Guatemala in the Park : JONATHAN GOLD

There are a lot of good reasons to visit MacArthur Park on a Saturday afternoon, even if you’re not in a mood to leave the cake out in the rain.

Local TV newscasts may characterize the neighborhood as the center of vice in the civilized world, and it is an easy place to buy a forged green card, but mostly, these days, it’s the crossroads of Central American commerce in Los Angeles. If you need to buy a bundle of banana leaves, Honduran-style bread or a papier-ma^chee statue of the jungle bird quetzal , this is the place to go.

You could stroll over to the art school to see whether there’s anything going on at the gallery, which is still a focal point of Los Angeles conceptual art, or check out the entry-level capitalism at any of the zillion surrounding swap meets. You could walk around the lake and watch the fountain for a while, visit the rusty George Herms sculpture that looks a little like a miniature of the one they tried to kick out of Beverly Hills or just scope the surrounding ‘20s architecture, which is almost a film noir landscape come to brick and stone.

And after you’re done, if you haven’t filled up on chile-dusted mangoes from the street vendors (or pastrami sandwiches at Langers), you can walk across the street to Paseo Chapiin, which may be the best place in Los Angeles for a Guatemalan lunch. On the walk to the restaurant from the (guarded) parking lot around the corner, you will almost certainly be afforded the opportunity to buy a bogus driver’s license.

Formerly called Guatelinda, a slightly grimy restaurant where it sometimes seems everybody in town ate his first Guatemalan meal, Paseo Chapiin is a tubbed and scrubbed kind of place, soaringly high, with glass-covered tablecloths, and walls, streaked with long “flowering” vines, freshly painted the color of mint-chip ice cream. Tables are set up where musicians once wailed away on oversize marimbas; booming jukebox ballads pour from big speakers near the ceiling. The restaurant even smells good, sort of a meaty, garlicky dinner-at-grandma’s kind of smell.

Guatemalan food is simple stuff, hearty and a little peasant-like, dominated by corn and beans and strong Maya herbs, as close to pre-Columbian cooking as you’ll find in Central America. Paseo Chapiin’s pepiaan is a forceful version of this Maya stew: ground, spiced squash seeds, fortified with burnt bread and toasted chiles and thinned out with broth, overwhelming the boiled chicken that floats in it but also giving the rather ordinary bird substance.

Pollo con crema is a revelation, a Latin American standard given life with an elegant, thin cream sauce, as tart as citrus, made from bell peppers and tart Guatemalan sour cream.

Paseo Chapiin’s revolcado , a gamy stew of pork parts, may mist the eyeglasses of expatriate Guatemalans but is probably more palatable chased down with a stiff shot of nostalgia. The grilled thin steaks and pork tend to be dry and a little dull; the meat-stuffed chiles rellenos are nothing to write home about. But everybody might like longaniza --little, coarse-textured sausages, hot with black pepper, shot through with pungent dried herbs and grilled crisp, served with a fresh, chile-laced tomato salsa with a deep, smoky bite.

The restaurant has a strong specialty in tamales: cuchitos , not unlike traditional Mexican corn-husk tamales, glazed with chile but slightly bland; tamalitos de chilpiin, more or less cuchitos laced with Guatemalan mint, and tamales Chapiin, the house specialty of pork-stuffed masa , steamed in a banana leaf, that has the wetness and herbal complexity of a Nicaraguan nacatamal . Paches Quetzaltecos , fluffy as a vicuna, are unusual banana-leaf tamales made with mashed potatoes where you’d expect to see masa, tinted pink with chile, scented with the subtly sweet flavor of the leaf.

Most dishes are served with a dollop of pureed beans, black as ink, maybe a couple of caramelized bananas with salty Guatemalan cream and some brothy rice.

Really, the fried plantains are all the sweet you need. But once in your life, you should try a real Guatemalan mole de plaatano , tart slices of fried plantain in a thick, dangerous sauce of the bitterest chocolate, flavored with cinnamon and dusted with seeds, intricate as a Guatemalan weaving.

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WHERE TO GO

Paseo Chapiin, 2220 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, (213) 385-7420. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Cash only. Beer and wine. Validated lot parking. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $12 to $19.

WHAT TO GET

Paches Quetzaltecos ; longaniza ; pollo con crema ; Guatelinda combination.