Slave girl and I heard about Holbox but never got a chance to try them. One of our friends was gathering people for a group tasting dinner and we totally jumped on this opportunity to see what the restaurant was about.
Holbox was located in a food court. Judged by the look with counter service and all, I would assume the restaurant only serves street food like ceviches and tacos for the lunch crowds. Since I did my homework, I found out chef Cetina had 20 plus years of experience specializing in Yucatan style Mexican food. I was pretty excited for our dinner.
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| Chef and the fish |
The dinner menu came with 7 courses, followed by my favorite dessert chef Turok's mascarpone cheesecakes. The cheesecakes were charged separately but it was totally worth it. The 7 courses were: blood clams, surf clams, yellowtail ceviche, scallop aquachile, seafood soup, pan seared scallop, and wood grilled kampachi.
First we got a bag of chips and salsa. It was perfect because I also wanted to sample all the hot sauces on the table and the chips made a great holder for it. The hot sauces were smoking hot but very good in flavors. My favorite was the roasted habanero garlic.
We got blood clam and surf clam as our starter. I've had Vietnamese style blood clam, but never had it raw. It was intense with the iron taste, and it looked like it was soaking in blood. So cool. Surf clam was crunchy and fresh. This was a good start.
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| Blood clam |
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| Surf clam |
Next we got yellowtail ceviche. From my understanding it usually comes with uni but I guess last minute change so no uni for our dish. It tasted well but nothing too exciting about this dish.
The scallop aquachile was really good. The sauce was not overly spicy and enhanced the sweetness of the scallop. Very refreshing dish. I wasn't too sure why the avocado was needed, but it made the dish pretty.
After that we had the seafood soup. The broth was made with fish and shrimp shells that brought the ocean to the bowl. Even though there wasn't a lot, it was refined and very different from the usual Mexican seafood soup.
Pan seared scallop was my favorite of the night. It had poblano pepper, mushrooms, cream and fennel in it. The scallop was perfectly cooked with excellent texture. Everything worked well in one bite and this is a must if you come here.
The star of the night was the wood grilled kampachi. A whole fish was grilled for everyone to share and every part was edible. We were also given a taco set to eat with the fish. The flavor of the fish was pretty mild but the meat was tender. Asides from the meat around the belly area, I also asked for the fish head. There was so much meat in the head that it was a meal itself. If you know how to destroy a fish head, you would appreciate how I ate mine. I guess people around me were shocked.
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| Taco set |
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| Fish taco |
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| Fish head devoured |
For the cheesecakes, we had 3 different flavors to pick from and since we got enough people, we tried all 3. They were key lime, pecan, and cream brulee. Not overly sweet and my favorite was the cream brulee.
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| Key lime |
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| Cream brulee |
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| Pecan |
Overall, I really loved what we had. The meal was way over our expectations and the service was friendly. There was really nothing negative about the experience and we will definitely go back again for different things.
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