La Hacienda

I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone. I went there with seven other friends on a friday night a couple weeks ago. it took about 30 minutes to get our drinks (beer!) and about 40 mins for a cocktail.
the starters were disappointing: looked like doritos from a package and the dips from a jar of some kind.
it was the waiter's first day, which is fair enough- you'd have thought that the management would support her. but no. it took TWO HOURS for our dishes to come. really awful. when we spoke to the manager about this, he blamed it on the waiter, saying it was her first day and that she should have given the order to the kitchen earlier. we told him this was unacceptable and that it is his job to guide her. he disagreed. his response to this crappy service? "you can have any soft drinks on the house". What a joke!
any proper restaurant would offer desserts or alcoholic drinks as a way of trying to somehow redeem themselves of the poor service. not this place. the food, once it arrived, was mediocre and by that time, after all the hassle and unpleasantness you've been through, you really don't want to eat it....
avoid this place at all costs!!!!!!!!

We arrived just after 6pm on Friday 1 June, in front of a family (i.e. mum and dad with two small children).  We ordered before them: two classic margaritas, tortillas and hot diablo dip to start with, a bottle of Soave, tap water and two main meals.

The tortillas arrived fairly quickly but with sour cream: our margaritas arrived around 20 minutes later and the tap water 30 minutes after ordering.

Everyone around was being served before us including the family and a fat lady who arrived well after us.  90 minutes after ordering, we asked about our mains and we told ‘we were waiting for you to finish your starter’.  Whilst I love tortillas, even I couldn’t finish the huge plate that had arrived. The manager also said we’d been busy talking and they were waiting for us to finish.  A few minutes after we said we’d just settle our drinks bill and leave, our mains arrived.  We explained that we didn’t want them and then entered into a heated ‘discussion’ with the manager who accused us of trying to get away with paying for  £35 of food (interesting as two margaritas were £10, we had only drunk half the £15.95 bottle of wine and the tortillas were £2.95).  The manager has absolutely no interpersonal skills and virtually shooed us out of the door, speaking loudly to try to embarrass us and make us feel as though we’d done something wrong. 

This was a very disappointing experience as we’d visited twice before and although service was not fantastic, the food was good and we’d been happy to support a new and independent venture.

We were told our custom would not be welcome in the future and we are not sorry.

 

 

Me and my boyfriend got curious after driving past this little mexican restaurant a few times. We went on a Friday night after work, so we were both nice and hungry. We gad the nachos as a starter to share. Portion was a good size and plenty of cheese, but the crisps werent the best of quality and the dips were not home-made which you would expect in a restaurant. I am a huge guacamole fan and often make it myself, it takes a few minutes but the real deal is so much better than the supermarket versions! Anyway, i ordered the chimichanga as a main, and my man opted for the peppered steak. I really enjoyed my main, very big portion, nice and hot, with lots of sour cream. I didnt touch the salad as i had a mountain of food to eat already. Steak was a bit small but quite tastely prepared. The service was not bad, not great either. The place is cheap for the amount of food you get, which i have found a problem in most london mexican restaurants.
I would go back there and. Am definitely ordering their take away!

Oh dear. I think a Mexican in Walthamstow is a great idea – if the food was actually mexican. Ok, the good points – nice decor, friendly staff, good portion sizes. However, I could make much mre authentic Mexcan food at home. Pretend salsa, pretend sour cream – seriously, it should not be THAT hard to serve real sour cream!
We started with tortilla chips and dips. The tortilla chips were from some low cost supermarket, overly seasoned and pretty unpleasant. The dips – barbeque sauce and a synthetic cheese dip? Yuck.
I had the enchiladas which were 3 small tortillas filled with un-mexican chicken. the refried beans consisted of 3 kidney beans and a tablespoon of sweetcorn. It wasn’t AWFUL, it just wasn’t um….mexican!
Two of my friends were reasonably happy with their food – a chimichanga and fajitas. Again, the seasoning in the fajitas was strange.
I think it is such a shame because a Mexican restaurant deserves to do a roaring trade in the stow – lets hope they read some of the reviews and make the changes needed to ensure it is a success.

As an American expat, I was spoiled for choice when it came to tasty Mexican in the states. I’m always on the lookout for good Mexican in London. Often I’ve been sorely disappointed, but this was NOT the case with La Hacienda. I’ve just returned from my first lunch there and it was delicious. The food was well prepared, well priced, and the flavors will all fresh and amazing. We will definitely be making it a regular dinner location and are happy to find that they deliver as well. Nom nom nom.

Even though we’d read the above review, I wanted us to find out for ourselves and hoped that a couple of weeks and perhaps a bit of feedback might have improved things at La Hacienda, sadly I was wrong. We arrived around 8pm on the Saturday night and were the only people there at first. Two other couples arrived while we were eating and I felt guilty about not telling them to run while they could, before they’d ordered so that they could avoid our fate.

The place says that it’s a Mexican restaurant and cocktail bar and certainly my margarita looked good …. and then I tasted it. Lime cordial instead of lime juice ….. it wasn’t good.

Then our starters: we got a portion of nachos and dips for two – and it was just like someone had opened a packet of tortilla chips on a plate and dished out a few portions of random poor quality supermarket dips. There was no texture to the guacamole and the dips included an awful synthetic cheese dip and what I would think is barbeque sauce (as well as a poor so called sour cream dip and a salsa). There was no chilli heat to any of them and no corriander.

My husband said his main course was ok. Again I can consider myself pre-warned. I ordered vegetarian fajitas which menu described as being stir-fried in SOY sauce (no, I’m not making that up) and served on a sizzling skillet , as you’d expect from fajitas. I asked for the soy sauce to be omitted in the cooking, unfortunately it wasn’t and there was no sizzle whatsoever to the skillet. By then I’d had enough of the bland food and asked for some Tabasco to give it a bit of taste and to try to disguise the soy sauce.

Staff weren’t friendly. The owner/manager asked whether we’d enjoyed our meal and when I told him what was wrong, he tried to blame it as a one-off ‘cos the main chef was on holiday. That doesn’t explain the soy-sauce on the menu. The waitress didn’t look like she was happy to be there, mispronounced what dishes she tried to say but also asked you to order them off the menu by number.

So, Mexican food cooked by people who’ve never been to Mexico? I think so, but I’m not 100% convinced that they’ve even been to a Mexican restaurant.

What was Kurinji, the South Indian and Sri Lankan place on Hoe Street (well, one of several) has shut its doors and reinvented itself as La Hacienda - a tex-mex restaurant.

Now, I wouldn't go so far as to describe the food as "as if it was made by someone who'd heard of Mexican food but never eaten it", which is how it was described to me by a fellow diner in the pub after. But it wasn't wildly successful either.

The good news: it's cheap, portion sizes are good, the staff are nice, the salsa and parsley dressing for the salads are both quite good - if noticeably not traditional in their Mexicaneyness, and the decor is lovely - someone's really gone to town on the look of the place.

The bad news: the ever-present ding of the microwave in the kitchen, along with the clearly bought-in tortillas, bland (also probably bought in) guacamole and frozen, rather than fresh, spinach mean the food is generally on the tasteless side. Given the current trend for street food, and how great good Mexican food is (and how easy it is to make it great), then that's a pretty poor start.

I kinda want these guys to succeed - after all, there's no other Mexican in E17. But on this basis, I won't be hurrying back.