RESTAURANT REVIEW + PHOTOS: Bucanas mildly fills taqueria bill

Just past the pinnacle of North Little Rock's Park Hill is the L-shaped Lakehill Shopping Center. In the part of the L closer to downtown is the new North Bar, which recently replaced Ira's Park Hill Grill, and a three-storefront space now housing its third Mexican restaurant, Bucanas Billar & Taqueria.

Previous occupants include La Salsa Mexican & Peruvian Cuisine, which had replaced an outlet of Las Palmas. Since those places went out of business, North Little Rock's Park Hill area has returned to "wet," hence a full bar at Bucanas that for La Salsa required a private club license.

Most people are familiar with what a taqueria is -- a place where you get tacos plus, usually, a range of fairly simple Mexican food. But if your Spanish is as rude and rudimentary as ours, you might not be quite so familiar with "billar." Turns out, it's a pool hall, or to put it a little less rudely, a billiard parlor.

Bucanas' pool room and full bar occupy the farthest of the three storefronts from the front door; the main dining room occupies the first, spilling over into the middle storefront, where is also the cash register station and the kitchen door. (The front of the menu covers the offerings pretty well with generic photos of billiard balls, booze bottles and tacos.)

The dining-room decor is not very fancy -- vividly painted upper walls over a vinyl quasi-brick wainscotting, with seating at cafeteria-like black-composite-topped tables and sturdy cafeteria-like black chairs. Two flat-screen TVs, positioned on both sides of the main dining area, make it difficult to avoid seeing either American soap operas, Mexican music videos or, in the early evening, the local news.

The place is, however, clean and the atmosphere is pleasant. So is the service; most, though not all, of the staff speaks English (if that's an issue -- did we mention our Spanish is rudimentary?) while a fair percentage of its clientele is Hispanic, which is always a good sign at a Mexican restaurant.

However, Bucanas may not be the right choice if you like your food spicy. It isn't necessarily bland, per se, but the flavors are, for the most part, subtle, not bold. (When the most incendiary thing is the thin, red complimentary salsa, well ....)

You can, however, follow the example of Hispanic diners we witnessed kicking things up a notch with the extras the house provides -- two kinds of commercially bottled hot sauce and three squeeze-bottle sauces that the wait staff brings according to what you've ordered.

At a glance, the menu looks simple -- just three appetizers and four meat-based entrees, for example. But explore a little and you'll find six items under "mariscos/seafood" and a fairly full range of tacos, quesadillas, caldos (hot soups, including posole and menudo), gorditas, fajitas, burritos, chimichangas, tamales, enchiladas and huaraches (a sort of sandal-shaped cross between a tostada and a torta).

We liked our salsa, which, though you cannot in any way describe it as chunky, had plenty of pepper accents without being mouth-numbing. The chips on all of our visits were fresh and sturdy enough to stand up to both the white cheese dip ($2.88 small, $5.99 large), which had a nice little zip to it, and the guacamole (same prices), very fresh-tasting with a lot of avocado flavor.

The flavor of our Pollo Asado ($8.99), a nicely moist chicken breast topped with lightly sauteed onions, was particularly subtle; Intrepid Companion perked it up properly with some of the creamy salsa verde from the yellow squeeze bottle. After getting a really wicked fiery shock from biting into of what we totally misjudged as a mild grilled ancho chili that came on the side, we suggest squeezing a bit of that juice onto your chicken as another option. The side rice, soupy refried beans and salad lacked any distinction.

Our lunch-ordered Chilaquiles Mexicanos ($7.99) was a joy -- a pile of Bucanas' fresh chips topped with a rich, delicious red-brown sauce that reminded us of mole, with flecks of feta-like Mexican queso fresco and two eggs, served on the side instead of on top. (Ordered over medium -- and that's the first time we can recall being given the option on this dish -- they came out over-hard, but that's OK, and it allowed us the option of eating the eggs with the chilaquiles or separately.) No rice -- you get your carbs from the chips -- but the beans were substantially tastier at lunch than they were at dinner.

We were pretty unimpressed with our three Tacos al Pastor ($1.25 per). The pork chunks on the fresh flour tortillas were distinctly tender, so we know they'd been duly marinated in something (usually chilies, spices and pineapple), but it didn't add much, if any, flavor. Topping them with onions and what looked like at least a pound of cilantro didn't help.

The plate presentation on the Ceviche de Pescado ($8.99), bits of citrus-marinated fish (shrimp is also an option) interleaved with avocado and cucumber slices, was very impressive, but we needed to get all the way down to the lime juice that pooled in the bottom of the plate to be as equally impressed with the dish.

Weekend on 06/29/2017