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The Wahaca Southbank Experiment

We’ve not tried anything like this before. It’s not how restaurants usually get built. But that’s what makes it fun, right?

At the beginning of July, we’re going to be opening a new Wahaca perched next to Southbank Centre alongside Waterloo Bridge. This isn’t the kind of opportunity that comes up every day and we wanted to make sure we do this iconic site justice. So this won’t be like a Wahaca restaurant you’ve seen before.

To start, we’re not building it from bricks and mortar. Wahaca Southbank will be built from 8 recycled shipping containers, which our architects have designed to fit together on 2 storeys with a cantilevered hanging bar space allowing for 130 hungry people.

Raising the bar

Our 8 shipping containers have been modified to create a series of interlinked open spaces and include panoramic windows offering some pretty stunning views of the river and the passing parade of people, boats, royalty etc.

Keeping it fresh. A work in progress

Wahaca Southbank will be a chance for you to try out some new dishes. Tommi has already been up to her elbows in new recipes specifically for this site following our recent trip to Mexico and LA, and she will also be joined by guest chefs, invited to help develop other new dishes for the Southbank menu. We’re thinking of this as a development kitchen. The dishes that you tell us you like the most will be added to our menu in our other restaurants. We like to think it’ll help us to keep things fresh.

We’ve also got a bit more experimental with our decoration. We’ve been working with Tristan Manco, general worldwide authority on all things street art, who’s hooked us up with some amazing artists who will be flying in from Mexico City and around the world to graffiti the space, creating an evolving work of art that will be updated as the mood takes us and the seasons change.

What we'll look like. With a few sketches by graffiti artist Saner.

One thing we always like to know when opening a restaurant is how long it’ll be around for. But that’s also a little up in the air. You see, Southbank Centre have invited us to join them as part of this summer’s Festival of the World, a 3 month-long celebration of art instillations and events. They’ve said we can stay for as long as it takes them to decide what to do with the space next, which could be 18 months, or it could be longer. But that’s the clever bit you see. When we do move on, we just pick these shipping containers up, and set them up somewhere else. The Wahaca experiment will move on, opening up for new people, introducing new art and design and new dishes to a new community. So please come and get involved with our experiment. We hope you’ll like the results.

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Contributor Competitions, Guerilla Chilli Growing, News, Our News, Uncategorized, What's Happening

We have a chilli shoot!

Avid chilli growing fans may have read about the Wahaca head office chilli growing competition that we launched last week. Well gang, there’s news, we’ve got ourselves some progress. Look at this little blighter:

Ok, it's not massive but it's a start...

This tiny shoot is just the beginning of our horticultural journey and as one adventure begins, so another ends. Much like a great circle of life. Some people have recently enquired whatever happened to last Summer’s My Destination chilli off. It was so hyped, it even had its own twitter hashtag, but unfortunately hashtags and twitter followers count for very little when it comes to the nitty gritty of keeping a chilli plant alive. Team captain Alex “Plimiento” Plim explains what went wrong (Please be warned, this post contains images and descriptions of mistreated chilli plants):

“The chilli war is very much alive, and Team Inferno is the team to beat…” These were the final words of the last My Destination blog post, which was published almost exactly eight months ago. Since then, there has been not a hint of an echo of a murmur of a whisper from the offices of My Destination; the chilli war that was very much alive very much died. So what happened? How did the competition end? Did Team Inferno blaze to victory, or were their dreams extinguished by the Vindaloo Vixens?

“We were riding a heat wave of success after our first chilli appeared”, Captain Plimento recalls, “it started with one and then came another, and before we knew it, Hector and The Don were rife with fruit, like little green dreadlocks weighing against their limbs.” And how big was that first chilli? “Oh, it was big alright, but I didn’t get chance to measure it. Team member Will plucked it from The Don’s grasp and gobbled it when I wasn’t looking.”

Full Bloom on August 8th

Annabell Pepper couldn’t even contemplate such cavalier behaviour, for she had to wait another month before seeing the first fruits of her undeniably lax labour. “I just couldn’t understand why Team Inferno beat us to that first chilli”, she looks perplexed. “I mean, I did everything I could; I put biscuits in the soil so they had enough food, I gave them a desk lamp so they had light, and I even watered them once too.”

Soon, the boys registered their first measurement: 57mm. They were understandably proud, and spent the ensuing week making puns about ammunition and guns that only they found funny. This alone would have been enough to eclipse the Vixens’ only entry into the competition, a flaccid fruit measuring 54mm, but their next chilli came out at a whopping 65mm. The contest was destroyed. Team Inferno didn’t even need their final three fruits to confirm their place as My Destination Chilli Growing Competition Champions.

