Wahaca 1st Birthday Food Review
Posted on: 2016-08-22
Our rating:
Beautifully presented, it was all aesthetically pleasing to the eye and divinely, sumptuously satisfying to the gustatory senses. In other words, as delicious as it was good looking. Mexican street food doesn't get much better than this.
Queens Road in Bristol was alive and buzzing with celebrations Mexican-style over the weekend of Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th August 2016 as Wahaca put on its party hat to celebrate its first birthday.
Yep, it's been a year since the Mexican market and street food restaurant opened its door the city's forever-hungry gastronauts, and in the past twelve months the business has gone from strength to strength plating up dishes of what is arguably the best food of its kind in the city.
When my brother and I visited on a beautifully sunny Saturday afternoon there was a genuine carnival and party atmosphere at and around the venue, with a food truck a little further up handing out free tacos to the more-than-appreciative masses, while inside Wahaca itself there was alive with a raft of fun activities including face painting, guacamole making, cocktail shaking and a sensational live band pumping out the guitar-strumming, bongo-banging Mexican riffs and rhythms.
Wahaca is the brainchild of 2005 MasterChef winner Thomasina Miers and the concept - and more importantly, the food - has proven so popular that, as well as Bristol, there are now branches open in London, Brighton, Cardiff, Chichester, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Manchester. They've even just launched their own taco making kits which are available at selected branches of Tescos. Pretty darned impressive, especially when you consider the original Wahaca in London opened just shy of ten years ago.
Location for any restaurant is of course key, and Wahaca's base at the top of Park Street on the Clifton Triangle is the perfect catchment area for hungry Cliftonites, students and passing punters. Even surrounded by the likes of CAU, Byron, Grillstock and Bill's, this Mexican pinnacle of all things spicy and delicious has more than come into its own and just continues to get better.
Human-sized bird cages swing with bevvie-sipping incumbents in the front window by the bar and the place has an immediately funky, cool and dynamic vibe, helped in no small part by the Latino music playing in the background, imaginative urban art decorating some of the walls, and the bandana-wearing chefs working their delicious Mexican miracles from the open-plan kitchen.
The menu is extensive and impressive, taking in the as-you'd-expect indigenous foodie staples such as tortillas, quesadillas, empanadas, tacos, tostadas and taquitos.
My brother and I went for the Wahaca Selection sharing platter for two (£22) which was, as advertised, 'the perfect introduction to the markets of Mexico' and consisted of pork pibil tacos, cactus and courgette tacos, corn, black bean and guacamole tostadas, chorizo and potato quesadilla, sweet potato and feta taquito and a bowl of spicy slaw.
This gargantuan selection was the ideal sampler of all that's great and good about authentic Mexican street food. The flavours and textures were out of this world, contrasting the combination of spicy kicks, melt-in-the-mouth-meats, and culinary flavorsome dynamics that made your mouth water, your taste buds dance in blissful ecstasy and your tummy growl with an appreciative, contented thank you.
We simply couldn't repress our insatiable - nay, gluttonous? - desire and appetite for a heavenly triptych of toasted soft corn tortillas packed with chicken tinga (£4.25). The perfectly soft tortillas encased the generous filling of grilled, melt-in-the-mouth chicken thigh mixed with a rapturously heady sweet, smoky chipotle and tomato sauce for several bites of incomparable flavour nirvana that were all over far too quickly.
Beautifully presented, it was all aesthetically pleasing to the eye and divinely, sumptuously satisfying to the gustatory senses. In other words, as delicious as it was good looking. Mexican street food doesn't get much better than this.
Before we'd even walked in, my brother had been adamant the finale of our massive Mexican blowout was going to be one of his all time favourite desserts, churros y chocolate (£4.25). This trio of curled doughy delights were the faultless combo of crispy outside/chewy inside, and the accompanying pot of rich chocolate sauce was so supremely velvety, so erotically smooth and so beautifully, intensely rich, it should have been illegal.
Staffed by efficient, friendly waitresses, Wahaca then, is a cool, spirited Mexican street food restaurant to really end all Mexican street food restaurants. Prepared and cooked with passion and panache, brimming with authentic flavours, textures and that all-important occasional piquant kick, it masterfully serves consummate cooking for the amateur and the adventurous in a way very few other restaurants in the city can match.
5/5
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