Cocina Chiwas — Restaurant in Tempe

Since the restaurant has opened, we've visited four times. At the onset, we were excited to see this ambitious modern take on Mexican cuisine from the founders of Tacos Chiwas. Finally - a quality establishment in Tempe to backfill the loss of a restaurant like House of Tricks.

Sadly, the consistent quality of service and culinary excellence that others had managed to maintain over decades, has not been attainable by Chiwas in only three years.

We found on our first visit that Cocina Chiwas is, at least for us, only for special occasions. Last night, our experience started by wanting to preview the menu to see what was new. Sadly, the link to the menu is broken on the restaurants website. The universe was sending us a sign! Another sign that we should have seen after been sat was the guacamole and pink drink spatters on both our menus. Gross.

We sat at the bar, which is our normal preference. Preference because it allows us to have a friendly chat with the bartenders, watch their craft, and generally a more informal experience that we enjoy.

However, that was not pro move last night! The staff clearly wanted to go home despite us having a reservation 1:45 before close. The bar tenders seemingly were in a hurry to close down - closing the patio windows and drawing the shades as they hurried to clean and put away the bar. They seemingly could not stop dropping things in front of us , almost comically so - eventually leading to a large bottle crashing on the floor. We thought for sure they close at 9 instead of the stated 10 PM.

Reviewing the menu, we found it to be largely the same with a few new smaller plates. We ordered the oysters, beet salad, chile relleno, and pork shank. The oysters were ok, but not separated from the shell completely. Salad unfortunately had wilted greens, the relleno overcooked, but the pork was excellent.

At the end of the meal, with the salad and relleno half eaten, we were ready to escape. It took what seemed to be extraordinary effort to have someone settle our bill despite it sitting in front of us with a card and cash laying in plain site. We left with $189 hole in our pockets for two that felt like a middling experience at best.

We don't have extraordinary expectations. We're never expect to receive excellent service, superior cuisine, and a low price. But when a restaurant can't deliver on any of the three while feeling like you're a burden at best - we out! Cocina Chiwas, please find your way back...

USA Today said this was one of the best restaurants and wowzah! I can see why.

A group of six of us came for a Saturday dinner and it was great. Hats off to Diane M. (go add her!) for gathering us up for such a lovely meal.

We shared the Guacamole ($16 - Aguacate, EVOO, Red Onion, Lime Juice, Tomato, Cilantro, Queso Cotija & Totopos) to start. You can't go wrong with a classic guacamole. The chips were the thin cantina style which buckled under the weight of the good green stuff but these are the kind of chips I like with guacamole.

For my dish, I ordered the Special of the Week, Farrotto ($24 - Batter fried Soft-Shell Crab, Farrotto [Farro based risotto] kale & mushroom cream base, Salsa Macha XO, roasted lemon, parmigiano reggiano). Seriously, it's one of my top two bites of 2024 so far. The soft shell crab was excellent and crispy and the farrotto is something I will be singing from the rooftops about. Even while typing this and eating the leftovers, my tastebuds are still happy eating this reheated version of the Farrotto. No notes!

I also tried the Chicharron ($22 - Roasted Pork Belly served on Salsa Verde, White Rice & Crema). This dish is really something. While I can admit the rice isn't anything to write home about, it's all about the pork belly on salsa verde. The bite of the pickled onions helped cut through the richness of the dish. Excellent flavor combination on an eye-catching plate.

I had two cocktails as well: Pina Colada ($14 - Charanda, velvet falernum, creme de coconut, fresh lime juice, fresh pineapple juice) and Un Cafecito ($16 - Espresso infused bacanora, coffee liqueur, Cafe de olla simple, coffee bitters topped with star anise zest). While my pina colada was a delightful drink, I must admit that I passed my un cafecito off to Mike D. because the smokiness of the drink wasn't to my liking. Beware, a lot of their drinks are smoky.

So why not five-stars? As much as I enjoyed our charming waiter, Jordan, his manager didn't allow us to split the bill three ways. There was also a weird persistence in splitting the bill four ways that didn't make sense given that we were three couples.

Note: 90-minute tables and reservations are highly...

Service was the worst part of this place. My girlfriend and I were each given a tiny glass of water and they were not refilled the whole hour or more we were there. Our waitress stopped by to give us our drinks, then take our order, and that was the last we saw of her. We had to get someone else to give us our check just so we could leave.

I ordered the short ribs and those were ok at best. The presentation looks amazing, but the plate is so full that any adjustments I made trying to get at the beans or rice meant things were overflowing off the edges. Also I was given a tortilla but it just felt like a burden to try and put anything in it with how crowded my plate was. I had to ask for a second empty plate just to stop making such a big mess. On top of all of that, my meat was room temp and my beans/rice were cold. The meat lacked any flavor, was decently burned, and way too stringy from how over cooked it was.

My gf ordered a different kind of ribs and the meat on that was also over cooked, burned, and stringy. She was complaining that it was so hard to get the meat off the bone and she might hurt her teeth in the process. Not to mention her ribs came with almost no actual meat on them.

She always has leftovers from a restaurant but she cleaned her plate here and was still hungry. That’s how little food we actually got. We went to another restaurant just to actually reach the feeling of “full” which is ridiculous because we spent $80 for the evening.

TLDR is awful service, over cooked and bland food, and prices that just don’t match the experience you get. There are much better restaurants in the same price range. I’ve never had a conversation with my gf about a restaurant where we say we’re excited to...