Mixtli sommelier Hailey Pruitt and bar manager Lauren Beckman knew Michelin recognized outstanding restaurant wine and cocktail programs, but they didn’t realize the French dining guide also bestowed a special service award — until they won it.
The women looked slightly dazed as they climbed the stage at the Michelin awards held in Houston last Monday night.
“Y’all, I got my car towed this morning,” Beckman said into the microphone after the women had been buttoned into their Michelin-branded chef coats and led to the center of the stage for photos.
“Well, your day just turned around!” responded the emcee.
Indeed it did. The service award was just the first win for the restaurant.
Later that evening Mixtli would become one of just 15 restaurants across Texas to win a coveted Michelin star. Pruitt and Beckman once again headed for the stage, this time in the company of Mixtli’s co-founders and executive chefs Rico Torres and Diego Galicia.
The men were duly buttoned into their white Michelin chef coats, but a moment later, Galicia removed his and put it on Alexana Cabrera, the restaurant’s 28-year-old chef de cuisine, who started with Torres and Galicia eight years ago, back when Mixtli was operating out of a train car at The Yard in Olmos Park, serving a dozen people at a time at one long table.
Cabrera teared up recalling the moment. “It was very unexpected. I mean, we’ve all worked so hard.”
She spoke last Friday afternoon ahead of dinner service from the Cellar, the narrow room adjacent to Mixtli’s dining room that holds much of its 1,200-bottle wine collection. Cabrera was joined by Pruitt and Beckman, executive pastry chef Shelby Mitchell and Catrina Torres, Mixtli’s HR manager and Rico Torres’ wife.
They are the women in leadership at Mixtli, who work alongside Torres and Galicia as part of a small, familial team.
Because it is so small, they each wear many hats both behind the scenes and in front of guests to create the experience that just earned Mixtli global recognition — and has already begun to change their lives.
Women in leadership
Women make up the majority of those in the restaurant business, but they are overrepresented in the lower echelons of the industry and much more scarce in leadership roles.
Yet according to a 2022 industry study, teams with more women in executive positions perform better.
Pruitt said women often don’t get the level of respect or benefit of the doubt the way many men do in the industry, which is one reason she pursued a certification from the Court of Master Sommeliers.
Mixtli is different, she said.
“Right off the bat, it didn’t feel like that here,” said Pruitt, who also manages Mixtli’s front of house, curates the Cellar’s wine collection and oversees the wine club.
Catrina Torres, whose background is in restaurant and packaged food industry management, said she believes her husband and Galicia have been intentional about offering women opportunities since they first launched Mixtli 11 years ago.
“And it has worked out,” she said. “We’re really at a point where the guys feel comfortable letting them run the show when they have to. That was always hard for them, but now they’re like, ‘You got it!’”
A tight knit team
Cabrera is one example.
She was 20 and still in training at the Culinary Institute of America when she dropped her resume off to the train car in person — no one had responded to the two previous resumes she’d emailed. The sum of her professional experience at that point was two years working under Chef Andrew Weissman at Il Sogno Osteria at the Pearl and an externship at a fine dining establishment in Belgium.
Rico Torres asked if she had time for a quick interview right then. He invited her back the next day to help out during dinner service, “doing whatever they needed me to do,” she said, “like walking dishes to the table, picking up dishes, plating here and there. I was so green.”
Once she graduated, Cabrera became Mixtli’s chef de partie, also known as a station chef or line cook. She did that for several years before becoming sous chef, and in 2022 was promoted to chef de cuisine. Today, Nico Garza serves as sous chef.
Working for founders who value women’s leadership, she said, is empowering. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve been here for eight years. I’m just lucky to be surrounded by the women in this room.”
They are clearly a tight-knit group that has each others’ backs. When Cabrera teared up, Pruitt got her a napkin. They laughed knowingly at others’ stories, like when Mitchell admitted she got bored making the same desserts off an unchanging menu.
After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, Ariz., Mitchell spent two years at Les Pêcheurs, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Antibes in the South of France. Like Mixtli, Les Pêcheurs offered a tasting menu that changed regularly, and she grew to love the challenge.
She moved to San Antonio in 2019 and worked for Signature and then Bliss as that Southtown restaurant’s executive pastry chef. But she missed the variety and challenge of developing new desserts, so when she saw the role open up in Mixtli, she knew she wanted it.
But Mitchell had promised Bliss at least a year.
She emailed Torres and Galicia, offering to be a prep to whomever they hired, working hours outside her job at Bliss. “They interviewed me the next day, and hired me for the position I created,” she said, her voice still registering wonder. “So I got to join the team” and keep her promise.
Roughly a year and a half later, the executive pastry chef position came open. “And I was here, so they … ” Mitchell does not finish her thought before Pruitt jumps in: “You deserved it. You worked so hard.”
An ever-changing menu
The hardest part of the job — and the most exhilarating, all the women agreed — is when it’s time to develop the next tasting menu. Since the beginning, the menu, wine and cocktails all change several times a year, with dishes that tell a story, often of a region in Mexico, but also of history, tradition and myth.
The current menu, for example, which runs through Dec. 21, is called “La Conquista: 1519,” marking Spain’s arrival on the Yucatan coast and the subsequent fall of the Aztec empire. Mixtli launched the year with Japan x Mexico, then followed up by rotating the menu every three weeks instead of every three months to showcase Mexico’s “pueblos mágicos,” or magical towns.
Telling a cohesive story is so central to each menu that Mixtli’s servers are known as guides, Pruitt said. “They’re guiding guests through the dinner service, through wine, cocktail and beverage choices … and guiding them through the history and the stories of the menu.”
The restaurant closes for several days while the team gathers to research and share ideas. They always include a trip to the UTSA library, where research librarians help by pulling relevant cookbooks and history books.
Those research days are “the most stressful time,” said Beckman, who became Mixtli’s bar manager last summer after making a name for herself behind the Sternewirth bar at Hotel Emma. “But I believe that pressure truly makes diamonds.”
Sternewirth is where Beckman first wowed Pruitt.
All the bartenders there submit cocktails for consideration on the bar’s menu, she said. “Every other bartender would have one or two, and Lauren would have eight. And they were all amazing. I knew she could take the reins here like no one else, and thank goodness she did, because it has made our entire restaurant better.”
The bar at Mixtli doesn’t require reservations, and even has its own entrance on South Presa Street. Everyone is welcome, even those who don’t imbibe. “My zero-proof menu is extremely important to me,” Beckman said. “I think inclusivity is really important in the bar industry. I don’t do my job to get people intoxicated, right? I I put art into a glass — and that could have alcohol in it or it could not.”
Beckman also emphasized Mixtli’s sustainability efforts. “Every decision we make here takes our carbon footprint into account,” she said. “I hope other bars in the city are doing the same, but if they are, they’re keeping it too quiet — and that’s a missed opportunity.“
‘Open arms when people walk in’
As they geared up for a busy Friday night, the women had a message for those who might be intimidated by the Michelin star or the expense of a night out at Mixtli, where a tasting menu ticket currently costs $150 for one person.
“People might think it’s a little bit snooty,” said Mitchell. “But that’s never been this place. I mean, they got the service award! It’s open arms when people walk in here. We cherish every customer.”
Pruitt said the secret to great service is authenticity and a laser focus on every detail.
“You want to be incredibly genuine,” she said. “You want to to study all the details of how the night is going to go, from the most mundane silverware placement all the way to: is this someone’s 50th wedding anniversary? Can we get them flowers? What’s going to make their night amazing?
“And how can we change our service to cater to that?”