London's new Mexican beat
How Adriana Cavita helped bring modern Mexican cuisine to the capital. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
DESPITE the huge breadth of London’s restaurant scene, and the capital’s growing Latin American population, it has until recently been hard to find serious Mexican food here. That has started to change over the last couple of years, above all with the arrival in summer last year of Adriana Cavita’s eponymous restaurant on Wigmore Street. And last week I finally made it there.
The new Mexican scene stands in sharp contrast to when I first arrived in London in 1995, after years living in the US, pining for Mexican food but unable to find any. For years it was hard even to buy staples such as corn tortillas (I still bring back a supply whenever I go to the US). Partly it’s simply the lack of Mexicans here: the 2011 census found just 8,869 Mexicans living in England, of whom over half were in London (by comparison, for instance, our Colombian population has been estimated at 160,000.)
Fortunately we can now get good tortillas, a range of dried chillies and more from merchants like the Cool Chile Company. Locally, there are a few outlets such as Maira Gallardo’s tiny Peckham store, Mexican Mama: Gallardo, a native of Guadalajara, Jalisco, regularly brings in shipments of Mexican foods and drinks.
There are decent tacos to be had from the likes of Breddos and the burgeoning El Pastor chain. We even have mezcalerías such as Brixton’s Hacha ; last weekend BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme devoted a whole show to mezcal.
But fine modern Mexican food is on a different plane. I caught of glimpse of this late last year during Fernando Hernández’s stint in London at Carousel. Hernández, chef at Puebla’s much-praised Moyuelo, showcased Mexican dishes unlike any I had tasted before: beef tongue carpaccio with parsley salad and pickled mustard seeds; octopus with jalapeño sauce.
And in New York last year I enjoyed similar fireworks at Midtown’s Cosme restaurant, a project of Michelin-starred Mexican chef Enrique Olvera. The owner and head chef of Mexico City’s Pujol, generally reckoned to be the best restaurant in the city if not the whole country, Olvera has developed a cuisine firmly rooted in Mexican classics but taking those ideas and flavours to a different level. Thus at Cosme he offers sweet potato tamal with guajillo chilli and Japanese togarishi spice; quelites (tacos of foraged wild greens) with mole and golden sesame; or his signature duck carnitas.
Like other culinary pioneers such as Ferran Adrià at El Bulli and René Redzepi at Copenhagen’s Noma, Olvera has by now trained a slew of brilliant chefs – including Adriana Cavita (she also did a stage at El Bulli.) Her food is rooted in her own background, growing up between Mexico City and the village of San Felipe Ixtacuixtla, in the central state of Tlaxcala; her grandmother sold antojitos (snacks such as tamales and tacos) from a roadside stall in Azcapotzalco, a northern borough of the capital.
Those influences are clear in her London restaurant, both in the design – rustic Mexican meets hipster chic – and the menu. Her street food-inspired dishes are superb, but with touches you won’t find in many Mexico City street stalls: tacos de cangrejo (soft shell crab with black garlic mayo); Iberico-pork tacos al pastor; smoked beef shin quesabirria.
Or take her tamal de puerco, with the addition of duck fat as well as guajillo chilli sauce – or the sublime camarones al grill, large prawns alive with intense flavours from their achiote marinade and roasted pineapple sauce with lime. Or the wood-grilled chicken with green mole, herbs and pumpkin seeds: this is wonderfully inventive cooking yet with its feet firmly in Mexican tradition. (There’s also a very cool mezcalería, Mayahuel, hidden in the basement.)
There are other ways of re-making Mexican cuisine. London’s other recent (2020) high-end Mexican opening, Kol, now with a Michelin star, takes an innovative approach, re-creating Mexican ingredients from British sources. But while the desire to make your food chain more sustainable is admirable, I don’t really want, say, the lime entwined in so many Mexican flavours replaced by sea buckthorn, as Kol attempts.
Mexican food remains, for most Brits, a question of nachos and burritos, as suggested by the fiasco of last year’s Mexican-themed Great British Bake Off TV show: sombreros and ponchos featured heavily. As Cavita told the Guardian newspaper then, “For me, it’s a bit sad to see this kind of thing... But I think slowly people are starting to learn more and I hope people will get more interested in proper Mexican culture and food.” With her crab tacos alone, she has struck a blow for that mission.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Bodega 4 Kilos, Gallinas & Focas “Tanuki Bob” 2020, Mallorca (Bar Daskal, £9.50/glass; Gourmet Hunters, £20.50) – Mallorca is now creating some very interesting wine and garage winemakers 4 Kilos have been the trailblazers. I really liked this pale Manto Negra/Syrah blend: smoky with lovely aromatic red fruit, quite long.
Domaine de la Mordorée “La Reine des Bois” rouge 2020, Lirac (The Black Book wine bar, £16/glass; Millesima, £26; other vintages available elsewhere) - I was reminded of the sheer deliciousness of this cuvée when tasting the 2022 at last week’s brilliant Lea & Sandeman Rhône en primeur tasting. Domaine de la Mordorée’s wines are not cheap, but this Lirac is just gorgeous: layers of flavour, rich and complex but beautifully balanced, so long. Their straight Côtes-du-Rhône is excellent too.
Pigasos [Chateau Pegasus]1997, Naoussa (N/A UK – was at The Sourcing Table, £32) – Imagine my excitement earlier this year when I found a small cache of this rare old xinomavro at Peckham’s brilliant wine shop, The Sourcing Table (an Indigo Wine venture.) I enjoyed a bottle last weekend: aromatic, savoury, fine – and while past its peak, still boasting gentle acidity.
Transparency disclosure: I paid for all of the food and wine in this post myself, though I attended Lea & Sandeman’s trade Rhône tasting as a press guest.