But then the Vindaloo Vixens’ apathetic attitude, barely concealed since Day One, began to infect the entire office. Team Inferno had spectacularly clinched victory, but the thrill that had been the chase turned into a burden that had to be watered every once in a while, occasionally coming in handy as a window stopper. In essence, it became a battle to the death.

Ironically, this battle suited the Vindaloo Vixens much better, and they applied themselves to neglect with vigour. For months the chilli plants withered, until Plimento buckled: “I just couldn’t stand to see Hector and The Don like that, rotting away to nothing as if they were just shrubbery poking through a crack in the pavement.” He decided to pull the plug, which in gardening terms means tossing the plant pots into a wheelie bin.

A chilling image

And that was that, an inglorious end to a glorious competition. The safe money always had been on Team Inferno, of course, but at least the Vindaloo Vixens took part, and that’s the main thing. It’d be untrue to say they gave it their best shot, but without them the contest would’ve been no more than a group of guys growing a couple of plants, and the My Destination office would never have erupted into a fervour of green-fingered activity.

Despite this rather gruesome end to the competition, we’d like to thank Alex and Anna for their chilli growing updates. We hope that the Wahaca head office growers have a little more success. We’ll keep you posted with how we get on over the next months. If you’re growing your own chillies, don’t forget to share your photos with us on facebook.

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Win a trip to Mexico City

Together with our friends at Lonely Planet and to celebrate the launch of their new book The World’s Best Street Food, we’re offering 2 of our customers the chance to fly to Mexico City to discover where our love of street food first began.

Wahaca and Lonely Planet, making streetfood dreams come true.

The winners will be guided on a street food tour of the city and have the chance to experience the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the neighbourhoods that are home to some of Mexico’s best street food. There are also 10 runners up prizes of copies of Lonely Planet’s new book. To enter all you have to do is fill in your email address below.

If you’re not one of the lucky winners, fear not, friends of Wahaca can buy The World’s Best Street Food at a special rate of just £10 (incl. P&P) by visiting shop.lonelyplanet.com and entering the code STREET10 at the online checkout. The book explores 100 must-eat dishes from across the globe, where to find them and how to recreate them at home. We’re pretty confident that you won’t need to look much further than the Mexico section to find the most delicious recipes though!

Terms and Conditions
The competition commences at 12am BST on 26 March 2012 and closes at 11.59pm on 25 April 2012. To enter, simply provide your name and contact email address in the competition entry section above. Entry is free, and you can only enter once. One winner will be selected randomly from all eligible entries on 30 April 2012. The winner plus one guest will receive a 7 day/6 night stay in Mexico City (including return flights and accommodation based on twinshare) and two places on Eat Mexico’s Street Food tour (approximate retail value GBP2500). Flights must be booked no later than 30 July 2012 and the date of departure must be no later than 31 December 2012. Prize winner(s) will be notified by email. By submitting your entry, you agree that these conditions of entry apply to your entry. Full terms and conditions are available here. Lonely Planet respects the privacy of others, and your personal information will only be used to tell you if you’ve won unless you have opted to hear more information above. See Lonely Planet’s privacy policy at www.lonelyplanet.com/privacy/. Wahaca may also email entrants once in a while with newsy updates from the world of Mexican Market Eating.

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Guerilla Chilli Growing, News, Our News, Staff observations, Uncategorized, Wahacos, What's Happening

From tiny seeds, spicy plants might grow (if we all keep our fingers crossed)

We’re not particularly renowned for our green fingered attributes in the Wahaca head office. The one thing we do have however is access to a lot of chilli seeds. So, this week, we’ve seized upon the recent bout of good weather and have started up a little chilli growing competition in our secret Soho hideaway.

We’ll keep you posted on how things go over the coming months, but for now, here are a couple of photos of how we got started.

For a small pot, could there be a little overcrowding going on?

You can just tell Oli's done this before. But will his 3 seed approach pay off?

Of course, like any wannabe chilli grower, we didn’t even think about touching a trowel until we’d watched the incredibly informative musings of our very own chilli expert and his series of videos, which you can find on this very blog.

The line up. The head office's pots, complete with specially commisioned plastic greenhouses.

Keep your fingers crossed for some green shoots of success poking through the soil soon. The hot money’s on Katie from accounts, but at this stage, it’s anyone’s game.

