Way South of the Border

Las Delicias Chapinas is a taste of Guatemala (“chapin” means Guatemalan). Startingwith the marimba band that plays Friday nights.

It consists of one quite long marimba--it takes three guys to play it--accompanied by drums and electric bass. A lot of the tunes sound like merry-go-round or silent-cartoon music in a medium-fast waltz tempo. Some are jazzier or more Latin, but occasionally you hear American ballad standards (“It Had to Be You”) or even ragtime numbers.

Though the band is named the Guatemalan Murmurs (Murmullos Chapines), don’t expect to get much conversation in while they’re playing. This is not background music, it’s for Central American boot-scootin’.

As for the food, fourth-generation restaurateur Brenda Lainfiesta will enthusiastically explain the dishes, some of which are unusual regional specialties. For instance, kak ic (kah-KEEK) is a dish from a Mayan-speaking region to the north of Guatemala City. It’s a bowl of strong, slightly gamy turkey broth colored red with mild paprika but tasting more of cinnamon. On the side are about half a big turkey drumstick, a slice of avocado and some rice cooked with vegetables. You add them to your soup as you please.

In Coban, where kak ic is considered a hangover cure, it’s flavored with extremely hot chiles. Lainfiesta serves it mild with hot paprika on the side: “Most Guatemalans are very big cowards about chiles,” she joshes.

Spicy Flavors Set Off Distinctive Cuisine

Though Guatemalan cuisine has a family resemblance to Mexican, it’s quite distinctive. The spice flavor is likely to come from cinnamon and cloves, rather than chiles. The Guatemalan tostada is, in effect, a giant tortilla chip.

And the enchilada is like a tostada: a light, tangy chopped salad of beets, tomatoes and pickled red cabbage mixed with ground beef set on a lettuce leaf and a toasted tortilla. The whole thing is topped with raw onion rings, half a hard-boiled egg and grated queso anejo.

The chile relleno has a rich, complex pork and vegetable stuffing, and there’s a good pork tamale appetizer (chuchito). The chicken taquitos are familiar; garnachas (10 to an order) are like sopes: beef and beans roughly cooked on handmade tortillas.

Some appetizers have an archaic, pre-Columbian feel, like the tostadas (toasted whole tortillas dipped in tomato or black bean sauce) or the rellenitos (gray, egg-shaped lumps of plantain mixed with black beans). You can sample an enchilada, two taquitos, two tostadas, a chile relleno, a chuchito and a rellenito on a platter called San Lucas, named for a town on the road to Guatemala City where people customarily stop for snacks. (The menu also calls it humo en tus ojos, “smoke in your eyes,” because of the smokiness of the restaurants--a little Guatemalan humor.)

Lots of Combinations, Lots of Choices

Among the entrees, pollo en crema is a luscious dish of chicken in heavy cream with chunks of raw tomato, and the churrasco chapin combines carne asada with stubby little sausages called longaniza that are refreshingly flavored with onion and mint. It comes with chirmol, an intriguing dried tomato sauce. You can get either beef or chicken in a rugged but somewhat bland sauce of toasted pumpkinseeds (pepian).

If you can’t decide between fish and salad, mojarra frita is served on rice and the restaurant’s excellent soupy black beans--and topped with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. Hilachas is a rather bland dish of beef in tomato sauce. The menu describes rebolcado as a spicy pork stew, but the salient thing about it is the funky, marrowy flavors; if you have a problem with menudo, you’ll have a problem with this. It comes with fresh, chewy handmade tortillas.

There are only a few desserts: moyetes (sweet bread fried in egg batter and soaked with syrup), mole de platano (plantain slices in spiced bitter chocolate sauce) and jocote, a Central American fruit that looks like a cherry with a huge pit and tastes like a tart, exotic canned plum.

Las Delicias Chapinas is in Country Club Park, a neighborhood of grand old houses south of Hancock Park that seems ripe for gentrification. The restaurant is right across the street from a Classical Revival building that was the original Los Angeles opera house. So we can say bravo, I guess.

* Las Delicias Chapinas, 3731 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. (323) 731-6995. Open 10 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. No alcohol. Street parking. No credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $19-$31.

* What to Get: enchilada, chuchito, chile relleno, San Lucas combo plate, kak ic, churrasco chapin, pollo en crema, jocote.