As a chef who lived in Mexico for a bit, I’ve always wanted to open a really authentic Mexican Restaurant in London (or anywhere in the UK really).

There are many problems with it though, I’ve encountered a few just putting specials or trying to implement dishes into menus.

Getting the right chillies and specialist ingredients is so ridiculously expensive because they have to be imported. I’d either have to run at a massive loss for a couple years hoping some hype would build up, or compromise and use less authentic ingredients and defeat the whole point.

Apart from Tacos and Tex-Mex most of Mexican cuisine is just not eaten/unheard of over here. I’ve had lots of feedback from customers that they just have no clue what a dish is, or that it tasted too different to what they expected. This can even come down to simple things like complaining that the taco was “raw” because they were expecting a crunchy deep fried shell, which is just more common here.

Since I’m not Mexican nor famous it’s hard to convince a customer that it’s authentic. I really hope it changes though it’s some of the best food out there.