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.

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.

In the past 5 years, 20,000 of our specially designed spoons have mysteriously (a-hhem) dessert-ed us and this January we’re giving all those who bring one back to us the chance to clear their conscience without fear of retribution. In fact, we’re such a forgiving bunch at Wahaca that in return for that spoon you “borrowed” we’ll also give you a free plate of tacos. No questions asked.

We’re hoping that this amnesty will be our big chance to stop our spoons ending up into the wrong hands and being used for malicious means – As makeshift percussion instruments, serving taramasalata, or heaven forbid, being bent by Uri Geller.

If you’ve been resisting the temptation to pocket one all this time, we admire your honesty and in return, we’ll let you borrow one, so long as you bring it back in January. That way you can get a piece of the action without your values being besmirched in any way. If you ask, we’ll also give you a hug.

You know who you are, if you’ve got one of our lovely spoons hiding in your cutlery draw, bring it along and grab some tacos.

Tell your friends, The Mexican Spoon Amnesty is coming and reform never tasted so good!

Rules to control the fun: One plate of tacos per table, but don’t let this stop you bringing back the 5 spoons you have, our forgiveness is unlimited. You’ve got to hand your spoon in to your waiter at the beginning of your meal to claim your tacos. We’ll take the cheapest plate of tacos off your bill and at this point, we’d like to recommend how tasty our winter vegetable tacos are. Wahaca do not encourage theft of any kind, it’s very bad for your soul. Borrowing is OK though.

This weekend sees the opening of Miss Bala, Mexico’s official entry for the 2012 Oscars, and yet another film that has got the critics going absolutely crazy form Mexican cinema. And because we love you all very much, we want to send you to see it and then invite you along for a meal round at ours afterwards.

Miss Bala tells the true story of Laura, a young woman from Baja California who dreams of becoming a beauty queen but instead finds herself delivered into the hands of a violent gang of Mexican drug smugglers. Combining explosive bursts of brutal action with mesmeric sequences of balletic beauty and searingly vivid imagery, Miss Bala has taken worldwide festival audiences by storm.

We’ve teamed up with the film’s UK promoters and have 5 pairs of tickets to go and watch it at the Odeon on Panton Street (just off Leicester Square) during its opening week, and they’re ripe for the winning. If that’s not enough, each winner gets a £50 Wahaca cheque to come for a meal too. Not a bad night out at all. To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is email us at ola@wahaca.co.uk with the answer to this rather tricky question:

Which Mexican state is the film set in?

We’ll be picking our 5 winners at random on Friday 28th October, so get your entries in ASAP. The 5 winners will receive a pair of tickets to be used at the Odeon on Panton Street before the 4th November and a £50 Wahaca cheque to spend on a meal for 2 at any of our restaurants.

¡Buena Suerte!

Just when you were starting to think that the end of the summer meant an inevitable slow and depressing decline into wintery doom, along comes Mexican Independence Day to cheer us all up. To celebrate, this Friday 16th September, we’re doing what we do best, street food for free! But hold on a split second, surely we can’t give free food to everyone. You’re right. We can’t. That would be madness. It’s only for people in the know. People like you.

This year we’re keeping it nice and simple. All you have to do is bring a picture of a Mexican flag with you to any of our restaurants on Friday 16th and we’ll give any dish from our street food menu for free. It can be a picture that you’ve found on the t’internet and printed out (here’s a couple to get you going), one that you’ve had hand-stitched for you, or one that you’ve drawn with colouring pencils. Anything that vaguely resembles a Mexican flag and you’re in. But, we’re nice people, so please don’t abuse us, it’s one street food dish per person who brings a flag with them. Sorry, you can’t bring 2 flags and get 2 free dishes. That would just be greedy. If you do fancy more than one street food dish (and to be honest, who would blame you), we’ll buy the least expensive one. It’s only fair.

So what are you waiting for, round up your friends and your flags and get yourselves down to Wahaca on Friday.

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!

