Lupita

There are so many pseudo Mexican restaurants in London. Lupita is the exception to every single bad experience with Mexican food. I have been a fan of this restaurant since I discovers and was recommended by friends from DF. And I have to be honest, you can't get better!
Fresh tortillas, guacamole, refry beans, ceviche, the marinated pork cochinita and my favourite the prawns and chipotle tacos are such a good deal! The flan cajeta and Churros are a most! Food has flavour spicy and tangy, mouthwatering.
The cocktails are fab and the service is good compared with Wahaca, laredo and chiquitos and all those fast food chains.
It is a small busy restaurant so better be prepared to wait for a table and enjoy the experience is just Like eating in Mexico. I will be back next week with more friends!
I highly recommend to pay a visit. 
Leo

Wanted somewhere for a quick dinner (per-theatre) Lupita was quite empty and conveniently close by. Service was fast, but the food and atmosphere were both disappointing. Portions were tiny   -  appetiser sized - and didn't taste of much.  The atmosphere was that of a sandwich shop (like a Pret) with very uncomfortable metal chairs that gave a strong message of " eat here but don't linger"
Not somewhere I will return to.  There are plenty better restaurants which are not only better, but also better  value for money, nearby.

This is, hands down, my favourite Mexican restaurant in London. The food is delicious, with many and varied interesting vegetarian options.  I'm a particular fan of the "Chicharron de Queso" which is essentially a thin piece of deep fried cheese.  Nothing wrong with that!  Last time I went with a vegetarian friend and we had the vegetarian platter for two which, at £18.50, is quite expensive but gives you an extraordinary amount of very nice food.  The margaritas are also very very good.  The only real downside to Lupita is that the atmosphere isn't great - it's crammed full of tables and is quite noisy.  The downstairs is a bit quieter but still not great.  Given the food, though, I don't care!

Tacos! This is some of the best Mexican food I’ve had outside of Mexico or the states. The staff is friendly and the music playing makes for a fun evening. Also great margaritas. The bartender there is a very friendly chap as well. Will be going back soon to try more things.

Awful. I went there for lunch and found a piece of GLASS in my food. After complaining to what looked like the manager, I was offered my meal for free, but they still expected my colleague to pay for hers. I pointed out that we had stopped eating the food immediatly after the glass was discovered and shouldnt have to pay for any food. His response ‘if thats what you think then fine’ Before that the food was terrible anyway. Stay away

I love Mexican and checked in via Foursquare for complimentary Guacamolito on my first visit.

The Guacamolito didn’t come across bland whilst the main dish I chose, ‘Cochinita Pobli’ was simply unappetising.

My biggest regret was my automated reply of ‘fine, thank you’ when asked if everything was okay because it wasn’t but I was caught off guard, how could pork taste so horrible?

Other people seemed to be enjoying themselves and I liked sitting up at the table that around the kitchen but my dish!

I want to like this place and strange as this may sound, will go back to try it again.

I like Lupita. The food is very tasty, the service was great from the friendly waitress and I enjoyed watching it being prepared. The chefs are amazing with the dishes they prepare. Really authentic Mexican food. Many choices of dishes.

I was really disappointed with the food and service at Lupita. Our waiter forgot to bring almost everything we ordered (had to ask twice for most things and the final dish never showed up!) We finally asked for the bill and saw we had been charged for food we were never served.

When the food arrived it was…terrible. Not Mexican, not Tex Mex, just gross. The salsas were well flavoured, and we had a lot of tortillas and salsa waiting for our food to arrive.

If we’re comparing to Wahaca, I’d take Wahaca any day…and that’s not saying much.

Poor service, small portions of over priced tasteless rubbish. Expensive taco bell!! Awful

Decent food a tad overpriced (but hey it is Villiers St). A lot better than other offerings for lunch nearby. I loved my non-alcoholic cocktail, but for £4 I wouldn’t buy one with my own cash!

