A Mexico City Restaurant Opens in Austin With Tostilocos Topped With Ceviche

A Mexico City restaurant boasting coastal Mexican food opened in Austin last month. Con Vista Al Mar opened at 1209 East Seventh Street — which has been many former Austin restaurants including more recently Buzz Mill East — in the Central East Austin area as of September 10.

Con Vista Al Mar — with four locations in Mexico City — is all about Mexican dishes and seafood. The foods take their cues from Mexican beaches and cities. The Vallarta is a spin on the tacón, a popular seafood burrito in Puerto Vallarta, made with smoked swordfish, octopus, and poached shrimp. Then there’s the Chilango (a term for people from Mexico City), the restaurant’s take on the classic campechano, which is typically chopped-and-mixed beef and chorizo, but with shrimp longanisa and pork rinds.

Co-partner and executive chef Irak Roaro’s favorite dish is the tostilocos, a snack he grew up eating in Mazatlán after school. “Tostitos for me is a very nostalgic thing,” he says, and the epitome of “street food.” The snack is made with Sinaloan-style sierra ceviche, where mackerel fish is ground up (rather than diced or sliced) and mixed up with shredded carrots, cucumbers, and red onions, served in an open bag of Tostitos brand chips.

Con Vista Al Mar

Con Vista Al Mar

Con Vista Al Mar

Roaro describes the restaurants as botaneros, where foods are meant to be eaten by hand. He also mentions that the spice levels remain the same as the Mexico City restaurants, but, for Austin, the team added more beef and pork dishes. Scope out the full menu below.

For drinks, Con Vista focuses on using Mexican spirits actually made in Mexico, as Roaro explains. This means tequilas and mezcals, but also vodkas, gins, charandas, raicillas, and even sake. Of the latter, the Clamato “El Chino” is a Michelada drink with, yes, Clamato (a concoction of tomato juice and clam broth) with beer, mezcal, and sake by Mexican company Nami. The wines by the glass and bottle are from Monte Xanic winery in Baja California. Other drinks include cocktails like margaritas, Negronis, and carajillos.

Physically, Con Vista Al Mar is meant to feel like a true Mexican restaurant without being too “cliche,” explains Roaro. The team imported a lot of the furniture, decorations, and tiles straight from Mexico. Even the corn for tortillas comes from Oaxaca.

Con Vista Al Mar

Con Vista Al Mar

Behind Con Vista are Roaro and co-partner Renato Martínez, who have been friends since they were young in Mexico). They started Con Vista Al Mar in 2021, originally intending it to be a taco delivery business because it was the early pandemic, but then decided to shift into a full-service restaurant instead. They expanded with four locations, plus another one planned for the Mexico City area. The name is Spanish for “with a sea view,” a nod to the fact that while the restaurant isn’t by bodies of water, the team is bringing that spirit to those cities.

Part of their plans for Con Vista was always to open in America. Originally, the duo was planning on opening in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, but it was too expensive. So with the help of a broker, they secured this Austin location.

Con Vista Al Mar

Con Vista Al Mar

Most recently, the East Seventh address was an outpost of coffee shop/bar Buzz Mill (aka Buzz Mill East), which ran from 2021 to sometime in 2023. Before that, it was bar/record shop/burrito restaurant Troublemaker from 2019 to 2020, and, before that, it was buzzy New American restaurant the Hightower from 2017 to 2019.

Rounding out the Con Vista team are local partners Lucia and Sebastian Bedoya. Also, the team is looking to open somewhere in the South Congress area eventually, followed by Dallas and San Antonio.

Con Vista’s Austin hours are from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 2 to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. There are indoor and outdoor dine-in services.