Especially Central American restaurants that serve Yucatecan cuisine (as in Yucatán, part of Mexico, part of North America)

astrid wrote:Just went to this place on Saturday, took one hour to get a table, took another hour to get the food. Was it worth it? Not really. The food is okay (my papadzules were way too salty, and husband's red snapper was all bones), not worth a two-hour wait, and the margaritas tasted like something college kids would mix up at a party, all mixer, nothing fresh. You can find other, overlooked Central American restaurants in town. I think people are just flipping over something "different" here. The best thing about Xni-Pec was the super-nice staff.

We went on Sunday and pretty much had the same experience as you did with waiting 10 minutes for our menus (my daughter eventually went and got some herself), beer served without glasses, haphazard service and over an hour wait for a red snapper that was mostly bones. We have been there before Check Please but we came when the restaurant wasn't packed. Xni-Pec has some good food but it just doesn't seem to be ready for prime time. I don't know if its a small kitchen, poor organization or all of the above but I doubt that we will come back - there is just too many other good Mexican restaurants out there.

On a positive note, we just got back from Katy's Dumplings and had another great dinner. Always consistently good, especially the beef noodle soup.

astrid wrote: I think people are just flipping over something "different" here.

That is certainly what drew me first to the restaurant: curiosity about a perviously-little-known-to-me-cuisine. However, it's not what's kept me coming back at least twice a month. It is the food.

I think it's rather unlikely that all the various praise and universally positive media coverage Xni-Pec has gotten since about March is based on flipping out over something "different" or some kind of group think. It's a great place with great food, simple as that. I would be a liar, though, if I didn't admit that I am a little bit worried about Xni-Pec adjusting to the sudden influx in customers and working out an efficient service strategy for that. It must be difficult for a restaurant that is normally about 25% full or so on weekend dinners to be jam-packed now almost every night.

Hello all:

I just went back to Xni-Pec for the fourth time last Saturday. I found out about the place thanks to the Hungry Hound on ABC7 and I usually stop there on my way to shows in Berwyn.

The panuchos are awesome and the chicken pibil is OK. I usually stuff myself on the salsa when I'm there. They have a second spicy salsa now that's very caliente. Always worth the drive to try the salsa.

I tried the octopus cocktail and it was wonderful. They basically mix Heinz ketchup with cilantro, octopus, tomato, and some chile. It was surprisingly sweet, and they even bring out some saltines as a base. Apologies for no photo. It's a good-size serving worth the $10.

FYI, if you ring the bell on the way out the front door, the staff usually gets pretty excited and claps. Usually reminds me of leaving the Long John Silvers in Orland Park.

njtb wrote:The panuchos are awesome and the chicken pibil is OK. I usually stuff myself on the salsa when I'm there. They have a second spicy salsa now that's very caliente. Always worth the drive to try the salsa.

I tried the octopus cocktail and it was wonderful. They basically mix Heinz ketchup with cilantro, octopus, tomato, and some chile. It was surprisingly sweet, and they even bring out some saltines as a base. Apologies for no photo. It's a good-size serving worth the $10.

Welcome, njtb! No need to apologies for the photos...feedback is great no matter how it's delivered. Look forward to hearing about some of your other faves.

Binko et al -

Xni-Pec continues to be a warm and welcoming haven into these cold and snowy nights. Antonio "miss[es] all of [us] guys" but says business is good, even though they were very quiet last night amid the snows. I did not try the relleno blanco special (anyone have this recently?), but had two excellent cochinita pibil tacos and a bowl of spot-on sopa de lima, as homemade in flavor and composition as you could ever desire. Huevos motulenos and pollo pibil (this is always served on the dry but savory side, in my experience) were hits up and down the table, as were the vapores. Perfect michelada con Tecate as always. I'll try to get there one more time before the holidays!

We visited Xni Pec this past Friday night. The place was about 3/4 full, and pretty busy. The specials were the Chile en Nogada, and the Queso Relleno. After talking with our waiter, Carlos, we decided to have the Chile en Nogada as an appetizer.



This is one flavorful dish. It consists of a poblano pepper stuffed with seasoned ground beef and raisins, and pine nuts, topped with a cream walnut, almond sauce that is slightly sweet. On the plate, there was the addition of chopped, cooked pear, and pomengranate seeds, almost too perfect to eat!! The flavor is just excellent.



So for our entrees, my wife ordered another chile, and I ordered the Queso Relleno:



The Queso Relleno consists of Edam cheese stuffed with ground , seasoned beef, and a sauce similar to Veracruzana.



