Breddos, London EC1: ‘It isn’t Mexican or Tex-Mex food. It’s a chaotic fusion’ – restaurant review

I mourned AA Gill by chain-reading his work, bingeing on interviews, restaurant reviews, travelogues: all fearless, curious, unbothered by the bourgeois notion of giving offence, a clear-headed vision with unique literary elan. In one interview, these lines struck me: “Everything is so overflavoured now,” he said, “dominated by the East and by Latin America and these enormous, big flavours. This style of cooking is fantastic, and I love it. But actually, I was just thinking, when was the last time I ate a blanquette de veau that was just white, and just soft, and wasn’t shouting at me?”

Now, I swoon at a cacophony of tastes as much as the next palate on a journey to jaded, but Gill’s words resonate as I take possession of a series of Breddos’ signature tacos. They are unspeakably delicious, but I feel bludgeoned, bewildered, bloated with flavours. Normally when reviewing, I’m a hideous plate-sniffer, trying to identify individual components, parse technique, understand context; I’m a whole lot of fun on the job, me. Here, I can’t see the food (it’s dark), I can’t hear others’ observations (it’s loud) and everything arrives at once in a great, untrammelled blurt of hot-sour-sweet-crisp-gooey-chewy shoutiness. It’s a mic drop moment.

Anyway, some background. The duo behind Breddos, Nud Dudhia and Chris Whitney, were food-obsessed friends who jacked in their jobs to start selling beef shortrib tacos from a shack at east London’s Netil Market. A labour of love (Ginger Pig beef, marinated and seared and slow-cooked) they would make as many as they could with limited means, sell out and repair to the pub. Selling out earlier and earlier made them realise they had a hit on their hands. An extended menu and street food fame followed, and now they’re out into the real world of Clerkenwell at the edge of the City. Their new restaurant is a cutie: lightboxes, hand-painted wall menus, booths; during an early-days visit, it’s populated by a swearathon of industry insiders, chefs dick-swinging so noisily that it puts me off my frilly fried egg taco with macadamia nut mole, hoja santa (a lightly anise-scented Mexican leaf) and homemade queso fresco. Which is bloody annoying, because it’s way sexier than they are.

So I have to go back during daylight hours. Worth it: the kitchen elevates street food to an art. They make each taco in-house, soaking, cooking, liming, washing (or nixtamalising) the corn and grinding it on a mill made from volcanic stone. I know. No commercially bought taco will taste like these. They’re the perfect vehicle for the dazzling toppings, each core ingredient (pig’s head cochinita pibil, say; or crisp-fried masa chicken; or a loose pile of their own fragrant chorizo verde; or smoky roast sweet potato) with a backing choir of electrifying salsas and seasonings: honey and pasilla chile glaze, habanera sauce, shrimp chiltomate, x’ni pek, pea mole. (No, you look them up: I haven’t the word count.) The cumulative effect is blinding.

This isn’t Mexican food. Or Tex-Mex food. Or even the kind of ingredients-led Mexican food I ate recently in Arizona. (Brief shout out to all the Trump voters I spoke to who, when I hastily changed the subject to favourite food, answered “Mexican”.) It’s a mad, chaotic fusion where, if the flavour is big enough, it’s in; so there’s kung pao chicken, Szechuan black vinegar, pineapple nam jim. The subtlest thing we eat is Yucatan-style sea bass “tikin xic”. With its skin charred and its flesh glazed with half salsa rojo and half salsa verde, both ringing with chilli, it’s to subtlety what Trump is to interior decoration.

What seems to drive the Breddos boys is a kind of ferocious creativity. Menus change frequently: you might find crunchy nut sweetbread tacos, or the shortribs could come with masa onion rings and pickled jalapeño instead of lemon onions. Tlayudas (Mexican “pizza”) feature curry leaf and cumin instead of avo and salsa. The wood oven might be disgorging arbol chile crab instead of the Old Spot pork “al pastor” that came our way, spit-grilled and served with roast pineapple.

Whatever you find, it won’t be a soothing experience, a blanquette de veau for the soul. They need to do some work on running an actual restaurant in terms of timings and flow, rather than a street food shack with fine mezcals. But it’ll have your tastebuds howling “Chihuahua” like the drunk at the fiesta.

Breddos 82 Goswell Road, London EC1, 020-3535 8301. Open Mon-Sat, noon-late. About £10 a head, plus drinks and service.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 9/10