Wahaca is a bustling mexican restaraunt serving a variety of mexican street food. As you may have guessed the name has been spelt phonetically to allow ease in pronounciation. The atmosphere on friday is great, it's bustling with people and the staff were stretched but seemed to be coping well. I felt like I had just entered an open plan kitchen in a contemporary mexican street market. The only problem is the waiting period, we had to wait an hour for a table and they don't take reservations.
While waiting for our table i saw these brightly coloured packets that looked like matchboxes. I opened it expecting to find a matchstick, instead I found little cardboard sticks with jalepeno seeds on it! What an absolutley brilliant marketing idea. Imagine the local curry house giving you a cumin or mustard stick along with your takeaway. I haven't grown my pepper seeds yet, but I am looking forward to sprouting my new bunch of chilli plants shortly.
Apart from the free chilli plants the food was pretty decent and economically priced. S tried a bunch of their small street food platters of which the frijoles made of smoky black beans, crumbled cheese, spicy slaw and fresh salsa was my favourite. The rest were quite bland. I tried the Bass a la mojo - Sustainable sea bass with a corn and jalapeno salsa. Served with coriander rice, charred baby gem leaves and a red chilli. It was fresh and perfectly seasoned for my spice loving palate. Everything is accompanied with a red and green salsa sauce, which can be used to spice up the dishes a bit more. We ended the meal with 2 rounds of flavoured tequila , Hibiscus and Tamarind, which you are meant to savour and not slam. They both tasted like fenny to me, and I did'nt really appreciate the savouring bit , but if tequila is your tipple they have a wide range to choose from.
An interesting bit of info about Wahaca is the chef and owner is 2005 Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers. Wahaca is simple tasty mexican food , the ambience is entertaining and fun. The food needs a bit more tweaking and is a tad bland in some instances. I would go back for a fun evening with mates and a few more wahaca chilli sticks.