It was excellent, especially accompanied by their homemade tortillas. I hope they never stop making their tortillas by hand. I know when they are really busy, they go back to the packaged tortillas to save time.

Well, now to the disappointing part of our evening. I have not been here since the Check Please! debut, and I noticed an increase in the prices. I don't have a big problem with some of the dishes going up a bit, but it seemed that the alcohol prices have gone up, and the prices are not listed on the menu. As you know, the margaritas are small, so the price increase doesn't seem fair, at $7.50. And the beer prices are higher as well, at $5.00. This is, after all, Cicero, not Wicker Park or Wrigleyville. I realize they have added staff, but we honestly felt that the price increases were a bit high given the location.

Service was OK. We never received one of our sides, and when we asked, it took a while to come out, almost when we were done eating. So Carlos told us it was on him, however, it still made it on the bill. We missed seeing Antonio that night, but his wife stopped by the table to answer some questions about the entrees.

We will still return to Xni Pec when we have a taste for the Yucatan, but maybe next time for breakfast.

What a gorgeous dish the chiles en nogada is. I'm interested in the stuffed edam as well. The same thing, more or less, shows up in the former/current Dutch Caribbean colonies. You'll find it as one of the few indigenous dishes in Aruba, for example. I'd expect there is a connection perhaps to the south-eastern coast of Mexico.

The chiles and the cheese are two good examples of special occasion "criollo" dishes that reflect heavier european influence than most familiar Mexican foods. The possible (likely?) link between early-modern Spanish/Italian/Arab nut sauce recipes and chiles en nogada has been covered here including comments by Antonius.

I wonder, for those (including Antonius) with a good knowledge of things Dutch, whether stuffed and baked edam is a dish there, and whether a block of cheese stuffed with what is, essentially, picadillo developed either in Spain or in the Spaanse Nederlanden during that chapter in Dutch history. Fascinating stuff.

We made our trip to Xni Pec last night. It was a busy night, we had about a ten minute wait for a table, we were promptly seated, given drinks, menus, and our waiter Carlos gave us some of his favorites and we ordered.

We ended up with the Chile en Nogada, a fish taco, a shrimp taco, and a tamale. I had the pollo en pibil, and we also had the papadzules. As you can tell we decided to really try to sample as many things as the two of us could muster. Everything that we had was spot on. The only issues we had were minor service issues, they forgot the tamale, my pollo en pibil was lukewarm in temperature. We had asked about taking a desert to go and were told that their deserts are not prepared to be taken to go. However after some more questioning we asking if it was possible to package some arroz con leche to go, and they happily did.

What I found interesting was listening to the people from the other tables comment that they had seen the restaurant on Check, Please! and hearing their various comments.

"Oh you're the waiter from the PBS show!"

"Boy, you guys have Check, Please to thank for all of your business. I just sat there waiting for a table and it seems like their viewers are your only customers."

"You guys need a better sign. How are we supposed to find this place in the dark?" (The waiter did comment that they are working on getting a better sign sometime soon.)

My favorite was "You guys better get yourselves some parking, all the tv people seem like they're coming here!"


We enjoyed it so much that I'm thinking about seeing if they're open for lunch on New Years eve.

My first post, after lurking for a couple of months. Have had wonderful dining experiences in new places, like Xni-Pec. We visited on Friday night. Sampled a variety of items, all mentioned somewhere in these pages. Everything was wonderful. I would concur on the bar prices…seemed pretty steep. But we will definitely go back for the food. Thanks for this great forum.

This is arguably the tastiest thing I've ever had at Xni-Pec:



It singlehandedly turned one of those crazy-busy post-Check, Please! nights (an hour of waiting along the wall, some missed dishes, a heart-wrenching Queso Relleno shortage, a guy running through the dining area with a huge box of El Milagro tortillas when the home-made supply was consumed) into a transcendent Slow Food evening.

It is: succulent grouper, octopus so tender it melted in your mouth, vinegar-permeated hot peppers and onions, olive oil, whole peppercorns, olives, bay leaves, and lime juice, served hot, but with the telling sourness of something prepared with a smile a day earlier and left to mingle in controlled conditions. In short, a humblingly perfect escabeche.

This is not on the menu (yet), but Antonio's mama said she'd 'sensed' we'd be coming back in soon, made it in a slower moment yesterday, and sent it out for our feedback right at the point we needed some TLC tonight. That's the kind of place Xni-Pec is. After this, we stayed until the place was closing down, in the flow, lingering over cafe con piloncillo (served, pre-melted, in a separate ramekin) and some knockout fried plantains in condensed milk with canela.



