Address – 152 Loughborough Road, London SW9 7LL

Telephone – 020 3742 7040

Open most days from 12.00 noon

This is a colourful Dominican restaurant near Loughborough Junction. Sit inside or outside for the more hardy among you or just order from Ubereats or Deliveroo. We sat inside on a Saturday lunchtime and while waiting admired the eclectic decor of flags from the Dominican Republic and parts of the UK, the wall art and the sets of pink plastic wisteria. Everywhere you look there is something that doesn’t fit but is a feast for the eyes.

The menu is long and we learnt that you definitely need to share. In fact my advice is to take along a teenage boy to hoover up the food otherwise you will be taking home boxes of leftovers. There are starters, mains and sides, too many to describe here. You will also need to ask what many of them are as there isn’t a lot of explanation. But this will also require some knowledge of Spanish as our waiter didn’t know too many English words – but that added to the surprise. To our choices:

We ordered a Mofongo as the classic dish. It comes with a variety of meat or fish and salad. I chose the crispy pork (only for those who do not fear a dentist). A “Mofongo” is mashed plantain that has been previously cooked and then it is made into a tennis ball and fried (I think). The texture is tight. It comes with a hat of grated cheese and is served with a garlic sauce (definitely needed as it is quite dry). Only one third was eaten even with the addition of the sauce as it is very filling. The pork is indeed crispy and the salad fresh and chunky. Overall I think this is something you may try once but I suggest you try with some soup rather than meat as that will certainly change the texture. It was an adventure!

We also orders fried Tilapia and – a whole one arrived on the plate with a delicious coconut sauce and some more plantain, but this time fried on a skewer. This was accompanied by a small salad and boiled rice. This was lovely. The fish just cooked and relatively easy to take off the bone. Again a very large portion but the plate was empty at the end of the meal.

We drank home made lemonade (not too sweet and very refreshing) and one made with tamarind – also not too sweet. They do have alcohol on the menu.

We often passed this restaurant and were lucky to be hungry so popped in. We were there for quite a while and really enjoyed the trip. It was an adventure and the bill was quite large for a Saturday lunchtime but we have learnt our lesson and next time will order to share. A family arrived after us and just ordered the meat menu to share among the five of them and they demolished the lot. So this is a great place for friends and family to enjoy breaking bread – or at least a few chicken wings. The menu at the restaurant is much wider than the one online so we do suggest that the whole experience requires attending in person. Our bill came to £47.00 and it would have been half of that had we realized the portion sizes. We didn’t eat for the rest of the day.