Burrito Quest - Las Iguanas

So the quest for the best burrito in London continues. Last Thursday I meet Priya downtown at her office for lunch. We really had no specific place in mind for where we would eat. We left her office and ended up crossing the Hungerford Bridge over to Southbank. As we were walking we saw a restaurant named Las Iguanas. Now while I am going to review this place like I have with my previous blogs about burritos there are a few major differences worth noting. First it was a sit down restaurant as opposed to a fast food type of place so the food options were more varied while their burrito options were very limited. Second is it was much more expensive. Lastly, it wasn't solely a Mexican restaurant rather it describes itself as a Latin American restaurant and includes foods from Brazil and a few other South American countries.

Now when Priya and I were seated and started going through the menu it was clear that even for lunch this restaurant was priced a little higher than we had hoped. Also when I looked at their burrito options there were only a couple and you couldn't build them yourself rather you had to take what was on the menu. None of the burrito options really stuck out to me because it seemed I would have to ask them to leave out half of the ingredients they put in them. The lunch deal they had was you could get three of their smaller options (kind of like appetizers) for a reduced price. So Priya and I decided to just do that and share. Due to that fact I obviously won’t be reviewing a burrito here but rather just the Mexican food we got. We got the Lechuga Rellenos, a Chicken Quesadilla and Nachos. All in all pretty basic stuff. Here’s the menu for anyone interested in seeing what else they had.

The food took a little while to get there but once it was there we finished it fairly quickly, mostly because Priya only had an hour for lunch before she had to get back to work. The Nachos were fine, nothing special. The Quesadilla was good though the salsa it came with (“spicy” tomato) was bland. The Rellenos were by far the best of the three dishes. It had a sweet chili and beetroot salsa that I liked a lot better than I thought I would. The other thing that I would say I liked was the ice that they put in my Diet Coke. They were large, solid cubes. I like these at restaurants because they make a drink colder without needing as many pieces of ice. Many places here in London only give you 3 or 4 cubes of small ice that are basically half melted by the time they give your drink to you so you end up with one or two cold sips of soda from the top and then a fairly warm, unpleasant drink the rest of the way. The downside of course to the larger ice cubes is that they create great displacement causing you to end up being served less liquid. But for me less and cold is much better than more and warm. 

So overall based on what we had I would say the restaurant was okay but certainly nothing special. Now to be fair I didn't have any of their main courses nor did I try any of their non-Mexican dishes so there certainly could be a lot there they is quite good. But I admit it is not likely that I would choose to go back there because while the food is okay the price is quite high considering what you get. We ended up paying 25 pounds for three small starters and a couple of soft drinks. Based on what I had I would have to give Las Iguanas a 4 out of 10.

Here are some pictures of our meal

Other Burrito Blogs
Previous: Chilangos 
Next: Wahaca