Tipped

the best mexican you'll find here

July 03, 2009

It is really good! Always good and always great service. Just make sure your party is all there, cause they wont seat you until everyone has arrived. Delicious.

Great with friends

June 14, 2009

The interior to the basement Wahaca is done out like a street market with fake rolldown shutters on the walls. The idea is to recreate a kind of Mexican street cafe and not having a clue about the real thing it seems a reasonable conceit to me.

The menu has normal main dishes like burritos but the action is all in the small dishes that you can order in tranches.

The food is excellent, everyone is going to have their favourites but I love the black beans, cheese quesilladas and smoked chicken tostado. Everything tastes fresh and zesty.

On top of this Wahaca is the only restaurant I've been too recently that proudly shows off its MSC seafood. That means you can enjoy the crab and shrimp without guilt (while making it depressingly obvious how many places don't care about sustainable seafood).

Downsides? It can be very busy and therefore you have to wait a while in the crowded bar (which really fails to crank out the limited range of cocktails in a reasonable amount of time) and then your table gets turned as soon as you are done. It is more like canteen dining but you may feel you spend as much time waiting as you do eating.

Tags: mexican, lunch, dinner

Serious Mexican tapas

March 26, 2009

The upside: delicious food in a hip, modern setting in the middle of the city. The downside: too popular for its own good - getting a table can be near impossible.

Wahaca - an anglicized spelling of Oaxaca (the region of Mexico that gave us mole) - isn't so much Tex-Mex as authentic Mexican food. The servings are modest but filling, the service is quick - almost like a cafeteria but with table service - and the lines to get in can be overwhelming.

A great place to go with friends, but if you're looking for a quiet, romantic spot this isn't it.

Tags: cuisine: mexican, covent garden, popular, cheap and quick

I'll eat your identity crisis.

February 10, 2009

To put the important stuff first, I'll go back to Wahaca, and take friends. No hesitation, no doubts. The food at Wahaca was varied, very very tasty, and veraciously cheap. The waitstaff were friendly and efficient, the ambiance buzzing, the joint packed on a Monday night, the decor light and modern and interesting. My only factual actual complaints about our dinner there were the noise level (a bit much), and the crappy margarita--too sweet and mild, not enough tequila or acidity to justify the salt. But they had a fantastic sangrita, which is basically my favorite cocktail ever. And they have a separate tequila menu, the sign of a Mexican restaurant that takes itself very seriously indeed. So far, so very good.

But it's this seriousness that left me with serious questions. They claim all their food is locally and organically grown (the habanero sauce came all the way from Devon), and everything then recycled or disposed of as gently as possible afterwards. While I strongly agree with the hippy politics, the effect at Wahaca (short for Oaxaca, I presume) was one of complete unrootedness, inauthenticity. Mexican lite, inspired by but completely divorced from actual Mexico, despite Wahaca's claim to be "Mexican market food." (My memories of the market at Merida? Dark, huge, rambling, packed, selling everything possible, including the best cinnamon I've ever had, but with poor drainage, beggars, live chickens.) The Mexican food culture, the cuisine, evolved in a certain place, with a certain climate, in a specific cultural and historical context. It has terroir. Chilies grow better in warmer climes; the Aztecs prized the corn fungus known as huitlacoche. Apparently, huitlacoche grows best "during times of drought in a 78°F to 93°F (25°C–34°C) temperature range." How on earth do you duplicate these conditions in Devon, or Lancashire, and why would you try?

The feeling of being in a restaurant only loosely inspired by an ideal of Mexico was heightened by some of the menu's oddities--feta cheese instead of queso fresco, a "crema" on the frijoles that seemed for all the world to just be crème fraîche. The modernist decor, and Japanese-ish pottery dishes--Wahaca could have taken over the space and furnishings from any other restaurant, and any restaurant could take over from them. The waitstaff could have formed their own United Nations.

So maybe the actual point of Wahaca isn't Mexican food, and certainly not authentic Mexican food (though they studied it very carefully.) I assume it's to demonstrate a different type of restaurant, one where you can eat locally with the smallest possible environmental impact, where you know pains have been taken to recycle what can be recycled, and instead of matches, they give you chili pepper seeds to take home. Perhaps Wahaca, modern organic British food, can be forgiven (should be applauded?) for letting itself be inspired by the cuisine of a place 6000 miles away....at least when the results are so successful. Three cheers for globalization, and its backlash.

Tags: cuisine: mexican, buzzy, cocktails, vegetarian, fun, organic

Is it worth the wait?

