I had heard about Xixa from a friend at work and she had said that it was by the same people as Traif which I LOVE, so I was totally excited to see how Xixa would stack up. It's a similar format to Traif in that it's lots of small plates but the theme here is more towards Mexican fusion vs. American cretive. There are so many options that being here with just one other person made it a bit overwhelming. Our waitress recommended roughly 5-6 dishes for the two of us, which I would tend to agree (although I think we honestly could have done without one of our dishes and would have been fine). Aarti and I ordered the stuffed squash blossoms, fundido, steak tacos, scallop ceviche, and the Thai esquites. We figured we could always order more if we were still hungry and we wanted to leave room for dessert.
Since it was tapas style there wasn't a real logical order to the dishes come out, but Aarti and I did comment later how they probably should have started with the fundido first since that typically is like an appetizer in many restaurants. Instead the first dish that came out was the lightly fried squash blossoms. They were stuffed with goat cheese and served with butternut squash and squash seed-cascabel pipian. It was a wonderful dish that had a perfect blend of goat cheese and fried squash blossom. Delicious. Next came the Thai esquites which was sweet corn kernels in a spicy tom yum broth, red curry aioli and topped with cotija cheese. It was like a deconstructed Mexican corn on the cob with a spicy Thai twist which I thought seemed very unique. I always love a good corn dish in the summer time but I honestly could have done without the tom yum broth, it was a bit too watery. Next came the scallop ceviche and of the main entrees this was probably my favorite dish. It was a classically clean raw scallop dish and I could have had another 3 dishes and not gotten sick of it. Perfect summer dish. Next came the steak tacos - it wasn't really a steak taco how you and I know it. Instead it is served with recado negro tortillas, a huge bone marrow, and a side of steak tartare and then you had to put your "taco" together. I didn't find the tortilla very soft - in fact it was a bit too tough for me but the rest of the dish was quite interesting. The marrow was very fatty, as it should be, and while I usually am not a huge fan of steak tartare, I rather enjoyed it here when it was mixed in with the bone marrow. A very unique dish that I totally appreciated for its complexity. Lastly, we got the fundido, which is usually just a vat of yummy hot melted cheese, but the cheese here seemed to have coagulated by the time it got to our table. I wasn't sure if the dish had been sitting out and that's why it had that texture or if they just used cheese that didn't melt well, but I've definitely had much better fundido elsewhere. I will say that I loved the fact that they acknowledged that Aarti was a vegetarian and put mushrooms in there instead of the chorizo it usually comes with. The dish was just too heavy and oily and only had about 4-5 bites of it. Luckily, since we couldn't finish it we had plenty of room for dessert and I was so glad we did. All of the desserts sounded great but I am a sucker for really good churros and they had a salty churros served with passion fruit and a strawberry-jalapeno sorbet. OMG, amazing. The churros was perfectly fried and the sorbet was sweet and refreshing with just the right amount of heat from the jalapeno. Aarti and I agreed that this was the winner of the night.
All in all, I loved what Xixa had to offer and given the tapas format, I think it's much better for larger groups to enjoy. But they do have a chef's choice for $40/pp and they bring out 9 different dishes for you and your table to enjoy. It sounded like a great idea and I would totally do that next time but it was still fun to be able to choose our own adventure the first time around. Since it was a belated birthday dinner fro Aarti, I don't know the exact bill but I think it was around $100 including tax, tip and drinks.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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