Restaurant: El Inca Plebeyo
Location: 162 Essex Road, London, N1 8LY
Date of visit: 7 May 2017
Time of visit: 8pm
London has a handful of establishments that are Ecuadorian, or specialise in Ecuadorian cuisine. A stumbling block I came across with this country was the cuisine itself. Most of the restaurants seemed to specialise solely on ceviche dishes. Raw fish dishes. Most of the other non-ceviche dishes weren't particularly Ecuadorian, but more general South American in style.
But there was one establishment that stood out. El Inca Plebeyo in North London offered an horndo. An Ecuadorian roast dinner. There was absolutely no reason not to do this.
A couple of weeks before our visit I emailed the restaurant for clarification on the hornado. Their menu online stated that it was available at weekends only. I knew the answer to this question already, but I thought it was worth asking if this included Friday nights. And generally, as it was a special dish and quite pricey, I wondered if we had to order it in advance. Unfortunately, I didn't get a response to my email.
We went ahead with the visit anyway. Earlier in the day I reserved a table for two using Quandoo. We actually ended up arriving 15 minutes earlier than the time we booked.
Which was fine, as went entered to find a restaurant completely bereft of customers. As such, we were greeted straight away by the waitress. She asked if we were Taste Card customers, which we weren't. But she then confirmed my name from the booking I had made hours earlier, so at least that worked.
We took our pick of the tables, and the waitress brought the menus over immediately and ran us through a small list of the items on the menu that were not available. This was actually really appreciated. I can't remember ever having that before, but it makes ordering from the menu a whole lot easier for all involved!
We already knew what we were going for, but we still took time to look through the menu which had a great selection of Ecuadorian ceviche dishes, South American meat dishes and traditional sides. As we looked through the menu, we were offered a warm bowl of freshly cooked vegetarian sweet potato and plantain chips with large baked corn kernels.
We ordered fairly quickly - two hornados, and two bottles of Quilmes (Argentinian lager).
As we sat enjoying the snacks and the beer, one by one people started to come into the restaurant. Some for takeaway, some staying. Upbeat Ecuadorian music was playing throughout the visit.
The food came in good time. My very first impression was that the plates quite a little on the small side - just a little smaller than a normal dinner plate. But what a bloody plate it was - literally piled up with so much goodness!
You don't really get a sense of it from the picture, but buried under all that you can see is a mountain of pulled pork. So much meat. The pork itself wasn't seasoned or mixed in with any kind of sauce, but it was hugely tasty and very tender. Seriously substantial. There was one plantain on the dish, cooked to perfection. Rich, sweet, almost caramelised. But nice and firm, not by any means sloppy or greasy. Exactly how it should be.
The menu described it as "potato dumplings", but essential the plate contained two good scoops of mash potato. There were massive, dense corn kernels - similar to those that were served dried in the complimentary bowl when we arrived.
I have a love-hate relationship with pork crackling/scratchings. But this was, I think, the first time I had ever tried it fresh, in a restaurant. It was really tasty, and very easy to eat. I managed to eat quite a bit of it before the reality of what I was eating hit me, as it always seems to do!
Finally, to top off the plate, the green sauce - no idea what that was, but it was very fresh, very herby and really quite spicy. Not a drop of gravy to be found, but the green sauce was a nice alternative, serving a very different purpose. And it was all topped with some kind of shredded pickled onion.
It was a Sunday roast unlike any I'd ever had. And at £18 it was also one of the priciest. But it was unique, and exactly why this restaurant project exists. It's clear that many Ecuadorians eat very well on Sundays!
