If you listened carefully last weekend, you could hear the sound of expectations being knocked upside the head - kapow! - as revelers checked out the newly opened STIX (35 Stanhope St., 617-456-7849. stixboston.com). The specialty at STIX, brought to you by the team behind the neighboring 33 Restaurant & Lounge, is food served on flavor-infused wooden skewers, and a few of the drinks are just as unusual.
"Everything looks like something you want, and then there's an extra something that makes it just . . . unexpected," said Bobby Ciletti, a Back Bay waiter who was perched at the upstairs bar with a friend. "Like this, it's really fun and interactive," he said, poking with his chopsticks at what looked like slivers of tuna sashimi fanned out in a bento box, surrounded by all sorts of accoutrements. But what appeared to be fish was actually gelatinized rum, which Ciletti dipped into a quartet of tiny bowls filled with flavored sugar - one of which was almost as green as wasabi. This is the Ten Cane Raspberry Sashimi ($15), and if you've been looking for a way to dress Jell-O shots in haute couture, you've found it.
The upstairs dining room is hushed and airy, with Eastern accents, a marked contrast to the subterranean lounge with kinetic LCD panels found at the end of a series of winding stairs and hallways. That's where we found Christine Typadis, a program manager at Boston University. "At first I didn't know if I was going the right way, and when I got here, I thought there was maybe more. It's intimate, though," she said. "I'm used to places that are a little bigger, but this is great if you're looking for something low-key and swanky."
Apparently that's what Randall Yee had in mind. The law school student had gathered a few dozen of his friends there to celebrate his 24th birthday. But it didn't live up to all of his guests' expectations.
"I think it'd be nice if it had a dance floor," said researcher Connie Lee, 27, as the bartender turned up the techno music.
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