When we were organising our schedule for London, I said to Adam that I really wanted some good mexican food before we headed to see Wicked. (Huddersfield has a severe lack of Mexican food, the only Mexican eatery being over priced and cliché, they have things like duck in hoi sin sauce on their specials menu… whut?!)

Adam was straight on the case looking for a decent, reasonably priced mexican restaurant for us, preferably one where we didn’t have to book (‘cos we didn’t really know what time we’d be eating). The boy came up good when he sent me a link to the Wahaca website, http://www.wahaca.co.uk/, I’d heard about the mexican market eatery before as Katie had posted a few photos from one of her visits there, but it’d slipped my mind until Adam found it again.

Wahaca currently has two locations in the centre of London, one in Covent Garden (where we went) and one in Canary Wharf. They also have one in the Westfield Shopping Centre. We perused the online menu (a nice downloadable PDF version of the real menu, why don’t more restaurant websites have this?) and pretty much decided on the ‘Wahaca Selection’.. seemed like a great chance to sample a variety of the goodies and discover what we might want to have the next time we go.

It all worked out quite well, we ended up getting their about 4.30pmish as we wanted to have time to walk up the Mall and take a look at the Palace before heading to the show at 7.30pm. We got a table right away and both ordered margaritas, Adam went for the traditional and I got a hibiscus flavour which tasted a bit like berries. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from Wahaca because we were travelling light before going to the show. We ordered some nachos with salsa (nice, chunky salsa fresca which came with a small bucket of nachos) and our Wahaca selection which consisted of:

• 3  pork pibil tacos – these are soft tacos and quite small, about 3/4 bites each. The filling is a shredded spicy pork, akin to my favourite pulled pork.
• 2 broad bean quesadillas – very interesting, Wahaca have a thing about using seasonal local produce in their food, and with this quesadilla I think they’ve discovered a great recipe! If you’re not familiar with Mexican food a quesadilla is a sort of sandwich made from a tortilla filled with cheese and other ingredients and then grilled or griddled until it goes all melty.
• 3 chicken mole tacos - soft tacos again this time filled with a mole (thick, spicy sauce) and chicken. Quite messy but very tastey!
• 2 black bean tostadas - have to confess I only tried half of this, I was so stuffed. A crisp tortilla topped with lovely fresh ingredients, nice, nice.
• 2 new potato taquitos –  Another great use of a typically british ingredient, these are wrapped up tortillas filled with different things and then deep fried and topped with sour cream. I liked these, plus they weren’t too big so all the stodgy carbs weren’t too bad.
• Green rice & black beans – exactly what it says on the tin, the black beans were realllllly good though!

Overall I was really impressed with the food – for the price, quickness of service & use of ingredients – I’ve seen a few not-so-good reviews floating around the net, Time Out weren’t incredibly generous with their star-rating, but then again they still gave them a decent enough review. Some of the reviews are complaining that they once bought a huge taco filled with amazing things in Mexico for about $2 but then came to Wahaca and got small ones and had to pay almost £5… c’mon, get some perspective. This is a central London Mexican restaurant where you can get a table almost instantly, have great food served quickly made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients, wash it down with a super tastey margarita & then not have a heart attack when the bill arrives. Perfect place for people visiting the city like we were, and I’m sure it’s great as a regular haunt for Londoners too.

The founder of Wahaca, Thomasina Miers, recently released a great Mexican cookbook too, Mexican Food Made Simple – my copy is on its way as we speak – which is full of basic Mexican recipes that’ll help you through out the old el paso kits. Yep.

Oh! oh! And, you get a neat little packet or chili seeds with your receipt :)