December 30, 2008

Wahaca has a great buzz about it and the prices are reasonable. Just be careful what you order unless you like it oily. We found the beef dishes to be extremely greasy. The lighter dishes, such as fish and cactus based tostadas, are good. The margaritas are flippin brilliant. So, mixed reviews on the food and be prepared to queue.

Tags: Mexican

Good Wagamama's of Tex Mex

December 10, 2008

I'm not an expert of Mexican or Tex Mex food, but the format is quick and fun, location is smack in the centre of town, service is good, and the food tasty. Long queues are a pain, but it's good value for money. The drink list is pretty good too.

Tags: cuisine: tex mex

This is not Mexican, it's 'nouveau'

December 10, 2008

I miss quesadillas. So when I saw the queues at Wahaca and looked at the decor I was very interested. There are indeed long queues at peak hours, often over an hour.

Its decor is really interesting, giving this kind of 'chic peasant' feel with water features etc around.

It's definitely an experience, but its understaffed and the food is only reasonable (not great) with quite small portions. This said: reasonable prices. Do NOT go here if you want traditional Mexican, it's a kind of 'London nouveau' deal -- to this end, worth a try if you go slightly off peak -- we got a table for 2 at 7 almost immediately.

I still miss quesadillas.

(I think it's trying to be the Wagamama of Mexican... but it misses the mark sadly)

Not just cheese and beans....

October 01, 2008

So last week I suddenly developed a craving for Mexican food. Perhaps it was the late summer sun we had in London, or just that I'd become curious about this place following the mixed reviews. The last time I had Mexican cuisine was somewhere in the backwoods of San Luis Obispo and was treated to a burrito smothered in cheese the size of a small child. All I remember from that night was crawling home on all fours clutching my stomach and the ensuing cheese nightmares. But time is a healer, and once again I was ready to dip my toe into the waters. We arrived here off peak on a Saturday (around 3pm) and were shown straight to a table. The place was probably about 3/4 full and had a good buzz about it, although the decor is quite school canteen like. We ordered a selection from the Street food section of the menu and ploughed our way through some salmon ceviche tostadas, chorizo and potato quesadillas, pork tacos, a super food salad and some margaritas, a couple of Modelo Especials and a shot of aged tequila for husband. I felt the food was actually pretty good - it felt light and fresh, and dare I say it - almost healthy! Service was mixed - the waiters were friendly enough, but we had to remind them about some forgotten drinks and then at the end they mixed up one of our plates so we had to wait whilst it was cooked for us. The margaritas were so-so. I'd had a pre-dinner drink at Navajo Joe just up the road in Covent Garden, and their margarita definitely had more kick to hit. But then it was also more expensive. However, at the end of the day, our meal was very good value for money and I hadn't set my standards too high. Would I go again - probably. For a quick snack in town with some friends this is a good option. It's certainly not a place to linger, but it's perfectly fine for what it aims to be - healthy fresh fast food.

Tags: mexican

Don't jump on this bandwagon...

October 01, 2008

Hmmm, I've been here twice and both times I've left feeling annoyed.

They make you wait at least at hour for a table (I arrived on a weeknight at 7pm) and they give you unrealistic times so when you come back and expect your table ready, you have another half an hour to wait.

The Front of House staff are rude, sarcastic and kept forgetting our booking. I can understand they have a stressful job but no need to be rude, after all, we are the ones waiting for a table.

The first time we went, we ended up sitting about an inch away from the people who had been queueing behind us for an hour which was a bit awkward as it felt like we knew them by this point.

Wahaca is a money-making machine. If there is a table available for 4 but you are a party of 3, they would rather make you wait for an hour than lose out on that extra person's spend. This is not a struggling business, they are constantly full and pack everyone in like sardines. It's also noisy and you have to shout to make yourself heard.

The food is good but the above really does spoil the experience.

Wahaca claims to be authentic Mexican but I'm not so sure. They offer Churros y Chocolate (which I love) and, according to Wahaca: "churro stalls are found all over Mexico". Which is strange because I've travelled through a fair part of Mexico and never saw a churro stall.

So why does it attract so many people? I think us British can't help but be attracted to a queue. If there's a queue, it must be good right?

Please don't jump on this bandwagon and spend your money somewhere more worthy.

Uninspired

September 25, 2008

I was majorly hyped up by this place, and all the good reviews it has been getting. Maybe the people who have dined here and thought it was good have never had good Mexican food.

Overall, the experience was pretty poor. The dishes were really uninspired, lacking the spicy tanginess of good Mexican. The tortilla chips were stale and out of a bag. The salsas came in very small portions and were equally disappointing.

I wouldn't go back or recommend this place. You can make better Mexican at home.