Mexican cuisine is known for its varied flavours, colourful decoration, and variety of spices and ingredients. Picture: WikiCommons
Sunday, December 27, 2009
AFTER decades in a culinary desert of Tex-Mex eateries with plastic cacti and dreadful cheese-drenched nachos, Wahaca is leading a wave of modern restaurants bringing the authentic flavours of Mexico to London.The British capital has been transformed from a land of pie and eels shops into a global food lovers' paradise over the last few decades by dozens of nationalities making it their home.
But few Mexicans have settled in Britain and their culinary riches have remained largely unknown until former Tommi Miers and business partner Mark Selby opened the first branch of Wahaca in 2007 after falling in love with Mexican food while travelling.
"Mexican food is so badly depicted in the UK. There are so many more interesting things to offer," Selby told Reuters in an interview at the company's third restaurant which opened in Canary Wharf recently. "I really wanted to do proper Mexican food ... it can be fresh, it can be wonderful, the flavours can be brilliant."
Miers and Selby travelled around Mexico in the late 1990s, with Miers returning to cook her way around its food hotspots for over a year, collecting recipes as she went.
On her return, she won British TV cookery contest show Masterchef in 2005 with a Mexican dish and the two opened the first Wahaca (phonetic pronunciation of Mexican state Oaxaca) in a basement in trendy Covent Garden two years later.
That branch now serves around 5,500-6,000 people a week, with queues often stretching up the stairs and down the street. The company is now looking to open a fourth branch soon.
"We love the idea of what Oaxaca state stands for. It's a culinary centre, it's a cultural centre, it's got this wonderful feeling about it," Selby said as the waiting staff buzzed around the gleaming Canary Wharf branch preparing for the long queue of bankers that soon gathered at the door.
"Everything about Wahaca is that we are inspired by Mexico but we are not just copying it. We never say we are authentic. But the style, the tacos, the flavour of the markets, the speed of the food, that's what inspired us," he said.
Many Mexican restaurants in Britain claiming to be "authentic" are anything but, serving up a movie-set parody of Mexico, complete with sombreros, ponchos and garish neon beer signs to crowds looking for a place to party.
Wahaca and a few other eateries in the capital, like Mexican-run restaurants Mestizo and Taqueria, are fighting back.
Trying to bring real flavours from south of the Rio Grande out from under the Tex-Mex shadow.
Only dishes actually from Mexico make it onto the menu, and Tex-Mex favourite Burritos only got on there once the two had traced its origins to Baja, California.
Wahaca's Pibil is as good as any Cochinita Pibil you'll find on the Yucatan Peninsula — the home of the slow-roasted meat dish — while the Chicken Tinga tacos match anything you can scoff in a Mexico City taqueria.
All can be drenched in sauce made for Wahaca from chillies grown in southwest England — ranging from the devilishly hot bottle of habanero sauce on your table, a crucial accompaniment to Pibil, to the green and red sauces in small bowls for those looking for a more moderate tingle to their tacos.
Wash it down with a fire-taming glass of Horchata, an almond and rice-based drink with a hint of cinnamon, or a variety of Mexican beverages.
"Although the flavours are distinctly Mexican, most of the ingredients are sourced locally," Selby concluded.
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