If you’ve been into Wahaca recently, you might have spotted the first of our new Dash of Wahaca salsas which have landed on the tables in the last few weeks.

Designed to be splashed on liberally

It’s been a labour of love but for the last year Tommi has been working tirelessly on the recipes with a specialist company who has created the great looking bottles for us. To give you an idea of the amount of effort that has gone into each one, just check out the list of ingredients – All of which are totally natural with no nasty preservatives anywhere in sight. In fact, if you have a look, you can see all of the little bits of chopped up herbs and spices swimming around inside the bottle.

Tommi has made 3 salsas for us to start off with. A brand new searingly hot chile de arbol sauce and new (and even tastier) versions of our yellow habanero and our smoky chipotle chile salsas that have been used on the tables in the last few years. So now there are 3 very different flavoured salsas each with a different level of spicines for you to choose from.

The brilliant news is, if you want to take some with you to give your home cooking a dash of Wahaca (see what we’ve done there?), you can buy them in our restaurants for £2.50 a bottle, just ask one of the waiters. Over the next few weeks, we’ll post a couple of recipes on the website so that you can discover some new ways of spicing things up in your own kitchen.

As always, we’d love to hear from anyone who’s tried them out already. What do you think of the new bottles? Do you have a favourite? Would they make the perfect Christmas present? (Yes they would).

Wednesday 2nd November see’s the culmination of Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations and we wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun, so we’re joining the party by giving away a free glass of tequila and sangrita to anyone who comes in for lunch or dinner tomorrow.

In Mexico, Day Of The Dead is a festival to celebrate the lives of friends and family who have passed away, and often sees groups of people partying on down at their family cemetery. This festival’s incredible colour and imagery is a great example of why we love Mexico quite so much. In fact, you can check out some more about it here.

Everyone who wants one gets a free tequila, the only thing we ask is that you sip it, and don’t shoot it down in one. This isn’t your average tequila – We’re giving you a measure of multi-award winning El Tesoro de Don Philipe, one of the world’s finest. To complete your full introduction to the world of top tequilas, we’ll be giving you a glass of our homemade sangrita to accompany it – Just as it’s drunk in Mexico.

We hope we’ll see you down here to join in the fun.

When we were asked by Bibendum, our wine supplier, if we wanted to take part in a tasting to choose a new wine for the list at Wahaca it didn’t take long to find volunteers. But this wasn’t an ordinary wine tasting – this was The Dragon’s Cellar. A tasting where 3 specially selected wine producers would pitch their finest vinos to a panel of the drinks industries most esteemed judges, to be in with the chance to win a listing on our menu. A format not a million miles from that made popular by a certain BBC show, just with wine and without Evan Davis.

The judging was done by Gabriel Savage, Deputy Editor of The Drinks Business, Tara Devon O’Leary founder of Winepassionista.com, Finkus Bripp from wineontherocks.com and our very own Mark Selby and Oli Ingham. With the 3 wine producers quacking with apprehension, the slurping began. Step aside Theo Paphitis, this was going to be serious…

As well as the delicious flavour of Stone Barn’s merlot, we were also well impressed by the work they were doing to keep their wine production environmentally friendly and sustainable. They even had a programme of building owl boxes around their vineyard – what a hoot (Sorry).

Since the making of this film, Stone Barn has indeed made it onto our list, and you are more than welcome to come and try it for yourself, and see what you think of our choice. ¡Salud!

Do you think you could whip up a torta as good as Tommi's

This week Tommi’s TV show Mexican Food Made Simple is taking a break, stepping aside for some cricket match or other. Not wanting you to miss out on your weekly hit of Mexican cookery, we’re giving 2 of you the chance to win all of the ingredients you’ll need to cook your own version of Tommi’s delicious chorizo torta – just one of the delicious recipes she’s been cooking up on her culinary tour, airing on Channel 5 each Tuesday evening at 7.30. And if that’s not enough, we’re also throwing in a meal for 2 in Wahaca, so you can see how your torta measures up against ours.

To win a delivery of all of the fresh ingredients you’ll need to make your own Chorizo Torta, just answer this simple question: Which Mexican sporting spectacle did Tommi go and visit in her show last week?

If you didn’t see the show, you can still catch it on Demand 5, which may give you some subtle hints to the answer.

The 2 winners will be selected at random on Monday 8th August so you’d better get a wriggle on. If you are lucky enough to win, you’ll have to send us your postal address within 3 days. Alas, the competition is only open to those living in the UK.

Don’t forget to tune in to the show which will be starting up again on Tuesday 9th August at 7.30pm when Tommi will be hunting down a distant cousin of the Cornish Pasty! You can tweet along live with Tommi on twitter and put questions to her during the show, just use hashtag #mexmadesimple.

Like

Unlike

For years now people have been begging us to offer more takeaway (presumably to increase the risk of spilling salsa over their keyboard), but it’s always proved tricky without disrupting the restaurants main service. Now, we’re the first people to realise that this isn’t a great answer. If the people want it, surely there’s a way to give it to them. And if you’re going to give it to them, you might as well have a laugh doing it. So the idea struck us – rather than opening up a dedicated takeaway, with traditional things like walls and a roof, wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to take the tacos to the people – We needed wheels. The taco van dream was born and the search for our truck began.

