Every once in a while even a creature of habit needs to shake things up. So when a friend and I were trying to choose a place for dinner last night, I suggested Tico. Gasp! I was leaving the South End! Newly opened, with lots of Facebook love – I wanted to give it a try. Surely they wouldn’t make me drink tequila. (For those of you not from Boston or living under a rock, a recent spate of tequila bars/South-of-someone’s-border style restaurants have flooded the Boston restaurant scene. The latest offering from demigod Michael Schlow, Tico comes with the best pedigree IMHO.)

With a bit of pre-dinner time to kill, I decided to check Tico out online. According to their website, Tico is simple.

A place that doesn’t take itself too seriously, Tico has a fun, sexy atmosphere, delicious and unpretentious food, amazing cocktails, cold beer, lots of tequila, cool music and great people watching.

Tico is all about your good time.

Conceived by Chef/Owner Michael Schlow (Radius, Via Matta, Alta Strada) and designed by David Manfredi of Elkus-Manfredi Architects, Tico is a new and exciting style of restaurant; American at its core, the menu is influenced by Schlow’s travels and love for Spain, Mexico and South America.

For the most part, I think Tico achieves what it sets out to be. I really liked it and will definitely go back. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yelp ranks higher on a Google search than the restaurant’s site (note to someone in charge of marketing), so I actually went there first. I was surprised to find so many negative comments after all my Facebook friends had been giving it raves. There were plenty of favorable comments, but the bad were enough to give me pause. Having no idea who these Yelp folks are (wannabe food writers from the looks of things – too bad some of them can’t write), I took their comments with a grain of salt, but it’s hard to ignore such straightforward criticism as getting seated 45 minutes after a reservation and a warning not to get stuck at a dining table next to the bar without risking bar patrons mistaking your table for a dirty glass depository. I decided it would be best to call to make a reservation. My first try I was put on endless hold and then hung up on. My second try got me an apology, a reservation and a half-hearted promise to find us a table not near the bar.

We arrived fairly early, fully prepared to wait in the bar until time for our reservation. As it turned out, we never left. A pair of nice women were leaving and happily offered us their cozy leather seats in the more lounge-like section near the windows. Here there is a mix of leather armchairs and cubes, window seats and low tables. Bar adjacent and in the center of the room is a really cute, white painted table with four leather cubes for seats. Unlike any of the other wooden tables around, it could be super fun. Maybe not on a busy Friday, when the bar gets four deep and tequila-drunk bar crawlers are tripping over you, but the two women who were sitting there seemed to be having a lovely time.

In my opinion, the best seat in the house – if you can score it – is the pair of big leather armchairs in the corner of the bar directly opposite the entrance. You have the perfect vantage point for watching people as they enter the front door and belly up to the bar, but you are buffered from the melee that has prompted such criticism about sitting at tables on that side of the restaurant. A warning girls: one of the bar’s few televisions is tucked discreetly into this corner. If you let your date take the chair with its back to the window you will lose his attention to whatever game is on, especially since the speaker directly overhead makes conversation challenging. Just make out. Scandalous is something to aspire to.

We ended up staying in our cozy corner of the bar to eat dinner. In part because we liked the comfy chairs, but mainly because our 8:15 reservation time came and went and at some point I just wanted to eat. I’m usually a bar diner anyway, but my friend is not. This could have been a problem and it is one of the criticisms most noted on Yelp. Expected new restaurant awkwardness may explain the kinks in service, but they’ll have to fix them soon because eventually people will get pissed off enough that they won’t bother to come back. The bar was packed on a Wednesday; you can imagine the nightmare of enduring an interminable wait on a Friday night when there’s not an inch of room – or service – to spare. I hope management cares enough to work on this because I’d hate to see this gem become the sole domain of Back Bay after work drinkers and tourists. Otherwise, service was warm, solicitous and good, even in the busy bar. When they were slow they knew it; our waitress had nonverbal communication down to an art. Food came from the kitchen miraculously fast.

Armed with several concurring opinions about menu standouts, I stuck to those for the most part. Even though I’m usually not a big cheese person, the Crispy Fried Manchego with spicy pomegranate honey sauce was as good as I expected. The honey tasted recognizably wild and was just delicious. No surprise that this is one of the most universally praised dishes.

