Zambrero Kentish Town — Restaurant in London

I love this place. I never review places but this is too good to ignore. I come around once a week. The portions are generous and easy to enjoy after I walk home.

The food is excellent. So so tasty.

the staff are great - kind, friendly and great at running this place.

The seating area is clean and quiet. The staff sometimes have music on but it’s not distracting.

These burritos are the best I’ve enjoyed in north London. The ingredients are my benchmark for burritos now. The black beans and black rice are yum together. The beans are seasoned and so tasty.

Skip ordering online, because you can only get the black beans and black rice if you buy in the shop.

I almost always get burrito bowls with chicken or beef because the seasoning and juicy flavours are so yum.

I wish there was a vegan version of either of the beef and chicken mixes because the vegan chilli mix is too spicy for me. (I wish I could enjoy spice but It hurts my tongue).

The guacamole is yum. Not too spicy.

They have vegan and dairy cheese. I usually skip cheese because I prefer sour cream. I wish they offered a vegan sour cream.

They have shredded iceberg lettuce which works well with the other ingredients. I’d love to have more fibre greens like shredded cabbage and chard. That would add more flavour and texture to the burritos and bowls. In summer they offer a salad mix, which is great when you don’t want rice.

They have three salsas to garnish the food: tomato, corn and red onion. Then you can get lime juice freshly squeezed, sliced jalapeños and a pick of four sauces. I usually skip the sauces because these creamy, spicy and tangy sauces can overpower the flavours from the hot ingredients for my palate (eg the ginger and turmeric infused chicken will taste mostly of the verde sauce)

Before zambrero I would avoid fast food because it’s greasy and i was concerned about quality, hygiene and the environmental impact. This shop has changed my mind. I’ve become a regular.

Packaging is environmentally conscious. Compostable containers. Paper bags. And recyclable aluminium foil when you get a...

Zambrero are a pretty familiar brand in Australia so I was chuffed to find one suddenly spring up in Kentish Town. Firstly the - conditioning is set up to cope with high summer in Alice Springs - a real blast of chilled air on a hot day.

Speaking of which the atmosphere was pretty chilled too. There are some nicely laid out seats, a green recycling point for the compostable packaging and, the usual sideways sidle along the counter whilst you build your order. There were enough staff without being in your face and a huge counting display updated all and sundry on charity meals donated in real time. Quite an addictive watch, that counter….

The server was helpful and, happy to express an opinion on building my perfect burrito so rare in these days of “robo server” - I had the vegan chilli as a “protein” There is an array of different fillings and add - ons which I would assume allow them to cater for nearly every palate. I prefer my food spicy so went for extra chillis and it was spot on.

Add a frozen margarita (they seem to have re - purposed a slush puppy machine to make a grown up version) to combat the heatwaves bouncing off the pavement and I thoroughly recommend Zambrero as a great stop for a low price and filling lunch or dinner. I took away a Blondie (not, blonde) for later...

Should start by saying I've got delivery from these guys a few times, and until last night it was always very good - probably 4.5 stars - and good value. Unfortunately, last night, whilst the burrito I had was very nice, for the tortilla chips and guacamole, the chips had a strange smell when I opened the bag (almost a bit like chemicals). They tasted odd - a bit of a cardboard/chemical taste - but dipped heavily in the guac I did eat most of them (probably a bad idea and shouldn't have given in to my hunger!).

Today my stomach hasn't been right and I looked up online what could be up with the chips as wanted to know why they might be like this, and seems online the general consensus means that the oil used could be rancid which would give them this off taste (and can cause digestive issues). Could be something completely different, but what people said online did seem to match up.

It is a shame, as obviously could just be a one-off batch (and the burrito was very good), but it definitely did ruin last night's meal so I probably won't order tortilla chips from there again and it does put me off ordering there in general (despite generally speaking having a positive...