Mexican at Mestizo in Camden

Deep fried cheese!

The tortillas come in such a cute warmer!

Enchiladas de mole

Mexican crepes

We were lucky enough to win a ballot to buy tickets to see Nick Cave in a special show at Koko which was being filmed for a documentary, which was awesome! It was on a Sunday so we didn't really want to drink but thought we would go out for dinner before the show, since we had to go there early to pick up our wristbands and then wait around until it was time for the show to start.

When we had got our wristbands I just googled Mexican restaurants in Camden and picked one which seemed relatively close. It turned out to be quite fancy with all white table cloths and stuff which I wasn't expecting but that was ok. There were a few other people in there but they seated us at a weird table really close to some other ones and then ended up putting another couple at the table next to us which was so close we were basically at the same table. It was weird because they had so many other tables available and it meant you were listening to each others conversations the whole time!

We were pretty hungry so decided to order a starter to share as well as mains. All the other tables got given complimentary corn chips and salsa when they were seated but we didn't for some reason, which was annoying because we had to wait ages for the starter! Maybe they didn't like us.

For the starter we order queso frito which is basically fried cheese. I'm not usually that big a fan of fried cheese but this was actually really really good. It came with a bunch of tortillas in a little tortilla warmer, and had a base of tomatillo salsa (not as spicy as the stuff I had had recently!) and some chopped onions and coriander (which I also don't usually like, but here it really worked). It was lucky we didn't order two starters because this was way bigger and more filling than I expected. I think what made it awesome was the salsa which meant the cheese wasn't too greasy or rich.

For mains we decided to get two different ones and share. Quentin ordered the enchiladas with mole sauce and I ordered some Mexican crepes with red salsa. They both came with black beans which I love, and rice which is usually good with Mexican but this one was pretty bland. The crepes were amazing, so delicious and had heaps of veges and really good salsa.

I tried some of Quentin's as well but ended up swapping back because I really didn't like the mole sauce. I'm not sure what it was about it but it had a really strange flavour. Maybe like dirt, I don't know. The filling in the enchiladas was really good (potato and cheese, you can't really go wrong!) but I would say my enchiladas were a lot better.

Overall I think the starter was by far the best dish and the mains were actually quite average. Still definitely good because I love Mexican food, but not on the same level as the starter. I think maybe just because the flavours were kind of dull whereas in the starter they were bright and fresh.

The service was not great, they took a long time to bring the food even though there weren't that many people there, and they sat people really close to us for no reason. Also no chips was annoying. Overall I would give them a 3.5. The starter was awesome, the mains were a bit above average but the service wasn't very good. I might go back and just order a couple of starters but I think I would prefer to try some other Mexican places. Oh and they had two giant TVs in the restaurant playing a looped tape of about 2 minutes of some random cooking show which was really off putting. There is no need to have a TV where you are eating unless you are in a sports bar or something, I really dislike it!