Facing lockdown lockouts when it comes to dining? Don’t despair. Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca has launched an innovative eat out at home service that brings the tasty delights of its Mexican street-food inspired menu to your kitchen table – and Wise Living took the Wahaca En Casa Feast Box for a taste drive.
Celebrate Christmas, Mexican style
While the restaurant-turned-takeaway bandwagon seems fit to burst in our covid-restricted times, Wahaca has adopted a refreshing DIY approach that ticks all the boxes that matter. An eclectic mix of taco tastes, garnishes and salads that bring vibrancy to any winter kitchen, and that is hugely fun to cook, assemble and eat.
The premise is simple. Order up your feast of choice, prep the kitchen and await the delivery of all the ingredients needed to recreate some of the more iconic Wahaca dishes at home.
There’s plenty of choice. The Festive Feast for £25 per person that two packs up two crowd-pleasing street food favourites such as pork pibil tacos and buttermilk chicken tacos, turkey taquito, organic squash coupled with crumbled feta tostadas, roast garden veg tacos, crispy cauliflower bites and a side of grilled tenderstem broccoli, with mince pie empanada to get you over the finish line. A veggie version is available for a discounted £22 per person.
The Wahaca En Casa Feast Box is a limited edition debut from the restaurant, and it delivers on its seasonable festive taco dinner promise. Recreate Wahaca’s famous tacos with pork pibil and marinated free-range British chicken, alongside a portion of frijoles, a selection of garnishes and salsas, plus twelve tasty tortillas that are ready to be grilled and stuffed with deliciousness. Each box also contains ready-to-cook black bean and cheese quesadillas, all the ingredients to make Wahaca’s fresh and delicious guacamole and a decent helping of tortilla chips. And for the perfect sweet finish, dive into a delicious chocolate brownie, served with cajeta – a silky smooth Mexican caramel.
You’ll need something stronger to accompany the meal, so we opted for Tommi’s classic margarita (£8.75), with a double shot of Gran Centenario tequila shaken up with agave nectar and lime juice.
Restaurant-quality DIY cooking at home
Wahaca isn’t opting for the Just Eat route of delivering hot food that’s ready-to-eat to your door. Instead, you’ll need to roll your sleeves up, break out the frying pans and prepare to get a little hands on. That’s actually part of the charm, and unwrapping the delivery box kicked off a great evening of prep and eating.
It’s worth noting that the box and delivery were unexpectedly good. Inside, everything is wrapped in sustainable wool-like insulation, with ice bags keeping everything fresh. Environmentalists will rejoice: cardboard and recyclables abound, cutting down on landfill and meaning you can chuck everything in the recycling at the end of the evening.
It’s vibrantly presented, with thoughtful cartons and helpful instructions to guide you through the prep. Allow around 30 minutes to unpack, cook and serve and be aware that you’ll need plenty of pans. We ended up deploying three frying pans, griddles and saucepans while the microwave hummed in the background. It’s slightly chaotic but cranks up the appreciation level when it comes to tasting.
Instructions are clear, though we erred on the side of caution and fried off the chicken a little longer that the optimistic timings on the recipe sheet.
Tucking into Wahaca
There’s plenty Wahaca gets right. Portions are excellent – the feast lives up to its billing, and we actually shared between three people and there was plenty to go round. Pop everything into the centre of the table, and dive in to assemble the tacos, piling them with salsas, pink pickles and guacamole. The pork pibil is the standout – juicy, tasty and a knockout alongside the decent margaritas.
The chocolate brownie could be more generous, but thumbs up all round in terms of moistness and general deliciousness.
Sustainable chops, excellent food
With Wahaca the first restaurant in the UK to be certified carbon neutral, it’s reassuring to see its focus on sustainability extend to its home delivery service. The whole concept is thoughtful and succeeds in transporting you to the lively streets of Mexico from the comfort of your kitchen.
You can order the Wahaca En Casa Feast Box online at www.wahaca.co.uk/takeaway – note that deliveries happen each Friday (this is no ad hoc thing), and it’s currently limited to London. There are also Deliveroo options for a more a la carte approach.
