The recent opening of Mixé proposes more questions than answers, or solutions, for Oakland’s struggling dining scene. The restaurant, which “features”—but doesn’t focus on—“Oaxacan fare,” replaced longtime Hive tenant Calavera. After I ate an evening meal there, I concluded that the Mixé owners appear to be carrying on Calavera’s approach to hospitality—the bar leads and the kitchen follows. If Calavera couldn’t keep its doors open with this formula, does the Mixé team believe customers will return for a new name and a different Mexican menu?
On a recent visit, no one stood at the host’s podium to greet us. Someone was making drinks behind the bar, but they didn’t communicate our arrival to anyone else. The dining room is capacious, but only two other parties were seated at tables. The interior wasn’t heavily altered in the transition, though the color scheme skews towards darker colors now. The centerpiece of the space is really the prominent bar, with its shelves of mezcal waiting to be poured.
After the initial delay, the person who seated us also played a secondary role as our server—and as the server for the other tables as well. During this early opening phase, Mixé is understaffed and not yet acting as a cohesive team. I recently interviewed a restaurateur who believes his business succeeded because he trained the staff to develop a rapport with each and every customer. His long term goal is to encourage return visits and for people to become regulars. Otherwise, what’s the point of being in the hospitality business?
After dinner, the bartender nodded to us and said good night—the warmest interaction of the evening. The presence of multiple screens playing sports on TV interferes with and inhibits connection in a dining room. If Mixé wants to hop on the sports-bar bandwagon, then the menu should reflect that raison d’être. As it currently stands, the kitchen competes with dozens of other East Bay Mexican and Latin American restaurants, pop-ups and food trucks—many of which are less expensive—and falling short.
A trio of tacos ($19, or $6.33 per taco) barely qualified as such; three proteins heaped on top of limp tortillas each with a sprig of cilantro, one lime wedge and one small container of salsa. This seemed a meager, indifferent approach to a dish that Las Guerreras—1 mile away—makes with verve and passion. There was no sign of any additional ingredient or adaptation that could have compensated for dry, overcooked, unseasoned pork, chicken and beef. It was as if the chef had never seen a taco before, or tacos made with onions, avocado, guacamole, cheese, crema, radishes, cabbage, rice or beans. Let alone anything more inventive or unconventional.
Our starters, too, were poorly conceived iterations of familiar dishes that are routinely excellent elsewhere. A bowl of esquites ($13) was greasy and laden down with chipotle aioli, sour cream and queso fresco. The basic idea behind esquites is to feature the flavor of fresh corn cut off the cob. Here, cooking oil and the add-ons dampened the kernels and made them mushy and flavorless. La Calaca Loca on Telegraph tends to the corn first before amping up the flavor with sauces and spices.
A plate of grilled asparagus ($11) was, for lack of a more sophisticated adjective, gloopy, just drowning in a river of melted Oaxacan cheese. The kitchen’s recurring problem is its inability to honor the ingredients, to let them speak and, ideally, sing for themselves.
Chicken enchiladas with a luscious verde sauce ($22) is one of my favorite go-to comfort dishes. Mixé’s version offers, instead, a small amount of verde salsa that should be served on the side. Universally, the tortillas lack distinction. They absorbed the salsa and couldn’t carry the weight of the enchiladas’ chicken and melted cheese. The plating, too, was a mess, heaped with a pile of unkempt lettuce and a side of red rice and refried beans.
Mixé, open 5–10pm, closed Tue. 2337 Broadway, Oakland. 800.388.4049. mixeuptown.com
