Wahaca’s Mexican street food
Inspired by the street markets of Mexico, Wahaca arrived on the Southbank last year in eight recycled shipping containers arranged over two overhanging dining areas to form a much talked about pop-up restaurant. Although Wahacha’s pop-up was intended to be a temporary fixture, it’s still there and if yesterday’s covers are anything to go by, Wahaca’s as popular as ever.
Wahaca’s Southbank experimental London Pop-up
Make no mistake, Wahaca is a pop-up with little formality. There are no reservations, the service is casual and friendly, and your dishes will arrive when they’re ready from the kitchen. Having had a busy morning, once the menu was explained, we ploughed straight in, ordering an array of burritos, tortillas, nachos and sides. Each dish served was fresh tasting and flavoursome, with the star of the show being the tortillas. Whilst they were a little moist, they tasted fantastic, as did the beetroot and goats cheese salad, although the dish would have benefitted from more goats cheese.
Wahaca pride themselves on, “delicious, freshly prepared food, produced quickly” and on this basis Wahaca can’t be faulted. We opted for Wahaca as an alternative to a depressingly predictable, homogonous, high-street chain restaurant, and I’m so glad we did. Although we discovered our 2-year old hasn’t developed a taste for Mexican food just yet, conversely, we re-discovered just how much we liked it, and how much fun Mexican food can be.
Hopefully Wahaca’s pop-up is here to stay
Judging by the Wacha website, their Mexican brand of street food is proving to be very popular and can be sampled at another seven locations across the capital, from Canary Warf to White City. I can only hope the forward thinking Southbank keep this pop-up going as it’s a huge amount of fun and the perfect antidote for the middle market chains looking to dominate our high streets.
Wahaca Southbank
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London
SE1 8XX
020 7928 1876
www.wahaca.com
We spent: £25 p.p.
Nearest tube: Waterloo
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Wahaca’s Mexican street food at the Southbank: http://alturl.com/y6emj
[…] Wahaca is the brainchild of Masterchef 2005 winner Thomasina Miers: a former freelance food writer, she opened the first Wahaca in August 2007, a second the following year and now she has eleven branches. Arguably the most successful of the new breed of Masterchef winners, she has also presented TV cookery shows including Wild Gourmet (C4), A Cook’s Tour of Spain (C4) and Mexican Food Made Simple (C5). She is an expert on Mexican food having travelled extensively in the county and reviewed many restaurants in Mexico City. Wahaca serves on mainstream Mexican food, washed down with Tequila and Mezcal cocktails, as well as a selection of Mexican beers (Negra Modelo being my favourite – a dark and malty lager which was first brewed by Austrian immigrants). I went along to the Soho branch on a Monday night – we were able to get a table without any problem but you might have to queue for a table on other nights (they do not take bookings). Wahaca has an extensive menu and the dishes are all fairly small and designed for sharing. We started with a black bean tostada £3.8 which centered on freshly prepared black beans paired with rich avocado and, oddly but pleasantly, finished with Lancashire cheddar. We then moved on to chicken mole tacos £4.1 which were essentially a Mexican style tomato and red chilli curry – the sauce was a tad mild, but the dish was still very tasty. Cod tacos £8.95 were the highlight of the meal for me – the fish was battered and served with a light, well dressed salad. The quality of meat in the steak tacos £4.85 was reasonable and it was served medium rare – however, we made the mistake of ordering the grilled cheese and salsa: the cheese was greasy and the salsa consisted mostly of raw onion – I would recommend ordering this dish without toppings. Verdict: good value, unchallenging but well prepared Mexican food.