Antonio, Javy, and Mama seem refreshed, excited, and ready for the new year (give or take a Saturday) with great new uniforms, a full larder of fresh grouper and peppers, and a stack of Time Outs extolling their family-run kitchen. I was once again proud to ring the bell on my way out.

i really don't understand how they are staying in business. yes the food tastes great, if you actually get what you ordered. i been there twice, with another couple and the service is horrible. each visit, one of us never got our food, or in one strange incident, was missing the main ingredient. (pork dish with no pork?) we decided we would never dine in again, but we would try carryout. last night, i placed a simple order of 12 shredded beef gorditas with the cheese/crema on the side and some chips. i was told half an hour. knowing how they operate i went to pick them up 40 minutes later, and the order still wasn't ready. after i paid, i was shortchanged money and had to go back for that. we arrived at our friends home one gordita short, and more than half of them were filled with a ground beef/potato/carrot mixture, not the shredded beef that we had paid for. on top of that some had cheese, and could not be eaten by our lactose sensitive friends. terrible. three strikes you're out.

dollbabytina wrote:i really don't understand how they are staying in business. yes the food tastes great, if you actually get what you ordered. i been there twice, with another couple and the service is horrible.

This may help to explain:

Santander wrote:It singlehandedly turned one of those crazy-busy post-Check, Please! nights (an hour of waiting along the wall, some missed dishes, a heart-wrenching Queso Relleno shortage, a guy running through the dining area with a huge box of El Milagro tortillas when the home-made supply was consumed) into a transcendent Slow Food evening.

Or this: Xni-Pec [Regional Mexican - Yucatec] GNR Award


In addition, The owners of Xni-Pec have always been very open and responsive to criticism of any sort as stevez pointed out. Have you tried pulling Antonio aside and expressing your frustration?

This is not a large restaurant. Given that it has been given formal recognition on both Check Please (often the kiss of death for small, family run businesses not able to handle a tidal wave of volume) and a GNR winner, it seems like they are handling the service issues as best they can. As you say, "the food tastes great". Why not do what I do when I am getting takeout from an establishment that I know to be or feel is overworked and check my order before leaving. Yes, it is an inconvenience, but then again, LTH is a group that will collectively drive hundreds of miles, scale sheer cliffs and save puppy dogs from burning buildings for great food. I'm not saying that everything shouldn't always be spot on and that you have no cause for complaint, simply that, given how good the food is, it may make sense to work with them a little so that both parties are satisfied.

we talked to our server (not the manager) on both occasions and got little more than a "i don't know what happened" and a shrug of the shoulders. getting carry out was our way of still getting their much deserved, award winning food, without dealing with the poor service issues. i never thought the poor service issues would extend itself to the carryouts as well. i will usually check an order but since i ordered 12 of the same thing i did not think i would have to open every one to inspect that i got what i paid for and we were already running late to our friend's place at that point. i know things don't always go as planned, but if a problem arises and a substitution is being made, i expect to be told. to knowingly give the customer something they clearly didn't want, ask,or pay for is pretty rotten. i am glad that you had a better experience with them than we did, but i felt that these errors are pretty flagrant. thanks for the suggestions.

Have you tried pulling Antonio aside and expressing your frustration?

i was going to take your suggestion and speak to antonio, but there was a very sincere apology note in my inbox from him. he has responded to my concerns, and i can now look forward to visiting there sometime in the future, after service is improved. his cuisine is wonderful, and apparently, so is he.

Like I said, it's that kind of place, and more importantly, that kind of family. One of my dining companions the other night said: "once you realize that it's going to come out slow but awesome, it starts to make sense."

TheWindyCity wrote:We visited Xni Pec this past Friday night. The place was about 3/4 full, and pretty busy. The specials were the Chile en Nogada, and the Queso Relleno. After talking with our waiter, Carlos, we decided to have the Chile en Nogada as an appetizer.



This is one flavorful dish. It consists of a poblano pepper stuffed with seasoned ground beef and raisins, and pine nuts, topped with a cream walnut, almond sauce that is slightly sweet. On the plate, there was the addition of chopped, cooked pear, and pomengranate seeds, almost too perfect to eat!! The flavor is just excellent.



So for our entrees, my wife ordered another chile, and I ordered the Queso Relleno:



The Queso Relleno consists of Edam cheese stuffed with ground , seasoned beef, and a sauce similar to Veracruzana.



It was excellent, especially accompanied by their homemade tortillas. I hope they never stop making their tortillas by hand. I know when they are really busy, they go back to the packaged tortillas to save time.

