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.