After a couple of visits to Mexta, two things became clear: The restaurant, which opened in March in downtown Austin’s historic Littlefield Building, has all its bases covered, from perennial Mexican favorites (guacamole, ceviche) to exciting, lesser-seen regional specialties (pork belly encacahuatado, tikin xic salmon with xnipec salsa). Second, it intends to be the boldest Mexican restaurant in the city.
Peering in from the foyer, distracted by happy-hour chatter and the whir of blenders, I looked around for half a minute before I saw my friends waving their cocktail glasses. I made my way across a room utterly transformed from the breezy white-on-white palette of the short-lived previous occupant, Simi Estiatorio. Room dividers lined with diminutive terra-cotta bricks are offset by massive copper-clad columns, huge straw wall hangings, and stark white contemporary furniture.
At the table, I collapsed onto a banquette and ordered one of the cocktails created by Mexta’s acclaimed consulting barkeep, Mexico City mixologist Mica Rousseau. To pair with the bubbly mezcal-and-champagne-laced margarita, I chose an appetizer that turned out to be my favorite dish of the evening: the tetela. Normally an unembellished bean-and-cheese-filled street snack, the tetela here has been seriously accessorized. The thick house-made-masa cake is filled with epazote-spiked refried black beans, folded into a tidy rectangle, and fried. Surrounding it are beautifully arranged accompaniments: a glossy puree of grilled avocado, batter-fried cubes of pork belly, and a midnight-dark pool of manchamanteles, a fruity, many-chile mole.
As it turns out, the tetela is not the only thing that gets the royal treatment at Mexta. Behind its highly creative menu are two Mexico-based chefs, each of whom has had a restaurant appear on the respected Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. From 2007 to 2017 Mikel Alonso was the chef at Biko, a now closed Basque destination in Mexico City (he currently consults at Cocina de Autor, in Playa del Carmen). Jonatán Gómez Luna Torres directs Le Chique, a Yucatán-oriented spot in Cancún. This May, each of their primary restaurants was awarded a Michelin star. They come to Austin as often as they can, entrusting day-to-day operations to chef Julio Luna.
“Austin has a lot of good Mexican restaurants,” Alonso says, “but our idea is a little different. We want Mexta to be a piece of Mexico in Austin—the decor, the art, the plating, the ingredients, the flavors, the essence. In other words, everything.” In their reimagining, a dish such as hamachi tiradito is transformed with a sweet-tart tamarind sauce and a mayo pumped up with smoky imported chipotle meco chiles (if I had a quibble it was that the accessories stole the spotlight from the subtle raw fish).
And so it goes with several more small plates, notably a distinctive guacamole, the avocado mashed with slightly sweet tomatillos milperos (tiny versions of the tart fruit, not often seen in Texas).
By the time we got to the entrées, I was cataloging all the dishes that might have to wait for another time: the pork belly encacahuatado (peanut sauce), the oysters with roasted-habanero salsa, and five American Wagyu steaks. We did try the Denver steak (undistinguished) in an earthy mole negro (magnificent). And we loved the tikin xic salmon rubbed in an aromatic paste of achiote, guajillo chiles, and bitter orange. But perhaps my favorite entrée turned out to be the small roasted whole chicken lavished with pipián verde (a green mole masterfully combining roasted pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and spunky serrano chiles).
By meal’s end, I had become so immersed in Mexta’s world that when I finally stepped out into the heat of a late-spring night, I almost turned around and went back in. But I changed my mind after a minute. The evening had been like one of those first dates where everything just clicks. I knew there would be more, and I wanted to leave plenty to discover the next time around.
Mexta
106 E. 6th, Austin
512-646-8085
D Mon–Sat. $$$
Opened March 22, 2024
This article originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “A Capital Collaboration.” Subscribe today.
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