Don't let the Masterchef accolade fool you into thinking this will be good! (Wahaca Mexican Restaurant (Covent Garden, London))

Member Name: sakura8

Product:	Wahaca Mexican Restaurant (Covent Garden, London)
Date:	18/04/09 (305 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Erm, you can name drop the restaurant to impress your friends?

Disadvantages: Mediocre, luke-warm food, so busy you're rushed out

Last night I went to Wahaca with three of my friends, as two of them had eaten there before and raved about the place.

About the restaurant:
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Wahaca is a Mexican restaurant opened by Tomasina/Tommi Miers, winner of Masterchef in 2005. I didn't actually watch that series of Masterchef, but I saw her TV series "The Wild Gourmets" and "A Cook's Tour of Spain". I was really impressed by her passion for food and cooking so I was really excited at the prospect of eating at Wahaca, where she is the executive chef and co-owner.

Wahaca opened in Covent Garden in July 2007 and sells itself as a place to eat authentic Mexican food. It is a funky 140-seat basement restaurant with a canteen style and the décor is colourful and unpretentious.


Getting in the door
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My friends who had dined there before said it wasn't possible to book a table, so as it was a Friday night we arrived quite early at 6.15pm hoping to get a table quite quickly. I noticed a sandwich board placed outside the restaurant with the boast of Winner, Best Cheap Eat The Observer Food Monthly Awards 2008, which is possibly one of the reasons for the long queue as we dived in through the front door to escape the rain.

The queue seemed to move quite quickly down the stairs towards the Front of House person, who looked like he'd been sucking on a lemon for a week and had the surly attitude to match his sour face. We told him we wanted a table for 4 and he asked us if all of our party were actually in the restaurant and we said yes. So he begrudgingly took our name and added us to the long list of people waiting for tables on his clipboard and he told us it would be about a 20-25 minute wait. My friend had warned me that they have a policy of not adding groups to the list if not everyone in your group is actually on the premises.


The long wait:
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We were given a table pager and waited by the bar with about 30-40 other people who were waiting for a table. Luckily there were some seats so my friends and I chatted away and as I hadn't seen one of them for years, we had a lot to catch up on and I didn't notice that 45 minutes had gone by. We then went to see how much longer we'd have to wait and luckily this prompted them to get us a table, however it was table for 10 people and we would have to share it with a group of 4 other girls. This didn't bother us in the slightest as it was a big table in the corner and there was plenty of room.


Time to order:
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Our waitress came over almost as soon as we were seated and asked us if we were ready to order. We'd hardly looked at the vast menu, so we asked for more time but we did order some drinks. These came quickly but then again we didn't order anything complicated like cocktails, just tap water and a couple of fruit juices. The juices were £2.75 each and for that price I expected a freshly squeezed Apple and Raspberry Juice, but to my disappointment it was out of a glass bottle. It wasn't bad, just nothing spectacular.

The menu is written on a paper place mat and just like at Wagamamas the waiter/waitress note down what you order, which is handy as sometimes it's difficult to remember what you ordered by the time they bring the food!


The Menu & what we ate:
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The menu is split into the following sections:
* Drinks and Nibbles
* Street Food, small plates of Tachos, Tostadas, Quesadillas or Taquitos
* Soup and Salads
* Platos fuertes, which are bigger plates of food

The Street Food dishes cost between £3-£4 and are designed to be eaten like Tapas, where you order a few dishes and share between friends (or gorge on them all yourself!).

The Platos fuertes cost no more than £10, but the portions aren't very big so my friends advised ordering a main meal plus a plate of Street Food. So I ordered a Char-grilled Steak Burrito (£6.25) and I was given the option to add cheese, which I did for an extra 40p. However, when I tasted it I regretted adding the cheese as it had such an overpowering flavour that I couldn't taste the Chipotle salsa & grilled spring onions that were supposed to be in the burrito. The steak was nicely cooked medium-rare and seasoned with lots of black pepper, but there wasn't much evidence of it being char-grilled. This main meal came with tortilla chips, which they claim are freshly-made but they're really nothing to write home about.

The Chipotle Chicken Quesadilla (£3.75) was a huge disappointment, as I expected it to be spicy from the chipotle (smoked jalapeno pepper), but instead it just tasted of cheese and there was hardly any chicken in it. The horribly sweet tomato marinade was an insipid pink colour and it looked like someone had thrown-up into a tortilla, it was so unappetising!


Such a shame:
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My biggest grievance with the food was that everything arrived luke-warm, which I hate as I like my food to be piping hot. Judging by the speed at which it came to the table, I suspect hardly anything is freshly cooked and I can just imagine a big fast-food production line in the kitchen.

They have adopted the Wagamama style of saying that "the food will be brought to the table as and when it is ready". I don't mind this at Wagamamas, because at least the food is served piping hot and I've never had to wait too long for everyone in my group to receive their food. Unfortunately Wahaca haven't managed to get this to work as my friend had to wait ages for her meal, which was a vegetarian salad! How they managed to make putting together a salad such a long drawn out process I will never know!

I will say that I was impressed with the main meal my friend ordered. It was Pork Pibil (£8.25), which is marinated pork served in a parcel. The meat was incredibly tender and full of flavour, but yet again it was luke-warm and you can just imagine it had been sitting around for a while. It came with black beans and green rice, but the portion of rice was about the size of a petri dish and wouldn't satisfy a sparrow. My friend had eaten here before, so she knew what to expect portion-wise and she also ordered 2 street food dishes to appease her stomach.

At first glance, the prices might seem very reasonable, but if you've got even the most average of appetites, you will need to order a few things to satisfy it, so the cost will soon add up.


Conveyor belt establishment:
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Not being too impressed with the food, we declined the offer of coffee or desserts by the waitress and just asked for the bill. Once we'd paid, the waitress proceeded to try and rush us out of the restaurant by clearing our glasses, even when my friend still had some in her glass and hadn't finished drinking it, which we thought was a bit rude. The waitress then cleared the placemats and we'd had enough of these blatant hints so we left. I know they were busy and desperate for tables, but I would have preferred her to say, "Excuse me ladies, there's a long wait for tables, so would you mind leaving?" But the service had been pretty poor all evening, so it wasn't surprising our meal had ended this way. Suffice to say we didn't leave a tip.

As were leaving the massive queue was snaking out the door and my friend overheard there was a 2 hour wait for a table. I felt like saying to those people waiting that it wasn't worth the wait and they should check out some of the great Thai restaurants in the area instead!


Word gets around:
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I think the problem with Wahaca is its popularity has made it a victim of its own success. What probably started off as a great place to eat fabulous Mexican food when nobody knew about it; has now become more akin to a fast-food joint and the authentic Mexican food has slipped into Tex Mex territory. Maybe it's a different story when it's not a crazy Friday dinnertime, but I won't be rushing back to find out anytime soon.

The only thing I did love about the place is the free Chilli seeds you can grow, that come in packets that look like matches!


Foodie Notes:
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- The corn tortillas are gluten-free
- They apparently use fresh ingredients from English producers, e.g. Lancashire cheese, peppers from West Dorset, chillis from Devon.


Wahaca, 66 Chandos Place, WC2
020 7240 1883
www.wahaca.co.uk
www.wahaca.co.uk/flash/downloads/wahaca_menu.pdf

Summary: I would rather save my money and eat McDonalds/KFC/Nandos etc etc