THE GOSSIPING GOURMET:Where Brazil and China fuse with Mexico and Hawaii

Yahoo! Wahoo’s is back! After almost a year of remodeling, this Mexiyaki taco emporium is back in business with parking in the rear and expanded seating, including an additional outdoor terrace.

If you’re sitting in the right place and crick your head to the left, you might even have an ocean view.

This is not your typical Mexican eatery. The food is a mix of Asian, Brazilian and Mexican with a surfer vibe. The walls are festooned with surfboards and posters, and the atmosphere is real chill.

When you step up to order, even if you’re a first time customer, you are greeted by Sergie, the manager, with such genuine warmth that you instantly feel like a regular.

The menu is organized so that you select a filling and then decide what you want it on or in.

Fish or chicken can be blackened as well as grilled. Shrimp is Polynesian style, and banzai veggies are marinated in teriyaki sauce.

Mushrooms are Cajun style, and there is also carne asada and carnitas. These can be served as salads, sandwiches, tacos, enchiladas, burritos or bowls.

The only desserts offered now are packaged cookies, but brownies and ice cream are coming soon.

You can begin with nachos, quesadillas, taquitos, chips with salsa and guacamole, or a Baja roll which is Wahoo’s take on sushi, with a lard-free flour tortilla as the wrap and chicken, cream cheese, spinach and salsa as the filling.

We started with tortilla soup, a very light, fresh-tasting tomato broth with chicken and vegetables, garnished with fried tortilla strips: mild in both flavor and heat, more like vegetable soup than the classic version which is spicier and thicker.

Fish tacos were the inspiration for this restaurant chain, and they do them really well.

First of all, the wahoo or mahi mahi — depending on availability — is grilled, not fried. The soft white corn tortillas are stuffed with a generous amount of fish and garnished with shredded cabbage. The addition of a side order of their nonfat cilantro dressing to top it off gives them a zesty finish.

Wahoo’s salad is entree sized and comes with cut romaine, guacamole, cheese and your choice of a topping.

We selected the shrimp, described as “mildly spicy Polynesian.” Although the shrimp were small, they were very plump and juicy. The marinade was lightly sweet, gently spicy and very tasty. Moreover, the portion was generous, which was a good thing since they were very addictive.

Enchiladas come with red or green sauce. We had one of each stuffed with chicken. The red sauce is light, more like a tomato sauce than a true enchilada sauce. There was no real taste of chili.

We much preferred the green sauce that is, lo and behold, their cilantro dressing, warmed. It was even better hot; not your typical Mexican green sauce but absolutely delicious!

You can turn your tacos, enchiladas and burritos into a combo platter with ahi rice and black beans or spicy Cajun white beans.

All these ingredients are served together in a Wahoo Bowl. Actually, it is served on a plate, but it is a mixing bowl of cuisines. Hawaiian, Mexican and Brazilian flavors combine in these generous entrees.

Our banzai bowl was a large plate of buttery rice with beans (we chose half black and half spicy white) topped with teriyaki veggies and chicken. We thought the spicy white beans were terrific, but the black beans were rather plain.

The crunchy vegetable mixture was cut into nice, bite-sized pieces with a light teriyaki flavor.

Sounds baroque, but somehow or other, all the flavors worked nicely together, though we hear there are some people who like to finish it all off with a dollop of that creamy green sauce.

Almost everything is lighter and healthier than the average taqueria. The flour tortillas are lard-free and the green sauce is made with nonfat mayonnaise. The banzai vegetables are a healthy alternative to carnitas or carne asada, and cheese is used more as a garnish than a filling. Speaking of carnitas, stick to the fish tacos.

This unique blend of culinary cultures can be partly explained by the background of the founders, the Lam brothers, who were born to Chinese parents in Brazil.

In 1975, their father brought the family to Southern California and opened the famous Shanghai Pine Garden restaurant on Balboa Island.

The brothers, Wing, Ed and Mingo, grew up working in the restaurant business and surfing in their free time. Surfing became their passion, and they traveled to Mexico and Hawaii in pursuit of the waves.

It was on a trip to Mexico that they discovered the fish taco and decided to bring it back to Southern California.

They opened the first Wahoo’s in 1988 in Costa Mesa and used donated surfboards from nearby factories to decorate the walls. To date there are 43 branches.

Not surprisingly, Wing’s favorite is the store in Hawaii, where he can catch the waves any time of year.