It was after a chance encounter with Simon Swift, from the totally brilliant Wondering Wine company, that we first laid eyes on what would become the newest member of the Wahaca family. Looking past the rust, gathering moss and dodgy engine, we immediately fell in love with the characterful shape of this classic Citroen HY van – Born in 1958 and later re-bodied to transform it into, amongst other things, a shop selling leather and Citroen memorabilia (not at the same time). She was perfect for our needs.

Look past the rusting exterior and there's a character you've just got to love

It turns out converting an old van into a fully working kitchen fit to serve the finest tacos and burritos in all the land isn’t that straightforward.

You start with a specialist mechanic. This one’s called Alex.

Then you breakdown on the M25, a mere 40 minutes out of the workshop – Bad times. But it was here that we learnt how useful the words “low-loader” really are.

Bad times on the side of the M25

From a side junction of the motorway, it’s into the workshop of AJC trailers, a very impressive set up, where old vans go to get their va-va-voom slapped back into them. These were the guys who fitted our Robata charcoal grill – This behemoth of the meat cooking world is like a barbeque on crack – tiny jets pump air directly into the coals to superheat them, meaning that you have much higher temperatures and a smoky flavour that is worth travelling across town for. Having done some searching around, we think we’re the only van in the country equipped with such a thing, and the flavour is phenomenal.

But this wouldn’t be a true Wahaca if it didn’t have “the looks”, so next it was off to the spay shop. Spray shops are fun. They involve putting your vehicle into a big oven (honestly) and heating it up so you get an even covering of specially developed paint. The results are a van that looks as good as new – Not a French leather salesman in sight.

Once you’ve got a van that looks this good, you have to find a good home for it. We had thousands of requests for various parking spots around the country (which we still have in mind, don’t worry), but we felt it was best to start off in a site that we know, where our nearby restaurant can be on hand to cope with any teething problems and somewhere that housed a lot of burrito-hungry souls. So we headed to Canary Wharf’s Canada Square Park. Ideal you might think, until you find out that the only way into the park is through the lobby of One Canada Square, the tallest building in the country and one which comes with a selection of health and safety paperwork almost as tall. It made for a fun Saturday morning.

After all that effort, you don’t want to open without a bang: Cue 2 days of free burritos, a mariachi band, a donkey called Larry and a queue that threated to take over the whole of Canada Square Park. Canary Wharf had never had it so good.

And now comes the reality of running a new business – One that’s a little bit different to our other restaurants, one that we want to have as much fun as possible with, and one that we want your help in shaping the future of.

We have a new menu. It’s just a starting point (albeit a very delicious one) and something that we want to work with our customers to develop as we move on. If there’s something that you’d like to see on there, please leave a comment below let us know on facebook or twitter or go along and chat to guys. We want to make the most of our new found flexibility.

At the moment it's a nice neat rectangle - Help us shape it

You can find us in Canary Wharf until the end of the summer when we are off to Gloucestershire for the van’s first festival – Harvest at Alex James’ farm. And then we’d like you to help us decide where we should move on to – The louder you shout, the harder we’ll search for a parking space that we’re allowed to use.

The Mexican Street Kitchen is something we’re so excited about. We owe so much to everyone who has contributed so much to it, none less so than Charlie Carroll – The man with the van plan. If you’re in the area, go down and pat him on the back and chat to him about burritos. He’ll tell you a thing or two about tortillas, the perfect searing temperature of steak and how difficult it is to find a mechanic in Luton who knows how to fix a 53 year old clutch.

Here’s to hitting the road.

There’s huge news at Wahaca HQ and we can’t keep it from you any longer. We’ve just secured the next Wahaca opening and this time it’s on wheels. Please say hello to the (soon-to-be) Mexican Street Kitchen.

The (Pre-op) Wahaca Mexican Street Kitchen

This little beauty is a long wheel base 1958 Citroen HY Van, which we’ve procured and are currently hurtling towards converting it into a fully functioning takeaway truck. (Oh yes, and your eyes are not deceiving you, it does have a sweet pair of megaphones on the roof!)

1958 Long Wheel Base Citroen HY Van (Complete with megaphones)

The idea of the Mexican Street Kitchen is not only to serve the best Mexican street food in London, but to take it back to the streets from where we began. We’re installing a state of the art Robata charcoal grill, which will give all of our freshly grilled meat that extra tasty flavour you can only get when you cook over flames – we’re pretty sure that’s the first of its kind in a van in London.

We’re going to be using the Mexican Street Kitchen to test out new recipes that you can’t find in our restaurants, and we’d like you to be a part of it. We’ll be holding events asking you to come and help us test out new recipes, new cuts of meat, new seasonal vegetables and new ways of serving them. We want you to help us as we develop exciting new street food recipes that (if they pass the “Tommi Test”) could be added to our restaurant menu.

