Tony L.
Yelp
Summary: Great place for a drink for date night; skip the food.
This is a tapas style cocktail bar with a Mexican take. We came on a Friday during early Fall and it was already quite busy, but there was free seating at the bar. This place has a good ambiance -- the right amount of busy/chic with cocktail bar feels (30% lighting, interesting bar mantle, mirrors + wall motifs. When we went, it was also two PoC femme bartenders, which is a bit of a rarity, so we were happy to support.
We ended up trying the Holy Smoke, Femme Fatale, and Sleep No More. Something we noticed was that every drink sounded amazing until the one ingredient that didn't sound appetizing/didn't fit our taste. ex. Dazed & Chartreused: "Tequila, Green Chartreuse, Lemon-Matcha-Coconut avocado"...why did avocado need to be brought into this? Death in the Afternoon: "Absinthe, Creme de Violette, Arrack, Lemon, Glitter & Cava"...I'm not sure I would want to ingest glitter, though I'm sure it would be beautiful. In any event, the Holy Smoke was medium boozyness with a nice smokiness from the Mezcal, but it was a bit too sweet which made it taste unbalanced; I think bitters would have helped balance it out. There were no complaints about the Femme Fatale which came with a burning rosemary sprig. The sleep no more was fine, but didn't really hit the spot.
While the drinks were generally good, the food was pretentious without the flavour, textures, or quality to back it up. Having come hungry, we went for the patatas brava (it's potatoe, how can you go wrong?), yucca fries, portabello steak, and tartare. The patatas brava were fingerlings (first odd choice) that tasted boiled and then baked, without the characteristic crispyness you'd expect -- they were pretty soggy. Moreover, the flavour just was not doing it -- none of that nice heat or cream existed, it was heavily crusted with hot paprika, so much so that you couldn't taste anything else. The yucca fries were ok, but for 9$ you got 6 slivers of really tough starch. The tartare came with waffle "fries" which were more like chips -- the beef was tough, despite being tenderloin, and it had no flavour. The garnish were dill pickles, which added a nice acidity, but the meat needed something else -- perhaps a horseradish or yuzu to give it flavour. The only thing we actually enjoyed was the portabello steak which had great flavour with a nice textural and refreshing flavour balance with the watercress atop. Everything else was too "meh" to even finish.