Wahaca - smile inducing Mexican street food

Last week I read a mouthwatering review of the Mexican street food restaurant Wahaca over on Katy Riddle's Feel-good Foodbook blog. Her photos and write-up looked so enticing and as I had to go to London for FE on Monday, I decided I had to try it out.

Well, the first thing I have to say is that Katy can write a cracking review. She was bang on about the quality and flavour of the food. It was absolutely delicious. I went to the Covent Garden branch which is about 15 minutes' walk from Westminster. You can't book a table, but, although the restaurant was busy, I was served straight away and the staff were very friendly. Nobody looked at me oddly for being on my own.

After an interesting and intense 3 hour meeting, I wanted to relax with one of these:

 I think I must have been drinking the wrong kind of tequila before because this had a much richer flavour than any I'd had before.

I decided to order Chicken Taquitos - spicy chicken in deep fried tortillas with salsa, sour cream and cheese on top. It looked very pretty and, like everything else I ate, had an almost perfect balance of flavour and texture. The crunch of the tortilla, the spicy heat of the chicken with the sourness of the cheese and the coolness of the  cream with the crispness of the lettuce. It was the sort of food it made me happy to eat.

I'm not a huge lover of beans, but Katy had gone on so much about the Frijoles that I really had to try them. They gave a warm, carby hit that would keep me feeling full and satisfied for a good while and I loved how they looked when the cream was all marbled in with the beans.

I can't ever turn down guacamole. It's one of my favourite foods and I've tried many different versions over the years. Wahaca's stacked up both in looks and flavour. A good amount of spice with cool avocado, sour lime and flavoursome red onion.

After all that, I was quite full. But after a few minutes I decided I could fit in another dish Katy had recommended - the salted caramel ice cream. Again it was perfectly balanced. Often when I've had salted caramel stuff before it's been a bit too salty, but this left in a bit of balancing sweetness. I also liked the fact that they gave me a spoon that matched my Kindle. I doubt it was deliberate but it appealed to me.

 The decor kind of makes you feel like you're eating with the sun on your back. I liked the white brick walls, the metal shutters, the faux stone banquettes and the brightly coloured tiles.

The atmosphere was not a million miles away from the Zumba class I need to work this lot off. The music was loud enough to cheer but not too loud to inhibit conversation.

One thing that struck me was that children were clearly welcome - not just from the stack of high chairs which were not in use at 10pm on a Monday night.

 The menu marks off which dishes might be too spicy for kids and recommends you ask your server for advice. That was a good touch.

All of that  delicious food and drink cost me just £20, which for central London wasn't bad, I thought.

One thing I would have liked to have seen was a statement on tipping policy. There's no service charge if you're in a party of less than five, but I'd still like to know that any tip I give is going to go to the staff and not the pockets of the owners.

I'm half tempted to go the Canary Wharf branch next Monday night when I'm down again. Any of my London friends fancy coming with me?

Call this a Scottish breakfast, John Lewis? What are you thinking?

So, it's the first day in post apocalyptic Britain. We all seem to have survived the end of the world, so we can now look forward to a bright future, where we're all nice to each other, live in peace and harmony, make sure everyone on the planet has enough to eat and somewhere decent to live? We're going to take better care of the world around us? Sure we are.

But first, a little rant. Because this is important, obviously.

My friend Andrew Brown, known to you as @oneexwidow on Twitter, and author of The Widow's World is, as I write, tucking into what is laughingly described as a Scottish Breakfast, at John Lewis in Edinburgh. I say laughingly, because, look at this...

How can you possibly have a Scottish Breakfast with no tattie scone? It's a scandal! An outrage!

For those of you not from Scotland, the tattie scone is, in my opinion, one of our finest examples of Scottish fayre. A warm potato flatbread, a little bit salty, to soak up the egg yolk and give you an early morning carby hit is unmissable. And John Lewis is cheating its customers by offering a boring old hash brown.

A couple of miles away, in the Grosvenor Hilton at the West End, another friend of mine was simultaneously sitting down to a breakfast which did include a tattie scone. If one of the biggest US based multi-national hotel chains in the world can adapt its menus to cater for Scottish tastes, so can one of our iconic Princes Street stores.

Andrew has kindly allowed me to share his photograph of the offending breakfast with you all and has said that he will be sending a strongly worded letter of complaint. How serious he is,  I can't be sure.. I added that I wanted to see it debated in Parliament, but the last word goes to our lovely elephant's Daddy Richard who suggests a debate at Liberal Democrat conference, complete with tasting samples. Given that said Conference is happening in Glasgow in September next year, I'm sure that can be arranged....

But, seriously, John Lewis, sort your lives out. Give us some tattie scones. Please.