Keep your eyes on our blog and facebook page to find out how we get on with the transformation. But before we get onto all of this, the first question has got to be, where do you want us to park it?

We’re always looking for new ways to come up with recipes and to use different cuts of meat at Wahaca, so a couple of days ago Tommi invited all of our chefs over to her house for a day of butchery and recipe development.

Our lovely butcher brought along half a pig, along with a couple of more random cuts to see what we could come up with. It was brilliant to see all of the chefs’ minds whirring at the same time and the results were as tasty as you might imagine.

Dishes included Elki’s rather scary sounding pig head tortas, drowned in chipotle salsa (‘tortas ahogadas’ to you and me) and Leo’s slightly less Mexican, but no less delicious pork and herb sausages! There was also Mexican Pozole, chicken liver tacos and beef cheeks cooked in a red mole.

Are there any Mexican inspired dishes that you would love to see us try out for the Wahaca Menu? Or indeed that you’ve tried out yourselves and would like to share with the team? Don’t be shy.

We’re always hot on the heels of current affairs and it’s become apparent that there’s a bit of a wedding on this Friday.

Now in Mexico, we don’t have such strict rules about guest lists, we say the more the merrier – It’s a fiesta after all. So we’ve decided that everyone who hasn’t had an invitation to the shindig at Buckingham Palace can come and celebrate round at ours. The margaritas will be flowing and there will be street food a-plenty – It’s not a street party without some street food now is it?

But it’s the special bond of marriage that we’re really celebrating, so exclusively on Friday we’re also offering free food and a round of margaritas to anyone who comes in with their loved one wearing their wedding dress or wedding suit! You heard it, free food and drinks on us – You just have to come wearing what you got hitched in.

To avoid any confusion with people who’ve just got a bit glammed up and are looking for a freebie, we are insisting that you bring along a photo of you and your loved one on your big day, to prove to our managers that it is actually your wedding attire.

As a special note to Wills and Kate – We’ll also happily pick up your bill for your lunch or dinner on Friday. Let’s face it, our Covent Garden restaurant is only at the other end of The Mall and it’s the perfect way to avoid all of those scary relatives. Come on down. We’re open til 11pm.

Following a flurry of excitement amongst our facebook fans, we are now looking for an exclusive panel of 5 tequila experts from amongst you lot, the followers of our facebook, blog and twitter pages, to join us for a tequila tasting with a difference, to be held at Wahaca Soho on Wednesday 23rd February 2011 at 6.30pm.

Do you know your agave from your auto-clave, your piña from your pot still? What on earth would you do with a Tahona Stone?

If you would like to join this tasting, send an email to ola@wahaca.co.uk explaining in no more than 100 words why you are qualified to help us select the next top tequilas that will be featured on our bar list. The deadline for entries is the end of Monday 20th February, so get cracking.

On the night, we’ll taste a range of tequilas which have been sent to us by the Mexican Tequila Board that aren’t available outside of North America. They’ve kindly searched out 30 top quality tequilas from Mexico’s smaller distilleries just for us. It’s not just for fun though, at the end of the tasting, we’ll pick out 4 favourites, which will be appearing as guest tequilas in our bar over the next year. We’re hoping that by putting them on our list, we’ll help to introduce these brands to the international market, and their amazing products can start to be shared with the world.

The tasting will start at 6.30 with a cocktail to get us in the mood, then it’s down to the serious business of choosing our top tequilas. The tasting will be led by the all-knowing tequila aficionado Henry Besant, who will help guide us through a range of platas, reposados and añejos and will finish at about 8pm.

Don’t get confused, this is not the same event that is being organised by QYPE (That’s one’s going to be just as good though!) This one is just for all you Wahaca fans out there in the world-wide-webernet. (If you’re looking for the Qype event, head over to their page for details).

We’ll look forward to hearing why you think you’ve got what it takes to help choose our next favourite tequilas. Those still looking for a worm in the bottom of their bottle need not apply.

Tomorrow, February 2nd, the Dia de la Candelaria festival will be celebrated across Mexico. The tradition goes that whoever is lucky enough to find the small baby Jesus figurine in their Rosca De Reyes cake on the 6th of January should treat all of their friends and family to a meal of tamales on February 2nd. Anyone eagle eyed enough to have read about this year’s winter menu will have spotted that Tommi was hugely excited to be able to put two types of tamales on our menu for the first time. And very delicious they are too!

So, never one to let up the chance to have a bit of a party, tomorrow, we’ll be giving free tamales to anyone who comes in with a small baby Jesus figurine. OK, that might be a bit tricky. We’ll be giving free tamales to anyone who comes in with a picture of a baby Jesus figurine, and funnily enough, we’ve put one just here:

So, if you feel like getting into the Mexican party spirit, print out this picture, and head over to Wahaca any time tomorrow and get your tamales on!

Here’s some Ts and Cs:
One free tamale dish offered per printed picture, and no more than one per customer.
Offer only valid during restaurant opening times on Februrary 2nd 2011.
Anyone found not having fun may be evicted from the restaurant at any time, or asked to stand in the corner with a bag on their head, it’s a party after all.