Wahaca

Events at Wahaca, Music, News, Our News, Street Art, Uncategorized, What's Happening

Wahaca presents Day of the Dead at the Old Vic Tunnels

Lots of you will know we’ve been celebrating Day of the Dead in our restaurants since we opened. We love this amazingly emotive and visual festival celebrating the lives of relatives and friends who are no longer around and thought that it was right to make the party bigger. Much, much bigger.

So we’re putting on a 4 day festival from 31st October – 3rd November. Together with our friends at The Old Vic Tunnels and with support from The Embassy of Mexico in the UK and Nomad, we’re taking over a maze of railway vaults hidden underneath Waterloo Station and creating a celebration of music, food and art.

This year’s Wilderness Festival headliners, Rodrigo y Gabriella will be kicking off their European tour with these 4 nights, blasting out some phenomenal new tracks alongside work by a host of acclaimed artists from Gabriella Iturbide, to Le Gun and Hew Locke. There’s going to be a live score composed by the Cabinet of Living Cinema to run alongside Alejandro Jodorowsky’s classic film Santa Sangre, just waiting to be discovered too.

Rodrigo y Gabriella are starting their European tour with us for Day of the Dead

There will be food on offer from a specially constructed Wahaca Street Kitchen serving up mouth-watering pork pibil and seasonal veg tacos and there will be drink courtesy of award-winning tequila Olmeca Altos, all fuelling what promises to be a series of unforgettable nights.

Exploring the tunnels further you’ll find other stages playing host to more music and performance including a set from London based bands ‘Vado in Messico’ and ‘Keston Cobblers Club’ and a show from visual artists Frida Alvinzi and Raisa Veikkola’s ‘Theatre of Dolls’, an other-worldly visual experience using 4-dimensional art pieces, puppets as storytellers and their own bodies as sculptural landscapes. You might also stumble across a new collection of Nancy Fouts’ three-dimensional works that she’s created especially for the Day of the Dead Festival that poke fun at the contemporary western concept of death. Communion DJs will be adding to the soundtrack of the night.

You can buy tickets now from oldvictunnels.com or by calling the box office on 0844 871 7628. Tickets include wahaca food from our festival’s temporary street kitchen as well as entry to the funtimes which run from 7pm – 1am each night. All profits from the event will be going to charity.

Saturday daytime entrance at £5 (2pm – 6pm) offers an opportunity to view the exciting visual artists on show and enjoy screenings of the Alejandro Jodorowsky classic film Santa Sangre with The Cabinet of Living Cinema performing a matinee live score.

We’ll look forward to seeing you down there.

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Cocktails, Compliments to the Chef, Contributor Competitions, Events at Wahaca, Food & Drink, Food Topics & Trends, Guerilla Chilli Growing, Learn at Wahaca, News, Our News, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Staff observations, Tell Us, Uncategorized, Wahacos, What's Happening, Window to the Kitchen

Wahaca – Mexican Food at Home

Over the past 5 years we’ve had countless queries and requests from people wanting to recreate our magical Mexican street food in their own kitchen. We like their style. So with these hungry people in mind, Tommi has been compiling a book of her favourite recipes since we opened up our doors on Chandos Place and it hits the shelves on 21st June.

Just like the restaurants, the book is inspired by Mexico’s markets, cantinas and a love of parties, and it’s stocked full of recipes made using ingredients easily found in Britain so you can create authentic Mexican food without having to schlep across the Atlantic.

It has everything from breakfasts bursting with energy, hearty and healthy dinners, sensational puddings and zingy cocktails. There are little plates for sharing and larger dishes that are perfect for scooping up with a warm corn tortilla and a splash of your favourite salsa. And yes, it does have the much sought after secrets of our juicy Pork Pibil.

Having given away over 4.5 million packs of chilli seeds since we opened, there’s also a page dedicated to chilli growing with photos provided by the green-fingered readers of this very blog. A special thanks to everyone who entered our competition and sent in a photo (you’re on page 223!).

The book will be for sale in all of our our restaurants as well as in any bookshop worth its salt, but if you just can’t wait, you can order your copy online now.

Wahaca, Mexican food at home is our way of encouraging you to spread the word of Mexican food far and wide. We hope you’ll join in the fun.

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Compliments to the Chef, Contributor Competitions, Food & Drink, News, Our News, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Tell Us, Uncategorized, What's Happening

Win Tommi’s chorizo torta ingredients and cook along at home

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?

 

Competition entries

name *

email *

answer*

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.

