Wahaca Brighton celebrates the Day of the Dead with some great new dishes

This three-day celebration, which has its roots in southern Mexico and takes place from October 31-November 2, has come to the popular North Street venue in style.

The festival honours the memory of the dearly departed with family and friends getting together to celebrate and remember.

Until November 12 Wahaca is decked out in traditional papel picado, the cool and brightly coloured paper Mexican decorations, and a specially-created altar in the style of a ofrendas, with candles, painted skulls and photos of celebrity’s who have shuffled off this mortal coil in the past year.

And pride of place at the front of the restaurant sits a very fetching pair of Mexican calacas, life-size skeletal figurines hand-crafted for Wahaca by talented artisans from Oaxaca. Younger diners also have the chance to get creative and knock up their own Day of the Dead skeletal souvenir of Day of the Dead.

Amid the festivities there’s some banging new dishes on the latest Wahaca menu.

Sussex World and the Brighton and Hove Independent have always been massive fans of Wahaca, the restaurant group co-founded by former Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers, and are happy to see its continued success in the city.

At first glance the new menu seems to have retained the majority of Wahaca’s heavy-hitters and the fab seven-plate Discovery selection, not only perfectly matched but ideal for the indecisive.

One of the new dishes was a platter of Mexico City nachos, which was a world away from the dreary identikit pub nachos, with chorizo, black beans, crema, guacamole, pink pickled onions, cheese sauce, fresh tomato salsa, jalapeño and plenty of coriander leaves.

The marvellous thing about Wahaca has always been the huge number of fresh ingredients that make up their dishes. A second new dish – the beet tartare was a great example of this.

Two crispy fried tortillas was stacked with Riverford Organic beetroot, a little spicy salsa macha (although perhaps a little more wouldn’t have gone amiss) , fried horseradish, avocado cream, and topped with a hefty mound of fresh leaves.

There’s now also the option chef speciality sharing plates for two (served with rice or tortillas ). We very much had our greedy eyes on the smoky caramelised pork belly with tamarind sauce and crispy leeks but sadly weren’t the only ones and it sold out minutes after we’d ordered on busy Saturday afternoon.

Life is obviously heaving with disappointments these days but fortunately our high dudgeon was swiftly lowered with our second choice of sharing plate a Roast Riverford Organic Squash.

The curvy cucurbitaceae had been roasted with a dusting of chilli and was served with a cashew nut and fresh herb mole and salsa macha. The former was milder than the moles (the gorgeous Mexican chilli and spice sauces not the small mammals with poor eyesight) I’d previously had at Wahaca but the nuts and ‘erbs made for a super creamy addition to the dish.

Our last plate was the splendid beef gringa. A flavour-bomb of a taco. Slow-cooked British grass-fed beef with grilled cheese and salsa fresca. Gloriously meaty and gooey, with a nice gentle kick from the salsa.

There wasn’t enough room in the our tums for churros so we opted for another drink. One of us one was going easy and the other seemed more keen on trying a few of Wahaca’s very reasonably priced cocktails liberally laced with mezcal and top-drawer tequillas.

I had the new limited edition Catrina’s Chocolate Orange Margarita (an homage to La Calavera Catrina, who symbolizes the Mexican ability to laugh with death) a decadent cocoa-rich number with melted chocolate and Centenario Reposado tequila, while my boozy buddy chose the Mezcal Negroni and a Blackberry Margarita an inspired Anglo/Mexican blend which mixed the berries of Albion’s hedgerow’s with the spirit coaxed from the agave fields.