Restaurante Ocotillo — Restaurant in Baja California Sur

New chef, amazing new menu coming

Chef Brian Alvarez previewed a few dishes from the new menu he is developing for Ocatillo last night and they were amazing.

We started with a cold soup, inspired by a traditional Spanish recipe. It was voluptuously silky, creamy and complex. We could taste the garlic in the soup, but it was a roasted and rounded flavor of garlic, without any bite. The soup was served with sliced grapes on top, and drizzles of balsamic and olive oil, which finished the dish perfectly. The crisp sweet taste of the grapes contrasted the smooth, rounded flavor of the soup.

We continued with a ceviche based on a local mulatto chili which provided smokiness and fantastic depth of flavor, without much heat. It’s an original twist on ceviche, served with tangy sliced green mango, and tortilla chips.

The next dish was a sampler of two local fish - yellow tail and barramundi. I had no idea that barramundi lives in the Sea of Cortez, I always think of it as an Australian fish. Both fish were served over a fantastic mole and a drizzle of beat root reduction sauce. The combination of the sweetness of the beet root with the deep smoky flavor of the mole paired beautifully with the fish. The barramundi was cooked to perfection, not even remotely dry.

Chef Alvarez is also working on all the doughs produced in house, including developing a new Neapolitan pizza dough. While the dough was fantastic, the pizza oven still needs to be tweaked to get it a little hotter so that the pizzas can be crisper.

We finished on another high note, which yet again emphasized local flavors, a damiana and date cheesecake. Damiana is a local fruit, often made into tea, or an amaro-like liqueur. Dates are also local. Both the damiana and dates were ground into the velvety cheesecake boosting the depth of flavor, served with a perfect drizzle of butterscotch.

We can’t wait for the menu to be fully rolled out in the...

Our experience at Ocotillo was great from a service perspective and otherwise it was… fine. Again, the service was top notch, the space beautiful, and the cocktails tasty + interesting. The food, however, left a lot to be desired. We had guacamole, pear salad, veggie enchiladas, and fish. The pear salad was great, the enchiladas good, but the guac and fish were quite mediocre (though palatable). The enchilada sauce was good, but they were one dimension - some nuts or sweet potato would be a nice touch! The fish was over cooked and the rice very plain. The guac was fine but also didn’t have much of anything going on aside from avocado. I would be more critical if we weren’t in the middle of the desert in Mexico, but would also be less critical if we weren’t paying a high price for a fine dining establishment.

Ocotillo team - thanks for the wonderful service in such a great space. I hope you keep working on refining your food, and I have faith you...

The food was mostly excellent. Lots of great finds on the menu.

The sleeper by far is the enfrijoladas. Get it with chicken. Mole is to die for. You won’t regret it. Best bang for your buck on the menu. By far.

The tenderloins are better than the rib eye. You might think the rib eye is the best because it’s the most expensive, but it’s not. Tenderloins all the way.

Fried cheese was a great appetizer.

From the desserts we tried (cheesecake, flan, key lime pie, berry mousse), the key lime pie was the best. WOW. But chocolate cake was also fire. The berry mousse was bad though.

Seriously though, the enfrijoladas were f** amazing.

Service was a little slow tonight. Took ~ 50 minutes for food to come out, they seemed under staffed. It was New Year’s Day and they were 60% full so plenty of space but pretty slow.

$25-$50/person at least, before drinks.

Would...