Wahaca

Posted by john on Nov 6, 2009 at 6:10 pm

Your video lies! It’s not open now

Posted by wahaca on Nov 7, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Sorry the video is misleading… we’ll be fully open on Monday November 9th and look forward to seeing you then.

Posted by Moira on Nov 18, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Would be useful if you took bookings. Canary Wharf being full of business people, we can’t go to lunch if we don’t know if we will get in or how long we will have to wait.

Posted by Mark on Nov 23, 2009 at 12:20 pm

Thanks for your message. I am one of the owners of Wahaca and thought i would try and explain our policy on no bookings. We have tried taking bookings when we first opened in Covent Garden but unfortunately it didn’t work. For two main reasons: 1) We had people queuing for tables when the people who had booked didn’t turn up or were 20 minutes late and people rightfully complained that this was stupid that they were there ready to eat (because of our price point people were happy to wait for 10 mins or so for a table rather than be told “we are fully booked”). 2) and to us the most important we hate the idea of telling people they have to leave the table after a certain time. Much better once you are sat down on the table to be able to stay as long as you like. Our aim is to get peoples food to them within 5-10 minutes and then let them decide how long they want to stay. If we only allowed an hour per booking, or even two hours it would completely change the atmosphere at wahaca and also would mean we would have to raise prices quite considerably as we would not be able to cover the high fixed costs we have and charge the prices we charge if we only had two seatings per night. I know that sounds a crude excuse but unfortunately it is true. Please do email me on mark@wahaca.co.uk if you would like to discuss this further and once again I’m really sorry that you are not happy with this. We do try and keep the wait down to an absolute minimum (and from the week after next have a fantastic terrace bar opening) and if you come before 12 (we open at 11.30) or after around 1.30 you should get a table straight away. However I do understand that this is not always convenient. Thank you for getting in touch.
Kind regards,
Mark