Del74

Mexican

129 Kingsland High St, London E8 2PB

£

Del74 is a no-fuss taco joint in Dalston. With the slightly cringe motto ‘keep it simple, keep it real’, you expect good food for great prices, as well as relaxed and friendly service. However, when a group of 12 of us pitched up for a birthday booking one Saturday, none of these expectations were met.

Firstly, our table wasn’t ready for us, and the rest of the restaurant was rammed, so we were asked to wait outside and order some drinks. We all ordered a mixture of margaritas and paloma’s (£8.5-10) which eventually arrived in ikea-style tumblers and tasted distinctly watered down. It reminded me of when I let other people make me ribena when I was younger: a constant disappointment that I never really learnt from. The waiter was aloof and unhelpful, eventually showing us in 20 minutes after our booking was due. One of our party ordered a different type of margarita – to which he actually declined, saying “you won’t like that, it will be too spicy.” Did anyone tell this guy the number one rule of the service industry? The customer is always right, and even if they’re not they’ll still have to pay for it and you can laugh about it behind their back later.

We ordered a few plates of guacamole (which doesn’t come with tortillas – you have to order more on top. Pretty crazy as the guac is £8 alone). Much to our disappointment (and shock), we were told that they had run our of guacamole. Pretty odd, considering there was a supermarket literally across the road that they could have gone and got some avocados from and whipped some up in approximately 10 mins. Instead, they gave us a few portions of the black bean nachos – a soggy plate of dismay. I adore black beans, but these had been blended to a watery pulp which tasted like nothing and looked like old dishwater. The tortilla chips suffered as a result, becoming limp and lifeless beneath.

Next on the menu were the tacos: Tom and I ordered the fish, pork and chicken and were planning to share all three. Only two of these actually turned up, both as uninspiring as what had come before. The fish was not battered, instead covered in some unidentifiable spices and fried so it was overdone and broken – it genuinely looked as though they had scraped the leftovers from the pan and dumped it into a taco. The taco itself has not been warmed through, so was cold and dense – having none of the warm slightly fried crunch you’d expect, and on top was some shredded lettuce coated in what looked like the kind of salad cream I find in my grandparents fridge, sold on the menu as ‘homemade coleslaw’. The pork taco had its meat swimming in a orange liquid, which I originally thought were the meat juices, but much like the nachos, was a watery mess. There was an essence of avocado at the bottom – so they must have been harbouring some somewhere after all – but the dish was mostly dominated by the overly sour onions on top due to the lack of pork in comparison. Our third tacos never did turn up, neither did the chicken wings, but we didn’t ask where they were as we didn’t want to waste any more money on the questionably bad food or waste any more time in the awful setting.

Given we came to Del74 and only had half our order turn up, along with the fact we were actively told we couldn’t have something as we wouldn’t like it (again, how the fuck would you know?!) it’s very hard and almost laughable to write a review. It could have been partially redeemed through lovely service, but our waiter was quite frankly arrogant, unfriendly and made us all feel a little uncomfortable. The watered-down margaritas gave me an incredibly sober view of the setting which was dingy, bordering on dirty. We weren’t provided enough seats for our party, and I’m pretty sure we all massively overpaid as splitting the bill became incredibly complicated and the waiter didn’t tell us once we had hit the amount due. Overall, Del74 is the worst experience of eating out I’ve had since I can remember (potentially ever).

OVERALL RATING: *

https://www.tacosdel74.com/