Well, now to the disappointing part of our evening. I have not been here since the Check Please! debut, and I noticed an increase in the prices. I don't have a big problem with some of the dishes going up a bit, but it seemed that the alcohol prices have gone up, and the prices are not listed on the menu. As you know, the margaritas are small, so the price increase doesn't seem fair, at $7.50. And the beer prices are higher as well, at $5.00. This is, after all, Cicero, not Wicker Park or Wrigleyville. I realize they have added staff, but we honestly felt that the price increases were a bit high given the location.

Service was OK. We never received one of our sides, and when we asked, it took a while to come out, almost when we were done eating. So Carlos told us it was on him, however, it still made it on the bill. We missed seeing Antonio that night, but his wife stopped by the table to answer some questions about the entrees.

We will still return to Xni Pec when we have a taste for the Yucatan, but maybe next time for breakfast.

I ate Chile en Nogada a couple of weeks ago and it was like a dream! Thanks for sharing it. Seeing the picture made me hungry for more =)

Went last night after Roller Derby @ Cicero Stadium (which was awesome, btw). First time for me and step-dad, but GF has been before.

My step-dad had the panuchos y salbutes, I had the cameron al ajillo, GF had the platillo de cochonita. And we shared a sopa de lima. All quite delicious, and I'm still recovering from the over-indulgence of habanero salsa...yum!

Very nice people, great food.

Hi to everyone,
We are glad to announce our online survey, five basic questions regarding your experience dining in our restaurant. We invite to everyone to help us trough this tool to improve our service.

You can fin it on our web page http://www.xnipec.us/ or click in the next URL: http://www.xnipec.us/limesurvey/index.p ... 65&lang=en

We know that LTH Forum has been always a grate support for us and we appreciate it enormously.


Thanks,
Antonio Contreras

Sunday, April 6th, 2008, a group of Chicago area Yucatecan travelers to Tulum, Mexico, who post on the www.tulum.info forum, got together at Xni Pec restaurant in Cicero to share great stories and photos, all while enjoying great Yucatecan cuisine. It was great to finally meet and talk in person, instead of through a keyboard!
Xni-Pec Restaurant:


The restaurant served their signature Xni Pec salsa, (similar to Pico de Gallo). Xni Pec means dog's nose in Mayan, as the salsa, with it's bits of habanero pepper, will make your nose wet, like a dog's.

Xni Pec Salsa (right) with a side of Habanero salsa (for the brave):


My wife and I started with an order of Panucho's and Salbutes. Panuchos is a handmade tortilla that is split and stuffed with black beans, then fried. After that, they put a shredded grilled, marinated chicken, and pickled onion on top. Salbutes is a handmade fried tortilla with the grilled, marinated chicken, tomato, cabbage and avocado on top. It is served with a side of chicken broth that is seasoned with a bit of a dried pepper, perhaps Guajillo or Ancho. Excellente!:

Panuchos Y Salbutes:



The entrees we all ordered were great. Some of us got the Chile en Nogada, which the owner, Antonio had made by special request. Chile en Nogada is a poblano pepper stuffed with beef, diced pears, apples, raisins walnuts and almonds. It is then covered with a walnut cream sauce and usually decorated with pomengranate seed. Since the fruit is out of season, the kitchen improvised with a a marinated pear. Others ordered the Tikin Xic, and the beef Poc Chuc:

Chile en Nogada:



Poc Chuc:



Tikin Xic:





The service was really great, as Antonio and his family always checked on us and made sure we had everything we needed. We also appreciated that he accomodated our request to make the Chile en Nogada available. After that great dinner, no one had room for dessert! We all talked for a while and shared our photo books. It was great to see everyone's awesome photos, especially all the ones you don't get to see online. We then said our good-byes and took one more photo. Hope we can meet again soon!

Tulum travellers:

Ah, Xni-Pec...another great dinner after Windy City Rollers tournament at the Stadium Saturday night.

We started with tequilas and Panuchos (with both salsas of course) then our four-top was evenly split: my GF and step-dad both got the Cochinita Pibil and our friend (1st timer) and I both got the Tikin-Xic (snapper!).


The treasure awaits...


Voila! Just look at the steam a'risin' eh?

Our server, George, was great and truly hilarious as well.

Oh, salsa habanera, how you taunt me so...always a next-day reminder of our delicous meal!

George is a character, isn't he? He is relocating here from Minneapolis. I think he'll do better here!
Also, we noticed the Tikin Xic is now a filet, which we prefer. Great improvement! Thanks for sharing your photos and story.

The beauty of the whole fish had much visual appeal, but this far inland, I too prefer the mildness and eating-ease of the fillet. I had two portions of snapper served in fillet in Puerto Vallarta, so its not inauthentic, either.

