The power of street food – the star quality of Michelin. No wonder Tom's review is such a.. Mexican rave!
Ella Canta
One Hamilton Place,
Park Lane, London W1
Rating: 
One of the ‘Overtures’ (or starters to you and me) at Ella Canta, a new high-end Mexican restaurant in The Intercontinental, Park Lane, is ‘Nationalistic’ guacamole. Which immediately makes one think of furious avocados, fists aloft and wrapped in the national flag, stomping down the Paseo de La Reforma, screaming ‘Donald Trump hijo de puta!’
I wish. In reality, it’s the green (lusciously creamy avocado), white (crumbs of ricotta) and red (pomegranate seeds) of the Mexican flag, topped with a nutty-tasting grasshopper, coated, Aztec-style, in gold. So a traditional Oaxacan dish (guacamole with chapulines) made elegantly modern. And one that encapsulates the cooking of Martha Ortiz, Ella Canta’s immensely talented executive chef.
Guacamole - green (lusciously creamy avocado), white (crumbs of ricotta) and red (pomegranate seeds) of the Mexican flag
Corn and huitlacoche cake (left); guava and burnt cinnamon candy (right)
Because like the great Enrique Olvera of Pujol in Mexico City, she reveres the past, without ever getting bogged down in it. Ancient and cutting edge sit merrily together, and her plates glow with the vibrant primary colours straight out of Mexican folk art.
And while her technique often errs towards the high end (sangrita sorbet with a shimmeringly fresh ceviche, a slash of pineapple purée with soft shell crab ‘El Pastor’), this food has true Mexican soul.
Flavours are bold, deep and gloriously unfettered – soft chunks of octopus wear a warmly smoky chilli sauce, threaded through with crisp slivers of deep-fried shallot. Chew and crunch. And there are verdant sprigs of coriander, and a blob of rich avocado purée, that stop things getting too intense. She understands the importance of balance, both of flavour and texture.
Pickled salmon sits atop tiny tostadas, topped with an elegant slice of avocado, and more smoky heat from the chipotle. There’s the power of the street, with the refinement of a Michelin-starred kitchen.
Old classics like carnitas and cochinita pibil are given new life. The former, pork fried in lard, sees a hunk of well-bred pig, forksoft and run through with rivulets of fat. Topped with a brittle, glossy sheet of crackling. You pile it into fine, charred, chewy and masa-scented tortilla (if chilli is the soul of Mexican food, then maize is its heart), along with a tangle of dressed watercress and a few whole charred chillies.
More pork with cochinita pibil, a dish from the Yucatan Peninsula, this time suckling pig, wrapped in banana leaf and slow cooked with annatto and Seville orange juice until you’re left with a magnificent mass of mess, Trump-orange and tempered with a pinch of the sour.
Calavera (left); Aquafresca (right). There’s the power of the street, with the refinement of a Michelin-starred kitchen
Pink pickled onion adds more tart relief, and a splodge of black ash salsa, dark, dangerous and furious with habanero chilli. There are other salsas too – a vibrant, sharp tomatillo, which dances across the tongue, and a yellow-hued beauty, with a subtle, building heat. A Mexican meal is not just naked without salsa, but utterly bereft too.
Again, the surroundings may be resolutely grand, but the juices still run lasciviously down one’s arm. OK, so this is a Park Lane hotel. Cash has been splashed on the interior, and in the day it can feel a little sterile. More empty than it should be, too. I go again at night, where the hard edges are rubbed off, the light dim and seductive.
Ordering can be an ordeal. The fact that a credit card is required to book is irksome enough. Then there’s the usual high-end hotel system of endless different uniforms. There are hostesses with flowers in their hair who take you to your table. Then fellas in white shirts who take away empty plates and brush down the table, but can’t take orders. That’s left to the men in jackets, and women in green dresses.
It can get rather tiring. And while service is lovely, every single dish is delivered with an exhortation to ‘enjoy’. Yuk. Prices are Park Lane high too. Dinner, with a few beers (at a tenner a go) and a couple of (excellent) margaritas, comes in at just shy of £50 per head. But we don’t balk at these prices when it comes to high-end French or Japanese. Why should this level of Mexican cooking be any different?
My friend Manuel, a proud Chilango, had raved about the place. ‘Out of this world,’ he gasped. And he’s a Mexico City native. It shows how far we’ve come. A few years back, Mexican food was little more than a Tex Mex-tainted culinary cuss.
Now though, thanks to the likes of El Pastor and Santo Remedio, we’ve a taste of the real thing. If you’ve never eaten real Mexican, prepare to be dazzled. And if, like me, you sit in utter thrall to one of the greatest countries on Earth, Ella Canta is a true gran dama: bold, beautiful and quietly brilliant.
Dinner for two: £100
What Tom ate this week
Monday
Back from Melbourne on Singapore Airlines. Cracking food. Claypot rice with Chinese sausage and dim sum for breakfast. My new airline obsession.
Tuesday
Time for some 5/2 penance. Soup. Seaweed, sadness.
Wednesday
Down to Worcester College, Oxford, my old college, to the opening, by my mother, of the splendid Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre.
Then an excellent lunch with the provost of Terrine and turbot.
Thursday
Lunch at Murano in Mayfair. Roasted squash tortelli , rabbit tortellini, then monkfish with guanciale and borlotti beans. You can always rely on Murano.