If you’re growing chillies and have some tips for us, or would like to leave some words of encouragement, please get in touch by leaving a comment below.

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Chilli growing photos: Our Competition winners

This June will see the launch of our new cook book Wahaca, Mexican food at home, which will talk you through some of our favourite recipes from the past 5 years in the restaurant. And as you may know, we’ve saved a page in amongst these delicious recipes for our most green fingered customers to show off their growing skills.

We had a huge number of entries in our competition (including from far flung outposts of Eastern Europe) and we’ve now chosen our winners, who will all have their picture featured and will receive a copy of the book to treasure when it has been printed. So congrats to Heather Rainbow, Laura Halvey, Rosie Martin, Nick Owers, Michael Anton, Jose-Paolo Roldan, Alistair ban Ryne, Alex Plim and Anna-Lucy Terry. You’re all winners and we’d recommend the book as a early Christmas present for all of your friends. Please send us an email to ola@wahaca.co.uk with your address so we can post a book out to you when they’re printed.

For all of those people who sent in photos that haven’t been chosen, we’re sorry that we couldn’t include you all, but please do keep up the chilli growing and don’t forget to check out our chilli expert’s series of videos for tips to help you along the way. One person who deserves a special mention is Sarah Walker, who sent in the photo below. It’s the first time we’ve seen chillies growing like this. Is that some kind of cross breed? We’ll have to get some seeds from your next harvest.

A new variety of chilli plant?

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Valentine’s Day gets a little spicy

If you’re looking for your Valentine’s Day to go out with a bang, then look no further than Wahaca, home to more aphrodisiac ingredients than Aphrodite’s larder. Just check out these (in no way spurious) claims that indigenous Mexican ingredients carry:

Avocados: Whether it’s mashed up in a guacamole or whizzed into a salsa, this silky smooth fruit of the gods is a great way to get things started. William Dampier, a nineteenth century English adventurer, said “It is reported that this fruit provokes to lust” and if that wasn’t enough, The Aztecs called it ahuacatl, meaning “testicle tree”. So, if you can get that image out of your head, woo your Valentine with some guacamole and tortilla chips.

Chillies: It’s long been known that the capsicum contained in chillies provide the right amount of heat to spice up any Valentine’s evening. But where does this rumor come from? Well, chillies contain vitamins A and C, as well as increasing the metabolism by as much as twenty five percent after the ingestion. So don’t forget to liberally pour over your chile de arbol salsa and let the heart start racing.

Chocolate: It’s no coincidence that chocolates are the most popular Valentine’s gift and the best way to a ladies heart. In fact, the tale is told that the Mexican Emperor Moctezuma drank fifty golden goblets of chocolate a day to enhance his libido and assure the continuance of his line. Probably didn’t do great things for his teeth mind you. It’s a complex food source containing theobromine, a substance related to caffeine, which gives an energy boost as well as phenylethylamine and seratonin, which are mood-lifting agents. We’d recommend trying some chicken mole tacos which have a salsa made with chilli and chocolate. Double trouble.

Vanilla: Another indigenous Mexican ingredient, which yes, is said to get things stirring in the right direction. In fact, Mexico’s Totonac people, whose region is the original home of vanilla, tell a folk tale in which Xanat, the youngest daughter of a fertility goddess, fell in love with a local youth. Since she was a goddess and he a human, they were unable to marry. Bad times. But to express her eternal love, she transformed herself into the first vanilla plant, whose aroma would always provide him with pleasure. Ahhhhhh. If that’s not enough to get you ordering our flan de la casa (with its wicked caramel sauce), then you’re a lost cause.

Passion fruit: Well the name says it all(even if it’s actually nothing to do with that kind of passion), and we think it’s best ordered in our Passion Fruit Margarita to sip throughout your meal. As you’ll probably know the tequila we use is made from 100% pure agave. And as the agave plant, is widely believed to boost the libido. That would make for 100% pure potent passion in a glass. So watch out.

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Send us your chilli plant photos and be part of the Wahaca cookbook

Since we opened we’ve been trying our hardest to turn you into green fingered chilli growers with free chilli seeds for over 4 and half million people and counting. The response has been so great with hundreds of you getting in touch to tell us of your tales of growing glory, bountiful crops and the satisfaction of a fully home grown salsa. We even appointed a Chilli Expert from amongst you, to help out with any growing pains and his videos have proved invaluable support for chilli novices around the world.

Now we have the perfect opportunity to celebrate the most artistic horticulturalists in our growing fan club. We want to use your chilli plant photos in our new Wahaca cookbook.

