London's best Mexican restaurants

If you had to design a cuisine for hard times, it may have ended up looking like Mexican food. Many of us now are looking for good value and small bills. We like wholesome, filling food; we need some zing, a touch of chilli maybe.

For some strange reason Mexican food and its cousins, Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex, have never fulfilled their potential in Britain — but that looks set to change.

WAHACA, 66 Chandos Place, WC2 (020 7240 1883, www.wahaca.co.uk) £10pp ex-drinks.
Thomasina Miers is the brains behind Wahaca, a bustling canteen-style restaurant on the edge of Covent Garden. The menu is based on Mexican street food, and dishes are straightforward. There's no booking but the queue, and your meal, will move along briskly. The tacos are good, also the guacamole and the burritos. A second branch opens at Westfield White City tomorrow.

MUCHO MAS, 27 Upper Street , N1 (020 7704 2123). £5pp ex-drinks.
A lively, informal establishment opened by Eric Partaker and Dan Houghton in Islington, offering excellent burritos, tacos and salads.

Chilango 142 Fleet Street, EC4; 020 7353 6761, www.chilango.co.uk; open Mon-Fri 11am-9pm £5pp ex-drinks)
Opened only last week as a second branch of Mucho Mas. A free burrito offer saw queues of office workers stretch down Fleet Street.

BENITO'S HAT, 56 Goodge Street, W1 (020 7637 3732) £6pp ex-drinks.
Has already established a decent local following, having opened in August. The hat in question belonged to Benito Juarez, who threw the French out of Mexico, ended up serving five terms as president and yet is still remembered for his taste in hats. This place was set up by Ben Fordham and has all the makings of a restaurant that's set its sights on becoming a chain. No frills, no fuss.

GREEN & RED, 51 Bethnal Green Road, E1 (020 7749 9670, www.greenred.co.uk) £22pp ex-drinks.
Cocktail bar and restaurant combo taking its name from its location (the junction of Bethnal Green Road and Redchurch Street). The food is sophisticated and showcases the cuisine of Jalisco but is still good value. The presentation may be home-style but dishes stand out through an intelligent use of different chillies, thus the slow roast pork belly is seasoned with pasilla chillies while the meatball dish — albohondigas — is made with chipotles. If the range of tequilas doesn't tempt, there are excellent Mexican beers.

TAQUERIA 139-143 Westbourne Grove, W11 (020 7229 4734, www.coolchile.co.uk, www.coolchiletaqueria.co.uk) £10pp ex-drinks.
When it comes to Mexican food, Dodie Miller deserves a long-service medal. Since the early Nineties her company, the Cool Chile Company, was the only place to get a decent choice of Mexican chillies and then, in 2005, she opened Taqueria. The food here combines simpler dishes such as tostadas and tacos with more ambitious ones such as sea bass ceviche. Miller has now imported a huge tortilla-making machine capable of turning out 3,500 tortillas an hour.