The £1400 bill at Row on 5 put any thoughts of all day drinking in Mayfair to bed. Instead, we head back to our bed in the rather sumptuous Grand Bellevue Hotel to sleep off the lunch and many wines, playing catch-up with both sleep and Love Island. We wake about 7.30pm, look out at the stormy grey evening in West London and agree we aren’t going anywhere, order some wine on room service and put on a dressing gown to not give the chap who delivered it a sight more than his pay-check warrants. Sophie is peckish and wants something spicy; we order a burrito each from Trejo’s Tacos on Deliveroo, eat it on the sofa and drink the wine for no other reason than it is there and we are paying way over the odds for it. The burrito is brilliant, not the San Francisco mission style that we see everywhere, but something more aligned to what Mexicans would eat either side of Trump’s wall. The components are simple enough; grilled chicken, salsa, rice. Some hot salsa to dunk in. It gets me really excited. The next time we’re west of Soho we are going to Trejo’s Tacos.
Fast forward four weeks and our hotel in Bayswater is just a mile away. After some very expensive drinks in Whiskey and Seaweed, followed by a disappointing Guinness in the much lamented The Pelican, we find ourselves outside of Trejo’s Tacos, straight on to the margarita flight that contains a frozen one, a spicy one, and a fruity one. Order chips and salsa, cheese quesadillas and three different tacos. Sip on a margarita, take in the permanent waft of weed that hovers over this end of Portobello Rd. Life is good.
And then the food arrives and it’s not. After the burritos we had in the hotel room we expect brilliance and receive something so lacklustre it could be on The 1975’s next record. The tortilla chips are greasy and emitting oil, with one salsa great, another mediocre, and one that tastes oddly of Thai green curry. The quesadillas are doughy with bland cheese.
The best of the tacos is the grilled chicken which has decent flavour and a cleanness the others are lacking. The beef barbacoa has a nice smokey heat but the meat is tough. Fried chicken taco, is not a taco per se, but some oily fried chicken on a lettuce leaf. The meat has absorbed the oil and is deeply unpleasant. It gets sent back. To their credit they remove it immediately from the bill.
Fried chicken removed, the bill is just under £90 with the margarita flight for two making up £44 of that. Once upon a time I’d book places I knew would be poor because I thought it would make interesting reading, but not anymore. My money isn’t to be wasted on poor food and that’s what makes this all the more disappointing. We both thought it would be a lovely lunch in London and it was nothing of the sort. The saving grace was Finn, one of the most impressive and sincere front of houses I’ve come across in ages. Someone find him a job and pay him what he deserves. The guy is a superstar.
5/10
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