Ixta, Serving Mexican Food With an Eye to Tulum, Opens on the Bowery

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What was Daniel Boulud’s modern kitchen and bar, adorned with French copper cookware, now pays homage to Mexico, specifically Tulum, the popular Yucatán destination. (Tulum is big this week; see below.) An elaborately decorated fantasyland with 165 seats, Ixta is the restaurateur Mike Himani’s largest undertaking to date. He and his partners say that they were also inspired by Oaxaca, and they’re certainly on target with an emphasis on mezcals. But the food, by the chef Francisco Blanco, who worked at Le Cirque, is more generally Mexican, with lots of contemporary touches, and long on seafood. Raw bar items, including ceviches, head the menu, which also lists a smoked salmon corn crisp, Caesar salad, a few tacos, whole branzino, halibut in a banana leaf and a whole suckling pig.