A Taste of Manuelita’s

---

Nick Montague discovers South American specialities in W6

Venture out of the immediate Chiswick area into the W6 badlands to get a taste of Manuelita’s.

Don’t be misled by the “Freehold for sale” sign outside: this Latin American restaurant is very much open and is well worth a visit.

We were the only diners on a Wednesday evening and were greeted warmly by the delightful Ecuadorean proprietor, who in appearance was a Latino Simon Russell Beale.

A complimentary bowl of moreish roasted corn was produced and replenished after we demolished it quickly with the first glass of the excellent and ungreedily priced house red – a 2006 Argentinian malbec. Full marks to them for automatically getting my wife to taste it, as she had ordered: a welcome contrast with the more chauvinistic Trompette.

The menu concentrates on little-known South American specialities, with starters priced from around £4 to £6. They include soups, ceviches and a range of more ample. dough- or corn-based rolls, fritters etc. Knowing that my main course would be substantial, I missed out on starters, but shared my wife’s exceptionally good quinoa soup with beef and vegetables: very full flavours (this is not a place for those on low sodium diets) which merged well and were nicely perked up by the accompanying and not over-fiery chilli sauce.

Mains go from around the £8 to the £11 mark, most priced at the lower end. My wife’s lomo de pollo was extremely tender chicken strips, sauteed with red onions and chillis and served with good chips. She also had a particularly successful side dish of empanadas de Manuelita, crisply fried but properly soft inside and stuffed with cheese. I went for the vast meat platter, which was both well-cooked and an interesting mixture. Beef, particularly good and meltingly tender pork, a sausage described as “chorizo” but more like a blood sausage, fried plantain, rice, a very interesting white corn cake and superb fried beans: now it’s clear why I missed out on a starter (and pudding). You couldn’t fault it.

My wife managed a dessert, which was genuinely outstanding: a pudin de coco, a traditional Ecuadorian coconut pudding of excellent texture and flavour – not, as she’d feared, too sweet. The wine list focuses on South American wines and is reasonably priced: there’s also a good range of Latin American beers.

The whole meal with wine came to just over £44 without service. This place is a real find, and should be kept going. It will, I suspect, need quite a bit more patronage if it’s to survive, as places in the bleaker stretches of King Street and Chiswick High Road do (remember the demise of the excellent Garni in the latter). But it’s not without hope – the admirable Azou in the same block has kept going for years. And for a good atmosphere, interesting food exceptionally well cooked and remarkable value for money Manuelita’s is hard to beat.

Nick Montagu


April 17, 2008