Peyotito, Notting Hill, London

I visited this lovely little restaurant in Notting Hill over the weekend and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised by it.

The ambience and atmosphere is very relaxed and pleasant. The décor is a mixture of rustic and modern like their food. The service is absolutely flawless and despite the fact that we went on a Saturday night and they mixed up our tables (which they sorted out very smoothly), they were incredibly polite and attentive throughout the meal.

We ordered a selection of their "tapas" style dishes as we weren't very hungry and didn't want to go for any mains. The menu is comprised of small plates meant for sharing. The portions are small but ideal for sharing and to be honest quite filling. Also, you can try quite a variety of dishes. They All the dishes were fantastic. The salsa trio with corn chips made of blue corn (which I never knew about before I visited this restaurant) was one of the best salsa dip dishes I ever had.

The potatoes with jalapeno mayo and the crispy calamares were excellent. The braised beef tacos (which we ordered in a tortilla but they come in lettuce cups as well) consisted of the most tender steaks ever. There wasn't anything we did not. We pretty much cleaned up all the plates (and we weren't that hungry!)

Desserts require a special mention. We ordered the mascarpone cheesecake with cactus compote. It was delicious (albeit a little too sweet for me) but the cactus compote was lovely.

 We also shared a plate of churros with chocolate sauce. The churros were light, crispy, sugary and tasting of cinnamon and the chocolate sauce was perfection - yes I could drink that sauce. It was dark chocolate which made it even more intense and perfect.

All in all, an excellent meal and highly recommend it.