Kokopelli Chili Company
The quest for great chili will continue, but at least we get a decent margarita
along the way.
Dining Out by Robert Nadeau
1648 Beacon Street (Washington Square), Brookline
(617) 277-2880
Open Mon-Fri, 5-11 p.m.; Sat and Sun, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.
AE, DC, MC, Visa
Full bar
Sidewalk-level access
We don't know much about Kokopelli, the flute player found on pottery
images from lost civilizations of the Southwest. Maybe he or she was a
trickster figure, and tricked away all the relevant information. Maybe just
being from the Southwest is enough to get a chili joint named after you,
although, as the menu admits, they usually spell it "chile" on Kokopelli's old
turf.
Chili is tricky enough that there are regional variations, and it's trickier
still for this kitchen to get right. Kokopelli also seems to have tricked an
early reviewer into suggesting it's a place for children. It does have a
children's menu, and topological puzzles at every booth, but this is basically
a dating bar with "grown-up" dishes that are rather spicy and unusual. What I
think is best about the restaurant is neither the chili nor the
child-friendliness, but the variety of tequilas and the quality of the basic
margarita.
I like it as a bar, and continue wearily on the apparently endless quest for
good Tex-Mex food in these parts. (And don't go loading up your word processor
about the differences between Tex-Mex and New Mexican food. I'm still looking
for either one.) But some people like a bite to eat with their margaritas. For
those people, the basic salsa and chips features a good, fresh salsa with
plenty of cilantro. The salsa bar, which costs more, has a great variety of
salsas, but none I tasted was any better than the basic one. The nachos ($5.95)
are strictly for kids, in my view. I don't know why people like untangling a
bunch of tortilla chips glued together with cheese to begin with. And the
better the cheese is -- and Kokopelli's is pretty good -- the quicker and
harder it dries.
A good option if you're hungry is a side order of sweet-potato fries ($3.95).
It's a big basket; the fries are crisp on arrival but grow limp after maybe 10
minutes, so jump right in. A vegetarian tamale served as an appetizer ($6.95)
is actually two tamales and a side salad, so this could make a light supper for
somebody. That would be somebody who likes the idea of vegetarian in general
more than the idea of a tamale in particular. There are many vegetarian tamales
from Mexico to Peru, but almost all of them are cooked to a solid texture that
rivals cheese or meat. This one has a light, crumbling texture and a slightly
sweet overall flavor. These nouvelle tamales come with an old-fashioned (i.e.,
sour) tomatillo sauce, though, so they went down well enough.
The restaurant tries to live up to its name with seven kinds of chili ($3.95
cup, $6.50 bowl, $7.95 on rice or spaghetti; add 50 cents for cheese). I had
three on the sampler ($7.95). I'm a fundamentalist, so it was the "Texas
Tenderfoot," Albequerque green, and vegetarian for me. I think Kokopelli would
do better to pick one style and get it right. The Texas lacked cumin, the
crucial ingredient of Texas chili, and was much too sweetened by tomato sauce,
though it was all stringy meat (as many Texans would specify). Albequerque
green was quite beefy and had some beans, but neither the heat nor flavor of
fresh green chili peppers. The vegetarian, which has no real tradition, was
reasonably good -- a hot stew of various beans, a little eggplant, and kernel
corn. It's possible that the New England style (lots of tomatoes and onions,
sweet as spaghetti sauce) will suit local diners; Cincinnati chili, developed
in the Macedonian-Greek diners of that city, features sweet spices and is
typically eaten over spaghetti, in case you yearn for such a thing.
Kokopelli Chili Co. also calls itself a "Southwestern Grill," and it grills
rather well. Fajitas ($12.95 chicken, $13.95 beef) come out on a sizzling
platter, but the noise is just the peppers and onions frying. The chicken is
sliced from a grilled breast and has a good smoky flavor; again, the cumin is
not there, as it used to be when fajitas (which means "belts") were made from
marinated skirt steak. But everything else is excellent, and the shaker of
powdered chili pepper on the table will do for hot sauce.
No hot sauce is needed on the vegetarian burrito ($8.95), a football-size wrap
stuffed with a medley of eggplant, beans, and other vegetables, including
slices of jalapeño peppers with the seeds. Experts will tell you that
jalapeños aren't especially hot by chili-pepper standards, but they put
what they have into an initial explosion that has always impressed me. And if
you choose the "three-silhouette" green chili sauce for a topping, this is one
live burrito. For some reason, this dish is served with a small square of
innocuous cornbread. A grilled vegetable platter ($10.95) is served with side
dishes of chilified rice and unspiced red beans. The vegetables are the usual
squashes and eggplant and onions and peppers, but topped with a lively, tart
red purée of peppers and such.
On to the drinks. Kokopelli has a good list of both bottled and draft beers,
and a lengthy selection of aged tequilas. Since tequila originated as a cheap,
rotgut spirit made from the common cactus, there is something odd about the
idea of aged tequilas, but they are certainly smoother than cheap ones. The
margaritas (starting at $4.75, classic or frozen) are properly tart and salty,
even though they are served in the large bubble glasses associated with the
devolution of margaritas into sweeter, weaker drinks. The sourness and
saltiness were designed to overcome the rough edges of traditional tequila, so
there is no reason -- other than conspicuous consumption -- to order a fancy
tequila made into a margarita. That said, good traditional margaritas are
almost as hard to find in Greater Boston as Texas chili is.
Kokopelli does have desserts; of particular note is the mud pie ($4.25),
which unites kids and the dating-bar crowd in chocolate ice cream heaven. They
also have sopaipillas ($4.25), a pillow-shaped fried bread. The bit with
sopaipillas -- neither staff nor menu mentions this -- is to tear off one
corner and fill them with some honey. Although this makes a dessert in
Brookline, it's served as the breadbasket in New Mexico. Like Indian poori,
sopaipillas go well with spicy dishes, and the honey has soothed many a glowing
tongue. Also like poori -- and sweet-potato fries, for that matter --
sopaipillas are at their best the minute they come out of the kitchen.
Service at Kokopelli was very good, and the restaurant currently fills up
around 7 p.m.; evidently the local crowd has figured out that this is not
a family restaurant. A lot more could be done with background music; either the
obvious norteño or -- for a trendier ambiente -- the cool jazz
they sometimes use at Cottonwood Café would add to the atmospherics. But
the key improvement should be either to the chili or to the name. Kokopelli
Margarita Co. could be a big winner.
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