About.com Rating

Visit Their Website

While the menu at Rojo Mexican Bistro includes Mexican dishes, the restaurant is more about its trendy, upscale atmosphere and Novi nightlife than its cuisine. The dishes at Rojo are good and sometimes memorable, but they are often overpriced.

Atmosphere:

Rojo Mexican Bistro occupies a corner location in Twelve Mile Crossing at Fountain Walk. In the summer, the restaurant has a great central location for walk-by traffic, but in the winter months, the shared parking with Buffalo Wild Wings, Hooters and Emagine Theater makes for a long walk through a cold parking lot.


Rojo Mexican Bistro is an upscale, trendy restaurant that obviously caters to Novi’s night life. This is most evident in the space given over to the bar area. The dining room has some nice touches, including a large wall of windows overlooking main street and enormous, multicolored-glass chandeliers. There is also a large patio area for those Michigan summer nights.

Once upon a time, the space occupied in the unique mall/plaza was occupied by the Bamboo Club, a Pan Asian restaurant. In fact, Rojo kept much of the Bamboo Club’s décor, including its round booths, fixtures and carpeting. Converting the space to a Mexican Bistro was mainly accomplished through large, hand-painted murals by Detroit artist Andrzej Sikora and a lighted glass display that is now filled with various tequilas from around the world.

Food:

The menu at Rojo Mexican Bistro has its fair share of burritos and quesadillas, but it's through the use of lobster, steak and mahi mahi, rather than through signature recipes, that the dishes are elevated above the traditional Mexican presentation.

One of the restaurant’s best-known dishes is its Guacamole. It is made tableside, which insures freshness and makes for a special presentation.

The Barbequed Shrimp appetizer, on the other hand, was a little bland and underwhelming, especially given that its high price tag easily outsized the three shrimp of the dish.

While the Rojo Signature Chopped Salad was fresh, and the apples and garbanzo beans a unique combination, the optional $3-per-shrimp add on called too much attention to the lone, relatively unseasoned shrimp perched on top of the salad.

The Fire-Roasted Vegetable Platter included a nice variety of vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. The real treat, however, was the way the fire roasting added a smoky, sweet flavor to the assortment. While grilled vegetables, especially the Romaine lettuce, can easily be over or undercooked, Rojo did a great job of grilling the vegetables without burning or wilting them. The vegetables were perfectly caramelized yet retained their moisture. The corn on the cob was also a pleasure, and the goat cheese was a nice contrast to the raspberry tamarind vinaigrette. So few restaurants have a vegetable dish apart from their salad selection that the platter was a real treat and would itself make a good signature dish.

Service:

The waiter was friendly but absent for much of our lunch experience. In fact, given the small number of patrons, the lunch course felt like an after thought for the restaurant/bar. The waiter was also MIA when we discovered we’d been delivered the wrong appetizer. Another waiter eventually filled us in on the fact that the appetizer we ordered, Tora De Camaron (shrimp cakes), had been discontinued. The misdelivered Barbeque Shrimp was, however, taken off the check.

Visit Their Website