There’s been a flurry of excitement over at the offices of MyDestination.com, where the infighting continues between the boys and girls teams in their chilli plant growing competition, but their efforts are starting to become fruitful. Alex Plim (aka Captain Plimiento) fills us in on their latest developments:

In the unlikely event anyone other than my Mum and Dad is following this competition (hey guys!), you will remember that the last MyDestination.com blog post left our crusaders in a shaken yet resilient state, rocked by a series of devastating setbacks, but looking forward to a more stable future.

For a time, the competition’s progress continued auspiciously at a dogged pace, like a Zimmer frame user heading for the biscuit aisle in Sainsbury’s, while the plants settled into four shiny new pots within which they had been re-housed.  The My Destination office looked on in quiet anticipation, noting the sprouting of each new leaf from stems that plodded ever further along their journey against gravity.

In fact, it was all going so well that Team Inferno decided to christen their plants, and it was thus that Hector Suarez and Don Juan Pablo came to be, like a 21st century Bill and Ben.  But Mexican.  And without arms and legs and heads.  Plant pots with faces drawn on in black marker pen then, really…

But controversy and catastrophe is never far away in the My Destination chilli war.

The Vindaloo Vixens, in a level of disgrace previously thought impossible, chose an especially blustery day to place a defenceless Hector Suarez on a windowsill as a window stopper.  The consequence was inevitable.  In an instant Hector was displaced onto the office floor, strewn across the carpet in a scene befitting a brutal and bloody murder. 

Team member Will was stunned into a shocked silence, leaving Captain Plimento to salvage the disaster and perform an emergency repot by himself.

Following this unfortunate episode, Team Inferno retired into a period of frenzied care for Hector and the Don, while the Vindaloo Vixens slipped into a habit of apathetic neglect, leaving their plants to shrivel into a pathetic, wilting mess.  Captain Plimento briefly considered referring this abuse to charity, before realising no such charity exists, then considered setting up his own plant-care charity, before realising this would be an utter waste of time.

It was upon the return of the Vindaloo Vixen’s adopted captain, Kirsty, from a trip to Dubai that the girls sprang to a sudden and panicked attentiveness.  Oblivious to the surfeit of information on the internet warning against over-watering chilli plants (‘the surest way to kill ‘em’, according to Wahaca’s own chilli growing expert), the girls launched a tsunami campaign against their plants, drenching them every day with enough water to fill Winston Churchill’s bath tub.

While this turmoil was unfolding, however, a far more sinister force was at work: aphids (or, to use its deceptively common name, the greenfly).  Don’t be fooled by the ‘ph’; aphids are the aids of the plant world, leaving in their wake a trail of merciless desolation as they destroy otherwise healthy shrubbery.  In an almighty anti-climax, the entire chilli competition became somewhat nuclear holocaustic.  The aphids attacked the plants, munched their leaves and toppled their stems.  Everything went dead; not just limp, but completely and utterly dead.

And that was it.  Everyone gave up.  They shook hands and moved on.  Team member Will began talking again, and the Vindaloo Vixens stopped being so vindictive.

The chilli competition ended.

But – and this is a big, big but – the faintest glimmer of the slightest shred of hope remained in the form of one formidable man, a man who refused to relinquish his dreams of one day holding a veritable, real-life chilli in his mighty palm.  That man was Stefan, the office’s token German, the very same German who rose to the occasion in My Destination’s previous blog entry and cared for the chilli plants as if they were kin.

Armed with nothing more than a spray bottle containing water and washing liquid, Stefan diligently purged the aphids, bringing the chilli plants back from the brink of oblivion.  It was like a scene from Rambo, except Stefan didn’t have a gun, per se, and he was wearing a shirt.  The plants’ recovery was slow, and by no means absolute, but gradually, to the gormless astonishment of everyone at My Destination, they made their way back to health.

All of which leads to 28th June 2011, a date that will forever remain in the memories of Team Inferno as the day that Hector Suarez, thrice depotted against his will, overcame immeasurable odds and sprouted his very first flower, bringing with it renewed hope for the future of the My Destination chilli war.  More flowers followed, like tiny white light bulbs dripping from branches which bowed under their weight.  Each new morning brought with it another, until each plant swelled with splayed petals.

