There is no cutlery at Homies on Donkeys, a taqueria in Leytonstone, east London, that is run by Sandra Bello and chef Erik “Smokey” Bautista. “No cutlery, no exceptions, we got napkins, get messy,” it says on the single-sheet menu, alongside descriptions of their abundantly stacked tacos filled with reverse-braised bavette or confit pork with dripping, wobbling amounts of jalapeño relish.
This fork-free zone will come as a relief to some informal diners, who find all those butter knives, dessert spoons, cheese scoops and grape shears a bit bamboozling. It may, however, dismay anyone wearing a non-wipeable fabric such as cashmere. Homies on Donkeys is more of a sou’wester kind of place, with added salsa verde and chipotle on your chin when you pay the bill. It’s also a place for people who like 1990s hip-hop, graffiti-strewn walls and the sensation of eating in a suburban skate park: Naughty By Nature, Main Source, Gang Starr and Grand Puba blare from the stereo as I sit at a table that is absolutely nowhere near big enough for all the tacos, large plates, sides and drinks that we’ve ordered; we’re also wedged in next to the till, where the servers are constantly ringing in orders. While the seating may not be ideal, the soundscape just about makes up for it. This isn’t a 90s-themed restaurant, but if you’re of a certain age, remember the Beastie Boys back when they were gobby kids, videoed Dance Energy with Normski on BBC Two or ever got grounded for tagging your neighbour’s garage, this place is like sensory whiplash with tacos on top.
Homies on Donkeys – vibrant, nonconformist, independent – is also one of the more exciting things to have happened to this distant area of east London for a while, where the grand plan seems to be to let developers build and build and build new blocks of flats, so filling the postcode with new residents, while at the same time restaurant openings, with all their prohibitive rates and outgoings, have virtually ground to a halt. Bautista and Bello made this new venture possible via crowdfunding, after a popular five-year stint in Walthamstow, where they had all of eight seats. By 6pm on a Friday night, their new venture was already at full capacity and they were fighting off the crowds at the door. The informality and relatively affordable prices are clearly a draw – it’s £8 for a plate of two heavily filled spicy chicken barbacoa tacos – thighs cooked slowly in a secret mix, served with a smoky, spicy guajillo and a tomato salsa that takes no prisoners, and topped with sweet onion and coriander. Camarón enchilado, or king prawn tacos, are equally complex and lovingly made: fat prawns in a heroic amount of garlic and chilli, served in a tomato base on a fresh taco.
The food is truly astonishingly good. These are dishes that have clearly been carefully honed, with no heed to the notion of even thinking about pulling back on the spice, acid, sweetness or umami. Even the refried beans have a smooth, intoxicating, miso-like undertone that lifts them from mere afterthought to star of the show, and all this is done with the sort of informality that will probably puzzle more discerning diners who want bells, whistles and forlock-tugging.
So, Homies on Donkeys definitely doesn’t stand on ceremony, but it does serve well-seasoned, top-class, lemony and almost buttery guacamole with a mound of hot, crisp, freshly cooked corn chips the likes of which I’ve never tasted in my long career of dipping things into other things at Mexican eateries. The menu is almost wholly tacos, though one special this particular Friday was braised tuna pibil, for which tuna loin is stewed in achiote and served with wafer-thin radish, pickled onion and habanero chilli. Another special of very rich, slow-cooked, braised chuck was deeply flavoured and devourable, and came flanked by wobbly bone marrow still in its bone, Pedigree Chum advert-style, topped with pico de gallo and accompanied by gorgeous corn tortillas. This dish should feature on an end of year roundup list of “debauched things that offer nothing-but-calories happiness”.
with pico de gallo, bone marrow and corn tortillas. Photograph: Matthew Hague/The Guardian
There’s no dessert menu, and we were quickly handed a bill so we’d vacate our spot as soon as possible. Then again, people hanging about and poking their panna cotta are the enemy of profit nowadays. If I ever get a table at Homies on Donkeys again, I’ll wear spongeable polyester and looser-fitting denim next time. This is not Claridge’s – in fact, I’ve had a comfier seat at Costa Coffee – but they play Kool G Rap while you eat, you leave very full and the bill is utterly reasonable. In many ways, that’s about as good as life gets.
Homies on Donkeys 686 High Road Leytonstone, London E11, 07729 368896. Open lunch Thurs-Sun, noon-4pm (11.30am-3.30pm Sun); dinner Thurs-Sat & Tues, 5-10pm (11pm Fri & Sat). From about £12 a head, plus drinks and service