Yes you heard, a new Wahaca cookbook, hitting the shelves in June and you can be a part of it.

So if your image library is an homage to Percy Thrower with all the style of Rankin, email your chilli plant pictures (in as high a resolution as possible) to us at ola@wahaca.co.uk. We’d love to see everything from your first shoots, through to your first chillies and your bumper harvest. We’ll pick our favourites, who will be featured in the book and will each receive a copy when it’s published. One to show the grandkids for sure.

You’d better be quick though, the competition closes on Monday 13th February. Good luck!

Oh, we almost forgot, here’s the serious bit: By submitting your photograph you are granting Hodder & Stoughton and Wahaca a royalty-free, non-exclusive right to use the photograph in print and online, and to archive the image for future use. Got that? Good.

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Wahaca voted Sustainable Restaurant Group of the Year

On Monday we went along to the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s first ever awards ceremony and picked up the Sustainable Restaurant Group of the year trophy.

We are over the moon to have received this award, not only in recognition of all the hard work we put into sustainability across the board, but also when there are so many other great restaurants working hard in this area too. Have a look at the article from this Sunday’s Independent to read about the other restaurants that took home awards.

We think the SRA’s awards are going to be a great annual event for shouting about what restaurants are doing, and can achieve, with all things green and want to thank the SRA for voting for us. Ever since we opened, sustainability has been a vital part of how we run our restaurant. It’s not always easy and it’s often quite a bit more expensive, but we think it’s worthwhile and when we receive awards like this one, it shows that work has paid off.

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Contributor Competitions, News, Our News, Spoon Amnesty, Uncategorized, What's Happening

The Mexican Spoon Amnesty starts today

Throughout January we’re holding an amnesty at Wahaca. A Mexican Spoon Amnesty. It’s a chance for all of those people (you know who you are), who have pocketed one our 20,000 missing spoons to clear their conscience by bringing our spoon back without fear of reprisal.

To thank you for the safe return of our specially designed spoons, we’re offering a plate of tacos to anyone who does the right thing and comes forward. Just hand your spoon to your waiter when you sit down. He won’t judge you. Our forgiveness knows no bounds.

Always been too honest to pilfer one of our spoons? Good on you. You’re our kinda customer and to show our gratitude if you come along we’ll let you borrow a spoon. Just make sure you bring it back in January.

So, what are you waiting for? Start 2012 off with a renewed sense of inner-calm, a belly full of tacos and a grin from ear to ear.

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Events at Wahaca, Learn at Wahaca, News, Our News, Staff observations, Uncategorized, Wahacos, What's Happening

The lesser spotted jaguar spotter

This January we’re sending Matt White, of Wahaca Covent Garden infamy, off to Mexico for a 3 week excursion into the wilds of the Yucatan on a mission to help a conservation group in their quest to protect Mexico’s wild jaguars.

In the summer we offered up a Scholarship fund of £2,000 for one of our managers to travel to Mexico on a trip that would expand their understanding of the country and indulge their passion for travel (and adventure). They were all given the chance to pitch their ideas for a trip to discover something new about the country. From all of the entries we had Matt’s plan had the biggest potential to really make a difference and allow him to achieve a lifelong ambition. Harking from South Africa, he’s always been fascinated by this illusive big cat’s African cousin, the leopard, but despite numerous attempts, he has never managed to spot (haha) one. We hope this will be his chance.

He’s going to be heading to Calakmul, home to Mexico’s largest population of jaguars, but even in this area there is an average of only one jaguar per square 25km, so the chances of actually seeing one here in the dense jungle are pretty slim. Calakmul is also home to the chicaleros, which you may remember being featured in an old edition of Ola London – These are the guys who tap the rubber trees for resin which they make into biodegradable chewing gum, all by hand and Matt will meet up with them deep in the rainforest.

The culmination of his trip will be meeting conservationist Mircea Hidalgo on a ranch in Laguna de Terminos in the Yucatan Peninsula, where he’ll be spending four days working with him downloading footage and replacing battery packs in the motion sensor cameras which they use in tracking the jaguars without disturbing their everyday prowling.

If you want to find out a bit more about Mexican jaguars, check out the Northern Jaguar Project, who have helped Matt get in touch with Mircea and organise the trip.

We look forward to hearing how it all goes with Matt’s expedition into the jungle, and be keeping our fingers crossed that he manages to catch a glimpse of the “beast that kills its prey in a single bound”.

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