And then came the day it all went galactic: 22nd July 2011.

If 28th June will forever sit within Team Inferno’s memory, 22nd July will be passed down to their offspring and to future generations beyond that, to be celebrated every year from now until the end of time as a day of monumental significance.  For it was that morning that Captain Plimento performed a routine check on Don Juan Pablo and found, to his deep and lasting astonishment, two and a half inches of firm, spicy goodness in the form of a ripening chilli.
Goodness knows how he, along with the rest of the My Destination office, omitted to notice such a specimen during its growth, but omit it they did.  It took a full week before either team could deal with the discovery and take stock of its earth-shattering implications.

Two things are now very clear: the chilli war is very much alive, and Team Inferno is the team to beat.

You can follow the progress of the Mydestination.com chilli growing competition on twitter, just search #MDIChiliOff.

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.

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Having followed his tips on planting, re-potting and pollinating, you’ll hopefully now have some good chilli shoots sprouting. But Mother Nature can be a cruel mistress and things do go wrong, so we’ve enlisted the help of our official Chilli Expert, Craig McKnight to give you some TLC tips. Over to you Craig.

First things first. As I’ve mentioned before, make sure that you keep the compost moist and not drenched. If you overwater, then this will not help your chilli plants, and will probably kill them. It is best to water them little and often, rather than nothing for ages, and then drench them in a mad panic because the compost has dried out.

If your plants have produced flowers already, then you can give them a helping hand by putting liquid tomato feed into their water for everyother watering. I tend to use it at half the concentration recommended on the back of the bottle. Alternatively, if you search on the internet, there are specialist feeds for chilli plants.

The second thing to watch out for is the enemy of the gardener, slugs and snails. The only surefire way to get rid of these is to check your plants periodically. You can use slug pellets, but obviously these tend not to be organic. However, I have tried a natural product called ‘Slug Gone’, and had very good results from it.

Lastly, everyone gets aphids on their chilli plants occasionally. A natural way to control these is to encourage ladybirds to live near your chilli plants, as they are the natural predators of aphids. You can even buy them from the internet!
Another way to try to control them is to spray your plants with a very weak solution of washing up liquid in water. However, do not use one that is describes as “anti-bacterial” and use one that is fragrance-free. Also, don’t spray your plants when it is hot, or in direct sunlight, as you will scorch the plants, and kill them.

There’ll be another ‘guru video’ shortly giving tips about how to recognise when your chillies are ready to pick. In the meantime, happy chilli growing!

Those of you who have been reading our blog over the last few months will have seen the competition that we ran to send one festival loving author to Mexico to report back on the Guelaguetza festival in Oaxaca. Last month we chose a winner and right now Mark Weir, is getting stuck into a few tacos and (hopefully) donning an elaborate headdress whilst joining the carnival atmosphere as the parade winds through the streets.

This is not Mark Weir

We had loads of entries in the competition and were truly impressed with the quality of the reports we received. It made it really difficult to choose a winner, but it was Mark’s descriptive style and ability to get himself into and out of various scrapes whilst exploring the back end of the Czech Republic that singled him out as a man who should be jumping on that plane to Mexico. Have a look and let us know what you think:

Language, lyrics and getting lost at the ‘Rock for People’ music festival in the Czech Republic.
By Mark Weir

It’s quite a beautiful feeling. That you can still experience a foreign land without having to download an app for it, surviving on a big smile, a polite nod and plenty of hand gestures instead. It’s humbling too, wandering from stage to stage like a mute, relying on the patience of others, the fortune of getting someone at the bar who takes the time to talk in broken English. I’ll return again soon, Hradec Kralové. You won’t be any easier to pronounce, but at least I’ll know where to find you.

Watch out for more of Mark’s writing coming your way as he takes up the position of our roving reporter telling us all about his trip to Oaxaca in the next edition of OLA LONDON, which will be ready for you to ogle at in October.

Thanks once again to The Mexican and Oaxacan Tourist Board, British Airways and Hostal de la Noria for helping us send Mark to Mexico.