This is the fourth Tasting Collective dining club event we attended. (You can read about the previous posts about Tasting Collective events here: http://www.foodlovergirl.com/fish-cheeks/   http://www.foodlovergirl.com/win-son/ and http://www.foodlovergirl.com/f-o-b/). Tasting Collective is a dining club for food lovers, and they offer brunch and dinner at great NYC restaurants. They close off the restaurants for the club, so we get to have the entire restaurant and chef(s) all to ourselves. So, this is more than just eating food at a restaurant, but you get to have the background story and its passion from the chef(s), eating 8- to 12-course brunch/dinner created specifically for Tasting Collectives. This event was held at a restaurant offering Mexican-inspired cuisine.

One really interesting thing about Tasting Collective is that they don’t always choose the kind of place that is super noticeable or with super high demand and popularity. Some of the places might not look like much from the outside, a place that you just walk right by without really catching your attention at the first glance, like Win Son. I was pleasantly surprised as soon as I walked in, and yes, the food was great. When we arrived at Xixa, we were wondering “is this the place?” There was no fancy, glamorous sign outside, well, not much of anything outside. Just a little “Xixa” painted on a wall, close to the ground.

Then again, with just one step inside, we were transported into this gorgeous, modern, lovely restaurant! There was no way to know or imagine that this beautiful space exist from just looking at the restaurant from the outside. I love the pleasant surprise. The history behind the name Xixa was interesting and also very adorable. Chef Marcus, who is Jewish, named the restaurant “Xixa,” pronounced “shiksa” in Spanish in honor of his lovely wife Heather, who is non-Jewish. Why? Well, because she is his “shiksa,” or non-jewish girlfriend in Yiddish. Didn’t I say adorable?

 

The interior was so cool, it was almost like a gallery in there. On the left side was modern chandelier, with a fully stacked bar. The bar had a deep red, artistic wall. To the right was a long communal table underneath golden geometrical light fixtures. They had a large painting of a woman with bright red accents to bring the entire room together. The ceiling had ropes hanging from the entrance to the end of the wall.

 

At the first glance, The restaurant doesn’t look that big. Just a long bar and a communal table. Maybe another smaller table or two at the back? But no, it kept going and going. The interior is narrow but long. The further back you go, the dimmer it gets, as they only have windows at the front wall. It didn’t feel “dark” but it felt cozy. They had more tables after the bar and communal table, enough to seat maybe 15 or so more people.

Then, it goes further back! They had these cool metal curtain-like divider, and behind it was more seating. They had several large-sized booth seating to the right, and more tables to the left. I liked the booth design, it was modern, homey, and with higher-than-normal structure providing a little bit of privacy.

I do think the bar is the focal point of the restaurant, or maybe it was just my favorite part of it all. With the chandelier and deep red, it does bring out the old-world with the new, Mexico-inspired red with our imagination for its culture and history running wild.

This event was extra special, because they are not open for brunch usually, and therefore, there is no brunch menu. The restaurant was opened just for us, and therefore the 9-course brunch menu was create just for us. Sweet!!! The chef, Jason Marcus, Eleven Madison Park and Le Bernardin alum was there to greet us and give us some background on how he opened up this restaurant. He told us how he fell in love with Mexican food during his visits to Mexico.

The first one was Pozole of Pork Belly. It is made with chorizo, briased hominy, and spicy guajiilo chile broth. It had very nice, deep flavor, and warm your up from the inside. With a little kick to it from chile, this soup woke up my stomach a bit, getting it ready for the Mexican-inspired brunch. The meat was very tender and soft, the tortilla was nice and crunchy, and homily had more of a nutty texture. It was fun to eat with all different textures. Very comforting soup for sure.

The second one was Crunch Corn Cakes. It came with a side of rhubarb-raspberry marmalade and toasted sesame butter. The staff who brought it out told us to put both sauce on, like peanut butter and jelly. The exterior had flavor similar to churros, and the inside was more on the savory side with corn. It was interesting mix of sweet and savory. Then the peanut flavor mixed with rhubarb-raspberry marmalade was really nice, it worked great together in my opinion. The texture of the inside reminded me of fried green tomatoes, sliced thick. It was not soggy, had the right amount of hardness and softness to it, if you know what I mean.  It was really interesting item!

The third item was one of my favorite items. It was Rice Tempura’d Grouper Torta, in a little slider form. It was made with spicy salsa macha, chipotle aioli, and brussel slaw. I was not expecting this item to be like a slider, so I was surprised, in a good way of course.

