With the open­ing of The Roxy cin­e­ma, Mira­mar has sud­den­ly become a rather pop­u­lar lit­tle neigh­bour­hood. And now things get even more inter­est­ing with the open­ing of Mex­i­can restau­rant La Boca Loca.

It’s a taque­ria — a Mex­i­can fast food joint. But the fast food in ques­tion is cen­tred around a selec­tion of tor­tilla-based dish­es, like bur­ri­tos, tacos and enchi­ladas, as well as a vari­ety of side dish­es.

A lot of thought has gone into the dish­es. Every­thing seems to have been espe­cial­ly designed, rather than any sort of assem­bly line “your meat here” sit­u­a­tion.

Too hotI ordered some stuffed jalapenos, which was a bit of a mis­take. They were too spicy-hot for me to enjoy. Like, I was actu­al­ly in pain and seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing run­ning over to the chemist to get some codeine. Dra­ma! I was sur­prised because I’ve had stuffed jalapenos before with­out such extreme mouth fire, and also because there was­n’t any sort of warn­ing on the menu. But then, the La Boca Loca does mean “crazy mouth” so per­haps that was my warn­ing.

Good burritoFor­tu­nate­ly my main dish was so much more enjoy­able. It was a beef bur­ri­to, served with a lit­tle side sal­ad and fei­joa chut­ney. I am in favour of bur­ri­tos that do not con­tain sal­ad. There’s noth­ing worse than sal­ad explod­ing out from inside a bur­ri­to, so real­ly well done for La Boca Loca putting it on the side.

The fei­joa sal­sa was a nice touch. Despite its Span­ish name and con­ti­nen­tal Amer­i­can ori­gins, I don’t think the fei­joa is a big part of Mex­i­can cui­sine. The fei­joa sal­sa seems like a nice acknowl­edge­ment of the restau­ran­t’s Kiwi loca­tion.

The beef in the bur­ri­to was ten­der and sea­soned well, so if it’s any­thing to go by, I’d be more than hap­py to work my way through the bur­ri­to menu.

Now, I know La Boca Loca is new and so I want to cut them a bit of slack, but there were a cou­ple of annoy­ing lit­tle things.

Tippy plateThe plate my bur­ri­to was served on was curved with a very small flat under­side. This meant that when I tried to cut a bit of the food, the plate rocked over on to its edge. It was just real­ly annoy­ing, and I had to keep shov­ing all the food into the cen­tre of the plate. It seemed more like a dish for fin­ger food than a din­ner plate.

And all the seats in the restau­rant were back­less stools. It’s not the sort of seat one can relax in, and I end­ed up all hunched over on the table. It was like a trick from one of those ’80s-era fast food restau­rants that were designed to stop no-good teens from loi­ter­ing, but yet La Boca Loca seems more like the kind of restau­rant that wants peo­ple to stay and order mul­ti­ple cours­es of food. And even bloody McDon­al’s give cus­tomers chairs.

Welling­ton has so few awe­some Mex­i­can restau­rants, so it’s good when a promis­ing new one opens. I get the feel­ing that La Boca Loca is just a few tweaks away from being a real­ly amaz­ing restau­rant, and it’s yet anoth­er good rea­son to make a trip out to Mira­mar.