Everyone is familiar with Mexican food in some guise but usually what we get in the English speaking world and Europe is actually Tex-Mex - an Americanised version of Mexican food. I’m told that nachos, for example, is not traditional in Mexico, that the burritos are usually smaller and skimpier on the fillings, and that tacos have soft shells.

In Sydney, nachos were ubiquitous on café menus throughout most of the 1990s, though the trend seems to have died off now. They might not be traditional but they were very good - a rich spicy red kidney bean stew, crunchy corn chips, melted cheese and spicy homemade guacamole. Imagine my disappointment when I went to the United States for the first time and encountered the liquid cheese horror of Taco Bell!

That is not fair, of course. The US has some fabulous Mexican - or Tex-Mex - food. I encountered it in Brooklyn, in Mexican Town in Detroit, and of course, in California where the cuisine really comes into its own.

In London, one of my favourite places for a burrito is the Daddy Donkey cart on the Leather Lane street market in Clerkenwell. It’s not cheap - it costs around £5 - but they keep the quality of their ingredients very high. You can get either a wrap or a salad bowl and they have chicken, beef, pork or vegetarian options. The meat is always tender, the salad crisp, the guacamole fresh and tangy, and the black beans and rice marvellously satisfying. Buy it to take back to your desk or grab a seat on one of the picnic tables beside the van.

Restaurant Review: Taqueria

Sometimes you want to sit down for a meal and the sad truth is that London is starved of good Mexican restaurants. Enter Taqueria in Notting Hill.

I have never been to Mexico but I’m pretty sure that the food here is as authentic as you’ll get outside Mexico. It’s quite unlike any Mexican food I’ve had anywhere else, with homemade tacos and light, fresh toppings.

The website says the restaurant makes everything from scratch, from Mexican chorizo to the hot chocolate, which is ground in house. They go to great length to source Mexican ingredients - the parent company, Cool Chile Co imports dried chiles and herbs, masa harina (tortilla corn flour), corn husks and pozole (a stew made from hominy - a type of dried maize) directly from Mexico, while the Mexican chiles are from Dorset-based Peppers by Post. They use organic chickens, British meats and cheeses to supplement the Mexican ingredients.

The food is very good indeed. The best thing to get are the tacos, which come in pairs. If you have a group of people you can order an assortment of tacos and try a few different flavours. The portions are not huge so you will need 2-4 tacos per person, depending on whether you have appetisers or dessert as well. Flavours include “carnitas” (shredded slow-cooked pork, green salsa, diced onion, coriander), “spinacas y queso” (browned cheese with spinach and red salsa on large tortillas) and “camaron” beer-battered prawns, avocado mash, chipotle mayonnaise, Mexican salsa, limey shredded cabbage, doubled tortillas. Vegetarians are catered for but the selection is not overly large.

For the drinks, I recommend the Horchata, a rice milk drink flavoured with almond and cinnamon. It’s sweet and smooth and quite delicious. The Flor de Jamaica, or hibiscus juice, is quite nice as well, tasting, not surprisingly, quite like hibiscus tea.

It will be difficult to leave without doing dessert as well. My favourite is the “plátanos con cajeta”. A banana split by another name, it features fried plantain (cooking banana), coconut ice cream, cajeta (goats milk toffee) and toasted almonds. It is simply perfect. There is also a hibiscus pudding, ice cream or sorbet, and the classic option of churros (doughnut sticks) with Mexican hot chocolate.

The service is occasionally patchy but generally good and it’s always friendly. Aside from a slightly overdone taco on my last visit, the quality of the food is exceptional.

Taqueria
Address: 139-143 Westbourne Grove, London W11 2RS
Tel: +44 (0)20 7229 4734
Web: www.coolchiletaqueria.co.uk

Mexico is my third country to feature on my UN food challenge, after Ghana and New Zealand. There are 189 countries to go…

When you think of New Zealand and food, pizza does not automatically spring to mind. The great Kiwi culinary exports are lamb, cheese and butter, kumera (sweet potato), and of course, kiwi fruit. (They also claim to have invented pavlova but so do the Aussies and I’m not willing to enter into that debate). Yet, a New Zealand pizza franchise has opened up in a corner of West London and is planning an assault on the British capital.

Hell Pizza opened in Fulham less than a year ago and the Kiwi manager tells me that the restaurant is intended to be the blueprint for an entire chain. That will be great news for homesick Kiwis all over London, as Hell Pizza is one of the most popular pizza chains back in New Zealand. I was introduced to the chain when I recently attended a birthday dinner for London-based, New Zealand-born author Natasha Judd.