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Compliments to the Chef, Learn at Wahaca, News, Our News, Tell Us, Uncategorized, What's Happening

Tommi pays a visit to Ednica, our street project in Mexico City

Earlier this year, our co-founder and executive chef, Tommi went along to see the great work that gets done by Ednica, the Unesco backed charity that we have chosen to support.

Check out this interview that Tommi filmed with Violaine Dulin who has helped us set up the fundraising partnership we have going on. We think it gives a nice feel for the amazing work they are doing.

Next time you’re in the restaurant spend some time perusing the “Street food special” section of the menu and you’ll see that every time you order one of these dishes 20p is given to Ednica to help educate and feed kids who work on the streets of Mexico City. At the momement we have the huarrache and a cactus queso fundido on offer, which are totally-knock-your-socks-off-delicious so you can have a extra big smile on your face when it comes to ordering.

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Events at Wahaca, Food & Drink, News, Our News, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Tell Us, Uncategorized, What's Happening

Can you help us find our Mayor?

Those of you who are in the know about foursquare, will probably understand what we mean with this post. For those of you who aren’t, please don’t think we’re desperately trying to hunt down Borris and invite him for a taco (although if you’re out there Borris, we’d love to talk to you about introducing Mexican style VW’s to our taxi ranks).

Foursquare is a great site that helps you to find new ways to explore your city by checking in on-line when you visit restaurants and bars, and linking up with friends to discover their favourite places to go out. It’s also a great way to pick up tips that only people in the know would be able to tell you – Apparently our “Frijoles are off the chain” according to James M (thanks,we agree), and One Tamarind Margarita isn’t enough for Fergus M!

Now, we’re pretty new to this site, and are hoping for your help in tracking down the Mayor of each of our restaurants (These are the guys who have checked in the most times, and basically love us so much they can’t stop coming back). We know who they are, but can’t seem to contact them.

Can you help? Do you know these Wahaca super fans? If you do, we’d love you to send us a tweet @wahaca, or post a comment below and tell us, so we can get their details from you.

Do you know these men?

Nick H

Richard S (Although this may not be a true likeness)

David G

So… Nick H (Mayor of Wahaca Covent Garden), Richard S (Mayor off Wahaca Canary Wharf) and David G (Mayor of Wahaca Westfield) Come on down! We’d like to invite you to a very special dinner tasting our new summer menu.

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Music, Tell Us

The Hot 8 Brass Band

We got an email the other day from someone called Emma, who said something along the lines of:

“I visited Wahaca the other day and heard a great re-mix of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing with lots of trumpets. I completely forgot to ask the waiter the musicians, can you let me know?”

Yes indeed. This is one of my favourites (hence why we play it quite a lot at the moment!) They are called the Hot 8 Brass Band… here they are on YouTube playing the song:

If you have any songs you think we should be playing please let us know by leaving a comment below.

Many thanks Emma for getting in touch.

Mark

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Food & Drink, News, Our News, Tell Us, Wahacos, What's Happening

Bienvenido

Welcome to the Wahaca blog. We’ve created the site for you to tell us about all things Mexican, curious, local and delicious that you are up to and in return we will share with you everything going on at Wahaca and with our suppliers and friends.

Our hopes are that the blog will allow you to become a part of the Wahaca world and to help us learn and improve… and most importantly have fun along the way!

We’ve got a lot planned for the blog so keep your eyes peeled for:

Food and Drink Recipes for you to make at home

Banter from the Bar which will include cocktail recipes and general chat

Window into the Kitchen which will give you a glimpse of what goes on behind the pass

Learn at Wahaca is where we will talk about the various cooking sessions we are planning to host

Upcoming Events is the place to go for new and review of our events. We’ve got some fun ones on the cards…

We’re really keen to hear what you think of Wahaca, be it positive, or less positive. It helps us to continue to evolve Wahaca to make it better and better

Let us know if you’ve got any brilliant suggestions for our playlist so we can keep our music fresh

And stay tuned for our regular news updates

We’re excited. As you can probably tell. If you’ve got any comments, suggestions or feedback, leave a comment.

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Get the Manager

GET THE MANAGER

We don’t like letting people down, so if there’s something that didn’t meet your expectations, let us know leaving a comment or emailing us at getthemanager@wahaca.co.uk

Illustration by Peter Ryan

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Compliments to the Chef

COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF

If you particularly like something that you’ve eaten at Wahaca, let us know so that we can make it even better (and give our chef’s a hard earned pat on the back).

Give us your feedback via the comments section of this post.

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Music

FACE THE MUSIC

We like to keep our music as fresh as our food.  Help us decide the best tunes to munch to by voting in our surveys and giving us your suggestions.

Tell us about your favourite tunes via the comments section of this post.

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