The slider was a good size, and nice thick fillet of grouper in it. I didn’t really taste any matcha, but it certainly had nice little kick to it. The grouper was fresh, so juicy and flaky, with great flavor. The spicy salsa had nice amount of spiciness without being overwhelming, and the brussel slaw was very refreshing. All the ingredients worked great together to highlight the flavor of the grouper. Could I get another one over here, please?

 

The next one up was Chilaquiles, made with morita chile, tomatillo salsa, sunny eggs, and crema. Now, I forgot to take a photo of egg porn, as they had beautiful sunny eggs on the top… It was nice and spicy, with lots of different textures from fried tortilla, egg, crema, salsa, etc. It was warm and homey.

 

Then the cute little Baked Poulet Rouge Chicken & Mojo Verde Albondigas, with roasted tomatillo cream. They are basically meatballs, very juicy and packed with flavor. It had lots of herbs in it, and it was very tasty! I feel like chicken meatball is not so common, but it was great. The chef told us something really interesting about this dish, or more like the name of this dish. He said that the Mexican dish that has “Al” is at the beginning of a dish (like Albondigas) original came from Middle East. Who knew? It seems that Spanish and Mexican cuisine had some influences from Middle East way back when.

 

And here comes another one of my favorite, Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Tacos, A.K.A. Breakfast Tacos. It is made with braised bacon, blue cheese, bearnaise, and arbol chile. There was good amount of meat in there, thick cut braised bacon. It was super juicy and packed with flavor.

The cheese was really nice too.  Very deep flavor and went great with the juicy bacon. All the ingredients had its own amazing flavor, but yet none of them tried to steal the spotlight alone. They all work together to enhance the flavor of the bacon, and created a really awesome breakfast tacos. The only issue was that it was a mini tacos…it was so good that I wanted more!

Next one was a Corn & Buttermilk Baked Pancake, with meyer lemon butter, guava, and smoked maple syrup. It was one big pancake, with blueberries and blackberries. The blackberries kind of looked like cute little ears, transporting the pancake into some sort of fluffy animal who had some trouble with orange melty crayon.

When I cut into the pancake, I was happy to find more blueberries in the inside. It was very moist, dense, sweet. It had the texture of corn pudding or maybe more like corn bread, with really nice flavor of sweet corn. It had a hint of salt flavor, which enhanced its sweetness. The guava and smoked maples syrup was really nice, great guava flavor.

Then it is time for desserts! The first dessert was Piloncillo Ice Cream, with crunchy ‘honeycomb,’ peanuts, and mexican chocolate. Piloncillo is a Mexican sugar, made from cane sugar. It had a kind of honey and molasses flavor, went great with the peanuts and chocolates. Honeycomb peanuts was fun and crunchy, and the ice cream was creamy and velvety.

The more interesting dessert was Homemade Goat’s Milk Raqueson Cheese, with mango, honey, and pistachios. Raqueson cheese is a Hispanic version of Ricotta cheese. It was mix of several textures, like the creamy cheese, crunchy pistachio, and fresh strawberries. I liked the combination of honey and the cheese, similar to greek yogurt with honey. I felt like this was more of an appetizer item than a dessert, but regardless, it was tasty and interesting.

The modern interior of the restaurant had one last surprise when it came to their design. It was their bathroom, located across from the booth. They have a wooden door, and inside is dark, with funky purple-ish neon colored lights. The light fixture had some clear bubbles hanging down from it, creating more of a mystical environment. The trash basket was hard to find in the darkness, but I found it under the sink.

Behind the sink was two bathrooms, uni-sex style. The wall was really cool, kind of rainbow stripes on both sides, with metallic grey wall to the back. Fun space in there, good design for a unicorn. And, they made sure to have sufficient amount of light in there.

We had another fun event, hosted by Tasting Collective. I don’t know how they find these great restaurants!  All of the items were tasty, and I liked the innovative, upscale Mexican dishes. The chef was very personable and funny, and I could tell he had passion for Mexican food and coming up with his own creations. The staffs were nice and efficient, and we sat with a couple that we met at previous Tasting Collective event, so it was really fun! I love finding a new, great restaurant while socializing, sharing plates with each other like a good ol’ friends. I would love to go back to Xixa for their regular menus, they also seem to have really great drinks too.

For those of  you who are interested in joining this great dining club, Tasting Collective, you can use this link to get a discounted annual rate of $115 (over 30% off the normal $165/year) for the first year: https://tastingcollective.com/?invite_code=JUN4346

Xixa – 241 S 4th St, Brooklyn, NY 11211