The style of pizza was familiar to me from Australia - it is like a much more upmarket version of Pizza Hut, a bit like the Sydney chain Gourmet Pizza Kitchen. It’s different to Italian pizza in two main ways. The base is not quite so thin and crusty but is a bit thicker and softer. Also, the toppings, which can be very untraditional, are piled on much more lavishly than the Italian style.

At Hell Pizza, the names of the pizzas are thematic - you have a range named after the Seven Deadly Sins, while other names include Brimstone and Damned. There is a standard range, which has things equivalent to Meatlovers and Supreme, and a gourmet menu where anything from refried beans to blue cheese might make an appearance. For example, the Cursed has chicken, smoked cheddar, bacon, gherkins, ham, honey mustard. The Purgatory, one of the vegetarian options, has fresh spinach, sun-dried tomato, black pepper, feta, garlic, mushrooms and onion. There are also dessert pizzas - the Forbidden with marscapone cheese, sliced banana and caramel toffee was quite a hit.

The food was tasty and since we had more than 10 people we could go for the £5 all-you-can-eat option, so it was a bargain as well. They bring it out to you so you don’t have the same temptation as you would if it were sitting in front of you or at a buffet table, but we still packed away quite a few slices. I had forgotten how much more filling that style of pizza is compared with Italian pizza. I can eat a whole Italian pizza myself, though I try not to, but there’s no way I could get through one of these babies on my own. The pan is bigger, the base is thicker, the toppings more plentiful - I had four or five pieces including dessert and I was stuffed.

Hell Pizza is definitely worth checking out if you are in the area, and they do home delivery as well. Personally I prefer the simple flavours of Italian pizza, but I know plenty of people who love this stuff and with a big population of Aussies and Kiwis in West London, this joint should do well once word gets around.

Two down, 190 to go…

I have been working in Farringdon this week so I popped up to Exmouth Market to sample some food from the street market. I had various choices, including Italian sausages and Breton pancakes, but I was most struck by Spinach & Agushi, the Ghanaian food stall.

It’s obviously quite popular because, as well as having to wait in a short queue, when I got to the front they were sold out of the eponymous spinach and agushi. So I had a vegetarian bean stew with rice instead. The curry was rich and spicy with red kidney beans and chick peas, which had a satisfying chewiness. There was none of that nasty tin flavour you sometimes get with the canned variety.

I liked it so much I came back the next day, determined to get the spinach and agushi dish. They change the menus daily and also offer meat-based dishes such as beef stew or coconut chicken curry but they do the spinach and agushi every day. This time they had freshly cooked plantains that had been deep fried in a wok so I had that instead of rice. I didn’t know what agushi was but the sign said it was made from ground melon seeds. It tasted like a mild, almost sweet paste, and went very well with the spinach and spices.

If I ever see agushi for sale I might buy it simply for the curiosity factor - I have found a few recipes online that use it, such as agushi soup and this stew using kontomire (coconut yam leaves) with spinach listed as a substitution.

Plantains are a close relative of the banana that provides a staple food in much of the developing world, including Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean - you can buy it in the UK in places like Brixton and Kilburn High Road. Plantains, unlike their sweet relative, are starchy and can only be eaten when cooked, but they are highly versatile, making anything from salty chips or crisps to sweet baked or stewed dishes.

On the Spinach & Agushi website I learned that Ghanaian food is made from maize, cassava, plantain and rice based dishes, usually served with soups or stews. Fish is usually smoked and dried and beef, chicken, lamb, guinea fowl and goat are also popular.

Tthe stall is run by Lloyd and Adwoa Mensah-Hagan, who were runners-up in the BBC2 show, The Restaurant with Raymond Blanc. They run the Exmouth Market stall Monday to Friday and a stall at Portobello Road market on Saturdays, but they are looking for suitable restaurant premises. I wish them luck!

1 down, 191 to go.

Spinach & Agushi

Location: Exmouth Market (Monday to Friday) and Portobello Road Market (Saturday)

Web: www.spinachandagushi.co.uk

Inspired by my friend Alex, I have decided to embark on a mission to eat food from all 192 members of the United Nations.

It could take me years and it might be hard to find cuisine from some of the more obscure states but I won’t be defeated! From guinea pig in Peru to spätzle in Austria, there’s a whole world of food out there.