Waitress was very friendly and remembered all of our orders rather than writing them down which was quite impressive.

Reminds me of Wahaca only not done with same polish, whether you like that or not is up to you…

Not keen on the added service charge but it seems to be the norm these days (deep sigh).

I celebrated my birthday yesterday at Lupita and was very impressed by the customer service and the extent to which the staff went to make our night special, so wanted to express my gratitude online by way of a good review. We had a great night and felt very comfortable. The food was amazing with very interesting flavours, and different to what we were used to. I especially enjoyed the margaritas! Therefore I was really surprised to come across some of these comments.

To aherring16: WOW - has Wahaca spent its whole marketing budget for the year already that it has had to resort to this? If you are not someone that works for Wahaca, then what has Lupita done to you to make you this vindictive and bitter? Out of curiosity I went to your profile and see that you have only reviewed twice - once for Lupita saying it was the worse place, and the SAME DAY reviewing and glorifying Wahaca. PEOPLE - Wake up and smell the G-wahaca-mole... Do you have any idea of the damage these kind of reviews can do to a business, especially when it is ALL RUBBISH? Are you trying to help close a business? To state that it is MICROWAVED TEX MEX is slanderous for starters. How can can you say this, when the food is cooked in the central kitchen in full view of everyone. Lupita is owned and run by Mexicans whilst Wahaca was started by an american lady who went to Mexico once, liked the food and then won Masterchef (all credit to her) If you had such a bad experience at Lupita, did you inform the manager on duty of your dissatisfaction and give them a chance to rectify the situation for you?
Normally, people complain, get a free drink and get on with it.
On the occasions I have eaten at Wahaca, sure, the food was ok, but it felt like any other chain restaurant. Given the choice, for me Lupita would win every time, especially on authenticity.
For anyone reading these reviews, I would recommend trying Lupita for yourself and making your own opinion.

We were recommended this place by 2 separate people, but I cannot for the life of me understand why. It is the shabbiest, dirtiest, tourist trap of a place that proclaims to serve Mexican tapas, but it was warmed up Tex Mex microwave food at best. The restaurant itself is disgusting. Marks all over the walls and floors, then halfway through our meal bin bags being taken out through where the tables are, cooks standing outside with the back door wide open smoking. Then there's the food. The refried beans were served with lumps of Feta cheese (how is this Mexican?) and was no better than the stuff you get out of a can from the supermarket. Burritos are supposed to be bursting at the seams with fillings, however, what was delivered to us was a flaccid tortilla with some old white rice in, dodgy chicken and a bit of salad. The tacos and guacamole were acceptable, but very bland. My steak quesadilla had a hard round disc in it that nearly broke my teeth and when I pointed it out to the waitress she didn't even say anything nor was I offered an explanation of what it might be. Their churros were also the worst I have ever tasted...floppy bits of batter cooked in old oil rolled in chunks of brown sugar and served with cheap melted chocolate. There was no offer to comp anything and seeing as we were in a rush to get to the theatre we had to bite the bullet and pay £60 for the most god awful meal in history. Use the toilets at your own risk too! The toilet seats are all broken, there is dust, spiders and paper everywhere and they generally just look unfinished, like something you would find in a dingy club, not a central London eatery. I cannot encourage people enough to stay well clear of this place. If you are visiting the city or even a resident go to Wahaca instead...it's only up the road, but is a million miles away from this place. Fresh ingredients, strong flavours, amazing staff and value for money. We have never had a bad meal there and go back time and time again, but we will NEVER be returning to Lupita.

Very poor. We ordered several dishes and I only remember vaguely liking one.
I complained about my cocktail and was told that the next one would be better.
Didn't wait to find out.
Avoid.

