Dining Out 022: Taquiza
Dinner in Peckham.
My first favourite restaurant in London was Taco Queen on Rye Lane in Peckham, which closed a few years ago (it’s now “Café Britaly,” no comment). It was a fun, easy place that was near where I lived, and it embodied everything I still value when it comes to eating dinner out. It dealt in light wooden tables, bright front windows and a battered avocado taco that went way harder than it had any real right to. In my early years of living in London, it was always the place where my friends and I would go to celebrate birthdays, or to meet up if it had been a while since we’d seen each other. When it closed, my friend Emma and I made a special effort to have a Last Supper there before we couldn’t any more, because in its way, it was a place that meant a lot to us.
The food at Taco Queen ruled because it was interesting (if not necessarily that authentic), but more importantly it was accessible and delicious – RIP the massive bowls of nachos, absolutely slathered in queso – and to be honest, since it shut its doors, I’ve missed it a lot, and have sometimes felt a bit lost when it has come to a replacement.
I think there are some contenders in the area – Bar D4100, for example, is just as chill and homely*, and Janda Diner also has a similar cosy, friendly, unfussy vibe. But in terms of a like-for-like spot, where the food is tasty and affordable and the vibe is something like: “you could go on a date here but you could also have a massive laugh with your friends”, there’s probably only one that can stand up to TQ’s specific legacy. And on a recent visit to Taquiza, the Mexican spot inside The Carpet Shop club, just off Rye Lane, I felt like that mantle had finally and firmly been passed.
I’ve eaten at Taquiza a few times and always enjoyed it (they used to do an insanely good 2 tacos + 1 beer for £10 deal), but I had wondered a little whether the kitchen was yet to hit its stride. Tacos have always been the main section on the menu, but the sharing plates that you begin with sometimes felt disjointed, or like each individual dish had too much thrown at it (once, for example, I ordered a lamb dish from the menu’s top section which was so enormous it almost felt impossible to get any tacos in afterwards). This time, however – last Friday to be exact, 7:30PM rez, purr – I was so pleased to see that things felt much more streamlined, and I had such a good time as a result.
I love eating at restaurants of all kinds, obviously, but when it comes to the places that I feel myself gravitating towards the most, the facts are that I like noisy spots where you can eat with your hands and drink strong cocktails, so there’s a big tick in Taquiza’s column already.
This is the type of place where you order a frozen Paloma and it basically comes out in a fishbowl (tick tick), and it is also, incidentally, one of the only places in London I know that sells one of my favourite cocktails – a verdita margarita, made with jalapeño and coriander, bright green, explosive as a live episode of Eastenders and better than any spicy marg you can get literally anywhere**.
I have thought about this drink constantly since I went to Taquiza and tried it last time, and having had it again, I can confirm that still bangs, and feels properly special and unique, considering the amount of places “these days” that thoughtlessly chuck in a chilli garnish and smilingly charge you a tenner for a Picanté.
We were seated on the left hand side of the room – be warned that the gaps between the tables are very small and at one point I did bump into the one next to us, blame my big Paloma – and I liked how casual everything felt. The room was loud and chatty, music was piping through and everyone seemed happy and buzzy, which is just how I like to feel when I’m eating out. Once we’d firmly got the cocktails in, food-wise, we went for totopos with the salsas of the day (one creamy, one green and tongue-tingly and tomatillo-y, one deep red and smoky), aubergine tinga flautas, and fried chicken. On my part, I then followed that up with tacos of the beef suadero and king prawn persuasion.
Probably the best of the lot for me were the king prawn taco and the flautas, for different reasons. Where the prawn taco was concerned, it was basically just comfort food to the nth degree – prawns in a cloudy but really crisp batter, drizzled in chipotle aioli, with lettuce and cabbage for bite. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when what you’re doing is making a really good wheel, with all of the components a wheel needs, know what I mean?
The real pleasant surprise of the order, however, were those flautas, filled with deliciously meaty aubergine, stewed tinga style and as robust as a Premier League defender as a result. Again, it was big time comfort food, served with zingy salsa verde and a crema I couldn’t get enough of, both of which gave different dimensions to that rich aubergine. Elsewhere, fried chicken comes with a nutty mole, offering a very moreish twist on something you probably order the time, and the suadero taco is served simply with coriander and diced onions, which is just how it should be done (confit beef can and should always do the talking).
It’s great to be impressed by food but for me, it’s kinda better to be satisfied, and that’s the feeling I had when we finished up at Taquiza. Everything was just so straightforwardly tasty, the room so chill and fun, and the drinks so ridiculous I asked for another instead of dessert. And while the spirit of Taco Queen certainly moves through the gaff, Taquiza is very much its own cool thing – a bit rowdier than its predecessor, the flavours a bit more in-your-face, and the food only getting better and better.
*It is honestly impossible for me to go more than like a week without talking about how good Bar D4100 is.
**The other place where I’ve had a version of one of these things is at the bar at the Nomad Hotel in Covent Garden, and it was class, but you do not simply have to take my word for it. The one they sell there – called the Sergeant Pepper – was named by Paul Mescal as his favourite London cocktail on Off Menu, so there you go x
This visit was organised by Glisten PR but my opinions cannot be bought even when the price is tacos.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
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