Wahaca

I recently visited Wahaca’s new Liverpool Street location for a breezy Saturday lunch with my boyfriend. We’re acquainted with Wahaca and have eaten at a multitude of branches over the years, but the fierce competition on the street food scene and the emergence of other popular cuisines has overshadowed this consistently good chain.
The Liverpool Street venue demonstrates the characteristics that are applied across the Wahaca brand: colourful interiors, vivacious staff, a menu with all of the staple Yucatan favourites with some seasonal choices thrown in, good vegetarian options and morsels that always look ascetically pleasing and delicious.
When we visited, I sampled two of the seasonal offerings in addition to a new plate on their street food menu. Some of the flavour combinations appeared odd because they used ingredients that blatantly veered from traditional Mexican cuisine. Both of my seasonal tostada dishes were deconstructed, presented as mezze style plates with the filling heaped in the middle and the tostada chips on the side. The hibiscus glazed aubergine with sesame pipian was reminiscent of Greek aubergine salad on a bed of hummus and the scallop and prawn coctel was a ceviche dish. Despite this, they were both very respectable– the former was sweet and moorish and the latter was fresh and well marinated with zingy lime flavours and a touch of heat.
My third choice was the salmon sashimi tostadas served with chipotle mayonnaise– again, another misnomer on a Mexican menu– but the flavour fusion is easily forgiven because they were simple and fresh, the salmon was meltingly soft and the gooey mayo offered a nice touch of interest.
Wahaca has always prided in its use of British ingredients where possible, so some Yucatan speciality dishes have been reimagined from the beginning. It appears that they are braving more adventurous attempts at fusion offerings in order to keep diners interested. And they shouldn’t mind provided that the dishes sing and aren’t merely a bland, lifeless imitation.
The ethos of Wahaca is fresh, simple food and this is omnipresent across the menu; even though it has come a long way from its flagship in Covent Garden, the prime directive is still alive in its newest branches and the chain is still worthy of high praise because of this.