Lupita is a small restaurant just steps away from embankment and charing cross stations, the deco has a modern mexican feeling to it without loosing the simplicity of a real mexican taqueria. I arrived there with my girlfriend and just seconds after sitting down a very overwhelming and overconfident waitress literally pulled a chair and sat next to us she started an awkward conversation while waiting for our order. We ordered a few dishes; the ceviche tostada was lonely in the plate compared to the 2 portions that other mexican restaurants like wahaca serve, the fish was tasteless and not marinated enough so it was still a bit raw. After that I had a new dish on the menu, tacos de birria; typically the feeling is a tender lamb marinated in a chilli sauce but it almost seemed like it was just a chunk of flavour less meet straight from the oven, after that we had some arrachera tacos, our mistake while ordering this dish was that we ask them with cheese and the whole taco was flooded by it, the flavour of the cheese took over and it was not as enjoyable, one important remark is that the taco portions are 2 per serving compared to the 3 portions or even 4 in other similar restaurants. Finally the best part of the food was the quesadilla lupita; very good and tasty with a rich filling of exotic flor the calabaza and mushrooms and the frijoles refritos side with chorizo, the chorizo was simply amazing you really have to dig in away from the overloaded tortilla chips to get some but the taste is absolutely superb. Drinks were very well done, the agua de jamaica (hibiscus) is one of the tastiest I've ever had in london and the michelada I always go for was well done. Overall it was a good experience.

As Mexican I can tell you that this is real Mexican food, it taste proper Mexican, and is as good as it can get, the service usually is very good, and the beer selection is excellent!

Finding myself in need of a bite and in the Villiers Street area I figured I might as well go check out Lupita: any opportunity to check out a potential new source of burritos has got to be a good thing, right?

In summary, "Okay".

What these guys served up under the description "burrito" was not anything approaching my understanding of what a burrito is. A toasted wrap, perhaps. Seemingly a small example, but with London being a hotbed of burrito availibility right now, this is a crucial thing to get right. I asked for no tomato, and the waiter to his credit tried to make it all better by offering me a 15% discount after he forgot to tell the cooks not to add tomato. In hindsight there was so little tomato on the thing anyway it made little or no difference. And come to it, the wrap was reasonably tasty. But a burrito it were not.

The corn chips to start were very nice, and not Doritos out-of-the-bag like I thought they might be. And again, to their credit, to make amends for screwing up my order the waiter gave me a free raspberry sambuca shot. Which was weird. As was the music, which seemed to be less about trying to create any sense of enjoyable ambience for the customer, and more about listening to stuff that the kitchen staff wanted to listen to as they worked.

It seems wrong to mark Lupita down so much when the waiter was obviously so penitent about slightly mismanaging my order, however to distinguish yourself in the centre of London you've got to be Good. And this wasn't Good. Not Bad, but definitely not Good.

Nice little Mexican in the west end

I understand why others like Lupita -- if you haven't been fortunate enough to stumble upon other authentic Mexican restaurants in London (both of them), then Lupita can appear like a beacon in the mist.

Pros: Service is friendly, and the atmosphere is fun/bustling. Better food than Wahaca in nearby Covent Garden (albeit we're talking about two different types of Mexican cuisine).

Cons: The tacos are not as flavourful as Boho Mexica; for example, the carnitas were bland at Lupita compared to the melt-in-your-mouth conchinitas, served appropriately with a sprinkling of pickled onions to add an extra zing. Price-wise Boho Mexica now looks much more reasonable next to Lupita.

For other dishes, Mestizo is multiple tiers above what Lupita offers.

The tray of dips offers a watery and tasteless avocado option that pales next to the potential of guacomole derivatives.

And where's the horchata???

Upstairs is nice, downstairs has a more unfinished look, with breeze blocks serving as a bench at one table. Service is good, and the dishes are very tasty with lots of mexican flavours on the menu. Good beer too. Dishes are quite small and it has more of a tapas feel than a main course, so you might have to order two to three dishes each. Don't underestimate the side sauces, they have a considerable chilli kick.

It would normally be a 4 star but since it's by far the closest to real Mexican food we have in London, I give it 5 stars.
And if you go there please don't order burritos. Ask for the real Mexican stuff.