Looks Good, but lacks flexibility (Wahaca Mexican Restaurant (Covent Garden, London))

Member Name: huggy2009

Product:	Wahaca Mexican Restaurant (Covent Garden, London)
Date:	17/05/09 (158 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice sounding menu, nice prices

Disadvantages: Not a place to go if you have an olive oil allergy

We went here based on the solid reviews in Time Out and other local magazines and the promise that this was something new for Mexican food in London, unfortunately I wish we'd contacted them in advance as their website advised that their chef would deal with individual eater requirements and take these into account, perhaps we misread it but having travelled up to London on a 3 hour journey for a day trip, we found the place disappointing.

Where is it?

Its based on Chandos Place, its about a minutes walk from the Covent Garden main square and is around 4 minutes walk from Embankment and Charing Cross tube and railway stations, its brightly coloured and you enter and walk down stairs to the main eating area.

The main eating area is fine its not as funky as the website or design outside would have you believe though.

The Menu

There is a decent selection of regional Mexican market foods, when we visited we ordered a selection of tacos which looked interesting as well as a Mole and some Quesadilla's. Unfortunately one of our party has an allergy to Olive Oil, so we asked if her food could be cooked in Corn Oil or something similar just to avoid her getting sick, hearing the hype we presumed they would be able to do this, but they were totally inflexible and in the end as they said everything on the menu was cooked with Olive Oil, we decided to go elsewhere, it was disappointing as we'd sat at a table for over 7 minutes waiting for a waiter, we headed off to Cafe Pacifico a Mexican restaurant nearby without the hype and they were more than happy to meet our request.

The menu at Wahaca looked interesting, the meals did look small on other diners plates and the drinks menu wasn't overwhelming, its nicely designed but service wasn't fast and we were disappointed by the attitude following good reports on websites.

I would love to say my experience had been better, but we're going to try Green and Red next time as they've confirmed they can cater for an allergy too. Overall it seemed to me to be a nice little restaurant let down by a bit of inflexibility.

Summary: We were disappointed!