Mixtli
Mexican restaurant · South of Southtown
812 S Alamo St STE 103, San Antonio, TX 78210
Highlights
Regional Mexican tasting menus with inventive dishes & curated drink pairings
Regional Mexican tasting menus with inventive dishes & curated drink pairings
"The multi-course tasting menu reframes a roughly 20-year historical period up to 1848, drawing on techniques and ingredients from Mexicans, Texicans, Spaniards, Europeans, and Indigenous Americans to tell a layered culinary story. A memorable course featured acorn and pecan mole served over root vegetables with amaranth; the acorn appears as a carefully selected flour (chosen from several varieties for flavor), while pecans, acorns, and root vegetables reference foraged ingredients and are presented minimally altered—left uncut with twisted roots intact—to evoke their ancestral textures and origins." - Courtney E. Smith
"A San Antonio restaurant that was a finalist in the Outstanding Hospitality category at the 2025 James Beard Awards." - Nicole Adlman
"Walking into the bar feels like entering a wonderland: a night-sky palette of deep purples and navy blues with fluffy, transparent, hand-blown glass clouds overhead. The bar experience is highly theatrical and carefully choreographed by bar manager Lauren Beckman, who greets guests (reservations not required for the bar), coordinates via earpiece and clipboard, sets them up with a drink while they watch a live stream of the open kitchen, and vigilantly matches each cocktail to its course. That same meticulous, research-driven service defines the entire tasting-menu restaurant, which opened in 2013 in a 12-seat train car and moved to Southtown in 2021; it is currently the city’s only Michelin-starred restaurant and has received multiple James Beard nominations and industry recognition for its chefs. Seasonal menus—recently themed “Mexico 1848: The Treaty of Hidalgo”—are the product of deep archival research using nearly 3,000 Mexican cookbooks from UTSA’s Special Collections; chefs audition dishes, then present each plate at the table alongside its historical context so diners leave with a richer understanding of Mexican culinary history. Dishes are inventive and evocative (for example, an acorn mole served over roasted root vegetables with amaranth that highlights Indigenous techniques and European sauce-making influences), service is collective (every team member touches each table, chefs are responsible from product arrival to plating, and staff watch guests’ reactions closely), and the hospitality is famously exacting—so much so that the sommelier and Beckman won Michelin’s Service Award in Texas and the restaurant recently earned its first nod for Outstanding Hospitality. Attention to detail extends to the dining room design (custom tables with built-in drawers to streamline courses) and to small gestures—chefs will even replace a fallen napkin—reflecting a culture of urgency, care, and continual improvement." - Courtney E. Smith
"San Antonio’s sole one-Michelin-starred restaurant is one of the pioneers of Texas’s modern Mexican revolution. Mixtli started humble, serving ultramodern riffs on pre-Hispanic dishes like mole and tamales in a boxcar with only 12 seats. Now, it’s settled in a larger Southtown space, where it still explores Mexico’s vast culinary heritage region by region. Though chefs Diego Galicia and Rico Torres consider themselves culinary archeologists, they make room for modern pairings like strawberries and foie gras. If lucky enough to secure one of the scarce reservations, begin the evening by sipping mezcal at the adjacent cocktail bar." - Brandon Watson
"For over a decade, this Southtown fine-dining restaurant has led the charge in redefining Mexican gastronomy’s reputation in America. Chefs Diego Galicia and Rico Torres take an intellectual approach, basing menus on the diverse geography and culture of the country. While the four-course tasting menu is a quick fix for fans, newbies should relish the whole experience with the longer prix fixe, where fantastical dishes made of unexpected ingredients come together into the epicurean equivalent of a magical realist novel." - Brandon Watson