I want to salute all the LTH Community as well to let them know that we expand our service ours for Lunch, our new hours are:

Lunch Monday to Sunday starting at 11AM
Dinner Tuesday to Sunday starting at 4PM, # we won’t offer Dinner on Monday#

We also want to inform that this coming week end Mothers day we are going to have Relleno Negro as weekend special and as a gift to all mothers on May 10 & MAY 11 FREE MARGARITAS FOR THEM!

Saludos.

Great that you expanded your hours back again. We needed to come for Huevos Moltulenos for breakfast!
We will miss the special though, as we will be in the Yuctatan, in Tulum, on Mothers Day week. We will have a toast to Xni pec, however, while there! Maybe Xtabentun? Salud!

Had a poor experience last month at Xni-Pec, and I tried to let Antonio know before posting it here. Never received a reply, so here's my original unanswered email:

Hi, Antonio. Rather than post this on LTH, I wanted to simply let you know how disappointed we were last night (Saturday the 2nd). We brought friends with us who had seen the Check Please! episode and who we had talked up Xni-Pec to for months -- and the evening wasn't wonderful. We didn't see you there last night, so I think you should know that things may be slipping when you're not around to oversee them. Specifically:

-- Most everything was lukewarm or cold when served. The combination appetizer tasted as it had been sitting around before being served. As to entrees, while my tikin-xic was hot (as was one of our guest's camarones, my wife's pollo pibil and my other guest's platillo were barely warm as if they had been cooked before the tikin was ready and sat. Worse, the vegetables and rice on all dishes were cold.
-- The spices were really toned down. Very little flavor to the tamale and tacos, extremely bland pork.
-- No specials? On a Saturday night? Disappointing.
-- Inattentive service. We had to continually ask for water to be refilled (and never received the ice we asked for), had to ask and wait for a chips and salsa to be replenished (you're using store-bought chips now?), didn't get an "is everything OK" until the meal was over.

Really, the only thing our guests liked was the pitcher of margaritas. That isn't saying much. Not a night to ring the bell on our way out. Just thought you should know.

There are no postings on the Xni-Pec thread since May, so I'm posting this separately -- has anyone else noticed a decline? (I'm not a fan of serving the snapper now as a filet rather than whole, but I know others prefer it deboned so I guess NHNF.)

>>Brent

I haven't been to dinner at Xni-Pec in several months because the staff is always seemed overwhelmed and my guests have less Slow Food patience than I, but I continue to go for lunch on occasion, though I haven't run into Antonio himself on the last two visits (we did have a fantastic dinner with him at Emilio's in the early summer, and he indicated things were going very well with the restaurant. As you all know, he and the family couldn't be sharper, worldlier, friendlier people).

The food I have had for lunch (typically the panuchos con consome, cochinita pibil tacos, vaporcitos tamales, sopa de lima, etc.) has been just as good as ever. They prepare constantly throughout the early part of the day, and I like going early to get everything as it's coming up. The fact that the staff makes the best micheladas in the city doesn't hurt.

Here is another way to leave feedback for Antonio (he posted this himself on the board earlier in the year):

http://www.xnipec.us/limesurvey/index.p ... 65&lang=en

Brent, my next words are more the need for explain my self to you rather than a pretext.

This weekend I took my kids to camping, the oldest one wanted some family time for his birthday. On this type of business you kind sacrifice what you love most.

We came back yesterday nigh, while I was driving back we cross some towns where people that had been in the restaurant live, while I drive I tough how far people live from my restaurant. My immediate feeling was a mix of pride and fear the fear to disappoint all those people, I’m a committed person to all of you that take your time and your money to put it here in this restaurant and to be honest whit all of you it is a very hard task, particularly in this time where we struggle each week to stay open.

I wish I had been here while you was here, I cannot change your bad experience nether your friends experience but I can offer to be better each time while we stay open, and I also can offer you a second chance to you and your friends to smooth this bat experience.

If you agree e mail me at info@xnipec.us the email that I check more often.

Thanks

Antonio Contreras

PD: This same offer applies to all of you that felt your last experience was not what you where expecting.

particularly in this time where we struggle each week to stay open.

Given that Antonio has replied with class as usual, do you object to this being merged, brotine (if the mods entertain it)? I'm sure we all wish the restaurant well, especially in difficult times.

I can't speak to dinner but I have been to Xni-Pec three times for lunch this summer, once with a large group. On all three occasions the food was as excellent as ever, and Antonio and Maria-Luisa were warm and hospitable hosts. The only thing that made me sad was the fact that few or no other customers were there at lunch time. This is a restaurant that deserves more visits from the LTH community, in my opinion.