Mexican cantina is eerily appetizing

Every day is Day of the Dead at Bone Garden Cantina —- a restaurant stuffed full of skeleton murals, skeleton sculptures, skeletons drinking and dancing, skeletons riding motorcycles and hanging from platforms that jut forth from the walls.

“You’re going to sit at the bar, right?” owner Kristen Benoit asks as I pause by the entrance of this lofty space to soak up this overload of information told in a thousand small details.

“Uh, yeah,” I answer. It’s late, and the lunch crowd has mostly vanished. I look past the empty tables of the dining room to the room-length bar that fronts the kitchen. This is where the last few lunch stragglers have congregated.

Soon I’m settled with a fish taco in hand, and everything feels just right. From my bar stool, I can look out to the grassy patch along the railroad tracks that will soon be a skeleton-filled sculpture garden and patio.

“I think once we get our deck open, we’ll be the best Mexican restaurant in town,” Benoit says.

It will surely be a fantastic place to hang out with a margarita and a basket of chips. A restaurant succeeds when it’s lively and fun. But also when it has that extra something: when it truly inhabits its space, when it’s comfortable in its own skin.

That hasn’t always been the case here. About six years ago, I first walked into this corner room in the Lumber Yard complex on Atlanta’s west side. Back then, it was a Southwestern/Mediterranean (yes, you read that right) restaurant called Ambra.

Despite its culinary schizophrenia, Ambra was a likable spot with a talented chef and an owner who tried very hard to please. You could get a sophisticated entree of chile-rubbed tuna, or you could nosh on tacos or flatbread pizzas.

But Ambra failed to attract a steady business and sputtered along until the owner relocated to Cartersville.

I suppose you could say it was ahead of its time, geographically speaking. In 2003 the Lumber Yard seemed to be the most remote development on the west side —- over grungy hill and post-industrial dale, surrounded by moribund rail lines and creeping kudzu. Now, new construction is everywhere.

Yet I don’t think Ambra’s remote location was the reason for its ultimate failure. I think it didn’t —- couldn’t —- fill its space.

High ceilings, vast plate windows, gleaming concrete floors. Ambra treated this loft aesthetic with reverence. The management turned down the overheads and chose geometric clunks of art for the walls. They scattered tables about and set them with white cloths and candlelight. Everything was open, spare, clean.

The poor waiters had nowhere to hide. They lined up in front of the bar to wait and watch as you sat at the table, sawing your tuna. As I wrote in a review of the restaurant, they looked like they were about to start singing madrigals or launch into a performance of “Our Town.”

Now, there’s stuff. Lots of colorful skeleton stuff, and more to come. Benoit’s husband and business partner, Michael, is both the artist behind the skeletons and the owner of the two Vortex burger bars —- eateries that are crammed with decoration.

“The way we set it up is very personal,” Benoit says.

“This is the kind of Mexican food we love to eat and the Day of the Dead aesthetic we love. Now our hope is to keep filling it up like the Vortex.”

More stuff to fill the high space. More color. More, more, more skeletons, inside and out. You are never wanting for the silly glee of their sepulchral companionship, even when you come very late one afternoon to sit at the bar and eat a fish taco.

> Bone Garden Cantina, 1425 Ellsworth Industrial Blvd., Atlanta, 404-418-9072

jkessler@ajc.com