September 4, 2002

By Paul Reidinger

THE DRILL AT Eldos is: pretty good food, predominantly Mexican, washed down with house-made microbrews in a ski-lodge setting, and why is the place called Eldos? At first I thought the restaurant's name referred in some bizarre way to The Lord of the Rings. (Could Eldos be Elrond's illegitimate son?) Like RoHan Lounge, in a way. But I asked and was told that the name in fact refers to the owner's passion for Eldorados, those three-ton, two-door Caddies of (as of this year) yesteryear, with the mythical (Spanish) name.

There is, interestingly, no sign of an Eldorado anywhere inside Eldos – or outside, for that matter (not even a sliced-in-half one mounted above the front door). But there are plenty of signs of the restaurant's previous incarnation, as the Golden Gate Park Brewery, a part of the late-'90s efflorescence of brew pubs and one that opened and shut with bullet-train swiftness. The space then sat empty for quite some time before Eldos rose, phoenixlike, from the ashes of our dearly departed economic boom.

Yet the first thing you see as you step inside is – remembrance of things past – a huge stainless-steel beer-brewing vat at the rear of the space, perched on a mezzanine. The setting is deep, high, and narrow, the cathedral ceiling supported by open rafters and the interior decoration consisting largely of rich, dark wood. If it were a little bigger, it could easily be part of the set of the first Batman movie, in which Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson rappelled about with great abandon.

But it's really not big (despite a galley-style mezzanine opposite the long bar), and so it's not easy to get lost – a good thing. The service staff are smilingly efficient as they go about the business of bringing you items from a menu that might be called "North American," jumbling Mexican and American standards as it does.

You might open, for instance, with an excellent ceviche martini ($7.95) of chopped cod, cilantro, tomato, red onion, scallions, garlic, and jalapeño pepper, marinated in lime juice and served (in a martini glass, of course) with a scattering of yellow and blue corn chips. Or, if that sounds too spicy (and it is spicy, though there are those of us who adore spicy), you might prefer a clam chowder ($5.25) – the milky, New England-style sort, heavily punctuated with chunks of carrot, celery, and potato, and (a wrinkle) the clams still in their shells. That last little flourish makes eating the chowder a bit more work, but it is visually arresting, since New England clam chowder can often look like milk just beginning to be curdled into cheese.

The gold standard for quesadillas in this city is, so far as I'm concerned, the version served at La Cumbre, so the question naturally arose as to how Eldos's edition ($8, including grilled beef) matched up. A brief transcript of session follows:

"As good as La Cumbre's?"

"Different."

I suppose that was a polite way of saying, Not quite, but still good. Still, it confirmed the basic order of things in the local quesadilla cosmos, and anyway I was scarcely in a position to quibble, being deep into the camarones a la plancha ($12.95), a sizzling fajitas-like plate of prawns, black beans, Spanish rice, guacamole, sour cream, and – the real treat – a tangy sauce of tomato, onion, and bacon.

That was mighty good. But even better was a lunchtime posole ($5), the classic southwestern stew of hominy and chiles, usually prepared with pork but turning out just as well here with shredded chicken breast. If there's an issue with chicken breast, it's dryness – not an issue in the posole, with its engulfing tide of yellow-pepper broth, but definitely an issue in the otherwise tasty Caesar salad ($9.45), since the slices of breast meat ended up being laid atop the salad after it had been dressed.

And back to the USA for a grilled-chicken club sandwich ($7.50) – slightly greasy bun, lots of shredded dark-meat chicken, melted Swiss cheese; not like the usual club at all, as a matter of fact. More like a chicken melt. The fine side of french fries reminded us (guiltily, of course) of Burger King's; they were so tender, within their delicately crisp crusts, that it was almost as if the potato had melted.

Eldos's dessert menu offers enough choices to raise the suspicion that they all can't be made in-house. But certainly the key lime cheesecake ($5.95) is, from the appealingly rough graham-cracker crust to the sour-sweet filling, almost meringue-like in its lightness and feathered on top with fine strands of lime zest.

The cheesecake doesn't match up too well with the array of fine house beers, but just about everything else on the menu does, not that beer absolutely must be drunk with food. Draught pints run $4 and include a Bohemian pilsner (a lush honey color, slightly bitter for my taste) and a smooth, caramely dark brew that would probably win some converts to dark beer if only people could be persuaded to buy that first mug. But even that case, though tricky, isn't hopeless, for if people will buy Eldorados, they'll buy just about anything.