My knowledge of Mexican food is very limited to say the least. I couldn’t tell you what is authentic Mexican cuisine and what isn’t. Of course the English food snob is obsessed with ‘authenticity’ and will not put up with Anglo- variants of a dish, though the changes in them are made to make them palatable to English tastes. I see little point in suffering in the cause of authenticity and so I am quite happy to eat foreign food even if it has the spirit of a foreign dish rather than the complete substance of it. So I had no hesitation in reserving a table at the New Mexican-style restaurant, Mayan, in Gas Street Basin.
In the past I have been to Mexico City for a few days and eaten genuine Mexican food in good quality restaurants but that was forty years ago and my recall of the dishes is now rather limited though I do remember an excellent dish which included a heavy use of chocolate (a savoury, not a sweet). Unfortunately it all ended in tears as Monteczuma took his violent revenge out on me which resulted in me loosing acutely about 9lbs in weight and for some reason or the other, to develop a dislike of the smell of coffee for some weeks following. It also cut short my ability to eat any food during my remaining days in the Mexican capital.
Well that was then and this is now. And the Mayan looked very exciting with what was clearly a large amount of money having been spent on it to give it a glitzy Mexican look with gold, though more probably gold plate, everywhere. The Mayan does for Mexican food what Qavali does for Persian and what Lulu Wild does for Chinese. Excellent, if perhaps somewhat overbearing, decor. Sadly I was the only diner that lunchtime, there to enjoy it.
I started with a ‘signature cocktail’ - a combination of tequila and mezcal and other ingredients called God of the Sun. It looked pretty but lacked punch and was disappointing at a cost of £14.
To begin I had guacamole with tasty, crunchy totopos. Avocado is not the tastiest ingredient available to a chef and this needed more salt at the very least to take away some of the blandness of the dish. But it was perfectly edible.
I had a starter of tortilla soup which proved to be a bowl of the tasty, hot and spicy soup with thin strips of tortilla and a very generous amount of tasty shredded spicy chicken and to balance the heat, cooling avocado and sour cream. This was very good but enough to make a meal in itself.
The main course was made up of three very well cooked pieces of sea bass with nice crispy skins and a single prawn with chick peas and a coconut, mango and tamarind sauce. While the sea bass itself suggested that the chef who had prepared it really knew how to deliver a perfect piece of fish, I’m afraid that the sauce did not really do the fish justice - where I wanted citrus the sauce was sweet and failed to complement it.
This had been a very filling meal and there was nothing on the very short dessert list to make me feel I wanted to add to sense of total repletion. I did however have a very spicy chocolate drink epwhich certainly gave my taste buds something to think about.
The front of house staff were very nice but for the price bracket this restaurant locates itself in, they need to be doing more things - filling my glass with water rather than leaving me to do it myself, paying attention to my napkin when I leave the table, offering to take my coat when I arrive and opening the door for me when I depart. Early days yet but all this was possible on my visit as I was the only diners in the restaurant that lunchtime.
This is a spectacularly decorated restaurant, probably quite thrilling when there are more diners there, but it is expensive, so the diner’s expectations must be high even at this stage so early in the restaurant’s life.
Rating:- 🌛🌛
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