STIX

Last week for my birthday some of my lovely friends decided to take me to STIX for dinner. I’ve been wanting to go there for a while now, so I was excited. We were super starved so we ordered our entrees immediately. After a few minutes we decided to split an appetizer. The waitress brought out some “Italian” breadsticks which were like cracker sticks. I’ve been to Italy (and I ate at restaurants everyday cuz the food was so damn good no matter where I went) and I never had breadsticks like that so I’m guessing they were using that name to look fancy. The ricotta cheese dip for them was soooo good tho. We just wished that they’d given us a little more sauce for all them damn sticks. Lol. For the appetizer we went with the Thai Fried Calamari which came with a coconut and lemongrass dipping sauce. It was ok which is saying a lot cuz I’m not a big fan of coconut. The sauce was kind of watery which was weird cuz I don’t know how the hell you’re supposed to dip something in watery sauce (I hold all calamari up to Chau Chow City standards, so I didn’t really expect it to be that great anyway). From that point I could tell that this place was more about presentation than good food. And then our food came. It was beautiful. I ordered the Andean Hanger Steak with sweet potato puree and chimchurri sauce and my friends had the Red Curry Salmon with Thai sticky rice and papaya slaw and the other had the Seared Diver Scallops that was supposed to come with black bean dal, crispy onions, and mint riata but she got it with a double sweet potato puree and the crispy onions instead. Everything was beautiful but nothing was over the top fantastic as far as taste goes. We all agreed that my medium well steak was cooked to absolute perfection though. I couldn’t have wanted it cooked any more or less. The chimchurri sauce was a really good addition to the steak. The sweet potato puree was good. I thought both of my friends’ plates were decent, but I was glad I had the steak. There was some sort of party going on upstairs so we were downstairs near the kitchen. The space is super small and there was only room for 4 tables. The waitress was cool, but pretty regular. Now that I think about it the first water that she gave us was dirty and iceless. When she came back she gave us glasses full of ice. We considered leaving cuz it was kinda like a dirty glass of water is no way to start a meal but after deciding we were too hungry to leave we stayed. Lol. A lil gross, but it’s too late now. The pricing for the place wasn’t too bad. The appetizer was about $12 and our food ranged from $19-$22. I will admit that we didn’t have the full on STIX experience seeing as though we didn’t have any of their signature STIX which are chunks of meat grilled on flavor infused skewers. I’ve been to no less than 5 cookouts since the 4th so I didn’t want any more shish-ka-bobs. Lol. Overall, STIX was a decent experience, but I’m not going to rave about it and I don’t plan to go back anytime soon. If I do it will be outta curiosity cuz they have something called Ten Cane Raspberry Sashimi which is basically gelatinized alcohol made to look like sushi (it even comes in a bento box) and I’d like to see what that’s about just to say I did it. STIX gets two and half stars meaning go if you want, but there’s no reason to rush. (the pics are...from top to bottom...the Seared Diver Scallops, the Red Curry Salmon, and the Andean Hanger Steak)