The Brussels sprouts with bacon, kumquats, mint and jalapeños are simply insane. As blasphemous as this may be for this South Ender to say, I think they’re better than the ones at Toro. I join those who say they would come back for this dish alone. Holy jalapeño!

When I asked our waitress which was better between the chicken a la plancha and the Serrano Ham with tomato rubbed bread, she recommended the ham. The tomato bread was tasty but needs more tomato. The ham was fresh but lacking in flavor. I’m not a big charcuterie person but a nice Iberico or a more flavorful Serrano variety would do this dish more justice.

The Lobster and Avocado tacos were good, but a bit on the bland side. They could have used something to bring up the flavor a bit.

My friend had the “Golden” Chicken entree, with Peruvian asparagus, crispy potatoes, red chiles and scallions. We both thought this was boring. The chicken was perfectly well cooked, moist and of good quality, but the brown sauce was blah and the aioli it was all sitting on was just gross. Other entrees may be better but I’d be inclined to skip them for the more interesting tapas.

It occurs to me that many of the menu recommendations I read may have come from less adventurous diners than I. The menu is diverse with lots of choices. Perhaps next time I’ll try the Crispy Fish tacos with pickled onions and red jalapeño, the quail a la plancha, and BBQ Shrimp with mango salad.

Tico has been touted as a tequila bar. Since tequila is not my thing I stuck to the Masi Tupungato “Passo Doble” Malbec blend from Argentina, which was a recommendation from our server. Not the best Malbec I’ve ever had, but serviceable and drinkable. Testing Tico’s cocktail mettle will have to wait for another visit.

My two favorite things about Tico are the decor and the music.

It’s very obvious that great attention to detail was paid in creating a beautiful space and atmosphere. Tico is a mix of modern and sleek, with wood and glass, and touches that give it a vaguely Spanish bohemian vibe. The ceiling in the bar is painted a dark burgundy with a gold swirl design that you’ll find echoed in the background on the website. The lighting over the bar is stunning. No pendant lights here; these are enormous vintage-looking fixtures that were described by one Yelp commenter as coming straight from an Argentinian hotel. I’ve never been to Argentina but I can imagine just this. I loved that the votive candles on the tables were each a little different and the cluster of star pendants in our corner of the bar is very cool.

The art in the restaurant is primarily photography created specially for Tico by Christian Boyd. I’m fairly certain that he must have created the great abstract fire graphics that decorate the glass panels dividing the bar from the main dining room, creating an interesting tease between transparent and opaque, and definitely adding to the warmth and Latin feel of the place. I’ll have to be sure to look for more of his work the next time I’m there.

Since we never left our great spot in the corner, I didn’t see most of the rest of the space until we went through to go to the parking garage exit at the far end of the bar. The dining room itself is large, doing away with the chopped up sections of its predecessor, and has extraordinary high ceilings. Although I didn’t really see it up close, my impression was that the pleasant darkness and warm lights served to keep the room more intimate than you might expect. There are several tables near the windows looking out onto St. James, which would be my choice if I were sitting in the main dining room. At the far end of the room is the open kitchen and ceviche bar. Purely subjective, I know, but open kitchens are one of my restaurant pet peeves. I hate going home smelling like I’ve been rolling around on the grill. I guess this is something I’ll have to accept from restaurants I like well enough otherwise but I wouldn’t let them seat me at a table there.

The music is a wonderfully eclectic, entertaining mix of funk, bluesy rock, zydeco, latin-tinged tunes and lounge standards. Perfect really. At one point they played Lenny Kravitz’ Mr. Cab Driver, followed by some Elvis Presley rockabilly and some obscure Stray Cats. Fabulous! The Yelpers who said Tico has bad music must be musical morons. I liked it so much I would have willingly paid for a playlist download. There was lots of foot tapping and head shaking going on. And not just from me. Our waitress told me toward the end of the evening that Michael Schlow creates the playlists himself and she seemed particularly happy that we liked it so much.

Tico is fun and sexy. I had a very good time and look forward to my next visit, when I will, most likely, stick to the bar. I may avoid weekends for a while, to save myself from the aggravation an overly crowded bar is rumored to have on service and enjoyability. But Tico is definitely worth leaving the South End for.