Wahaca Bristol

Bristol seems to be steadily growing into one of those 'go-to' places for foodies. Park Street especially has opened a plethora of new 'trendy' restaurants over the past few years and the latest, which I've been waiting to try out for a while now, is Wahaca.

The new restaurant is tucked away at the top of Park Street but it's not unmissable thanks to its bright pink signage, drawing you in for lots of Mexican loveliness. The restaurant itself is very 'cool' with hipster art work and graffiti, snazzy hanging chairs, dim lighting and even a table football game.

It might look small from the outside but the restaurant goes quite far back so there's plenty of seating for all types. Vince and I popped in at 12pm on a Bank Holiday Monday - it had only just opened so was pretty empty, but within 10 to 20 minutes it was absolutely heaving and there was a real buzz about the place.

Things aren't too disimilar to other restaurants, you're popped down in-front of a paper menu, which the waiter proceeds to scribble all over and your dishes are brought out as and when they are ready. This has both upsides and downsides. The upside is that you get your food relatively quickly but you can end up like that scene in FRIENDS where Joey is left at the restaurant table and meals for six people arrive all at once. In other words: major overcrowding. Some people like to eat a starter, then a main and don't want to eat them together. Thankfully, I'm not one of those people, bring it all on I say! The other downside is that you can be tucking into your grub and other people are still waiting, leading to that awkward situation where you can't decide if you should start eating and risk looking rude or be polite and wait and risk letting your food get cold.

I'm not too familiar with Mexican food to be honest and the menu had so many options that it was difficult to choose. The waitress was really helpful and suggested a few things to us and went through how things worked. We both went for bigger mains (I had the Pork Pibil and Vince had some sort of chicken in sauce, I can't remember the name!) along with sweet potatoes on the side and a starter of three tacos. In hindsight we decided it would be better to choose lots of different things from the starter/street food menu, that way you get to sample a bit of everything! The tacos from the street food menu were pretty yummy, however I think they should come in twos or fours - it's difficult to share a taco in half between two people!

The food itself was really good - the Pork Pibil I had was technically pulled pork with a coleslaw and pink pickled onions. It came wrapped in a parcel of paper - the pork had a real almost sour kick to it while still being yummy. It was a good size too and I couldn't finish it all, which is unusual for me! Vince's chicken dish was a decent size, covered in creamy sauce and did look really good. Thinking back, we didn't actually try each other's dishes. I have to say the best part of the meal was the sweet potato side, which was absolutely delicious. I could have eaten pots and pots of the things. They were dressed in smoky caramelised mojo de ajo which was gorgeous!

Overall we had quite a lovely lunch and it was nice to try something different. You'll usually find us across the road in the Cosmo pan-Asian restaurant, as it's one of our faves, but we forced ourselves to have a bit of a change. The prices weren't too bad, the atmosphere and food was great so all in all a pretty successful trip. Next time we'll remember to try lots of different dishes for that 'proper' Mexican street food feel.

Before you go, why not nominate Cherry Pie in the Cosmopolitan UK​ Blog awards here under the 'Best Beauty' category.