settles in, the cooking has become even more precise. A sense of all-out luxury is enhanced by the long list of premium tequilas and cognacs.

Unhappily, though, I can’t say much for the wines. I’ve encountered several duds by the glass at every price range. And today, when even inexpensive wines can be acceptable if well chosen, more research is in order here.

Desserts, which include a molten-centered chocolate cake and homemade goat’s milk caramel cajeta-filled crepes, are not overly sweet, a plus in my book. Individual Key lime pie is an exquisitely fragile crust holding a creamy tart lime custard. Pineapple upside-down cake is an ethereally light fruit-flecked individual cake beside an oval of excellent homemade ice cream.

Everyone knows that one of our city’s great treasures is a nearly endless supply of Mexican eating places to try. Too many, alas, to get around to. But Malverde is clearly one restaurant that no true Mexican food devotee will want to miss.

**

Malverde

Location: 11215 Long Beach Blvd. #1010, Lynwood, (310) 631-9177.

Price: Appetizers, $6 to $8; entrees, $14 to $23; chef’s 5-course tasting menu, $40.

Best dishes: Picadillo-stuffed bobwhite quail, poussin in ancho-red wine sauce (pollito al chile envidiado), lamb with black mole (borrego en mole negro), squash blossom soup, Key lime pie.

Details: Open for lunch 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and for dinner, 5 to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; and until 12 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Lot and valet parking. All major credit cards. Full bar.