Wednesday 12 November 2008

Mexican food



One of the things I've always missed living in London is good Mexican food. It wasn't until I left the States that I realised just how much I loved it and then subsequently missed it. I'd search out the Mexican restaurants when I could, but they were mostly of the Chi-Chi's bastardized American-Mexican. Which made it the bastardized version of the bastardized American version of Mexican food. My favourite Mexican in Europe is funnily enough in Warsaw. It's called Blue Cactus. It's owned by an American.

Until recently. Not long ago Wahaca, which serves Mexican market food, opened in Covent Garden, and there's not a burrito or taco in sight.

Now that we have moved offices, we have an over-abundance of yummy places of every food group, to eat lunch.

One of which is Benito's Hat. It's basically a cafe where you choose your format, burrito, taco or salad, your filling, steak, pork, chicken or veggies, and your fixin's, which I won't get into here.

When your customers are overwhelmingly unfamiliar with proper Mexican food, I thought it inspired to lead them down the decision making tree. It's actually not unlike ordering at Subway. Just way tastier.

And that's because of the meat. Ok, and the beans. But mostly the meat. The pork and the steak are slow roasted with chilies, cumin and cinnamon; the chicken char-grilled. This is the thing that makes it so much better than it's competitors. They take the time to cook the main ingredient properly, and don't use mince meat for filling.

In the just over a week that we've been on Charlotte Street, I've been there four times.

Because you can move to a new country, develop, become more sophisticated and urbane, but there are some things you can never get over.

1 comment:

Hunter said...

Its competitors, not it's competitors.

But I couldn't agree more about Mr B's headgear - splendid food :-)

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