http://www.laperla-london.com/

Mexican cuisine is usually a good idea, and La Perla in Covent Garden offers some excellent tortillas, quesadillas etc. It also claims its Caesar salad dressing “is based on the original from the Caesar Hotel, Tijuana-Mexico”.

Well, there’s no doubt the La Perla salad puts some effort into that dressing: the flavour is very strong – especially after some of the rather weak-willed efforts we’ve encountered in the past. However, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and in this case the good thing in question is parmesan. The cheese lumps together amidst the lettuce and in combination with the dressing leaves an odd, rather powdery aftertaste in the mouth.

This overabundance (and the fact that the lettuce got quite soggy quite speedily) meant my fellow salad-enthusiast and I were actually unable to finish the dish, even though we’d only ordered one between us and I’d call the portion healthy rather than excessive.

It was a real shame in some ways, because the homemade croutons in the salad were excellent although too few in number. And the fact that the salad was basically just lettuce, croutons, parmesan and dressing (although you can order it with chicken or prawns) meant it had agreeable simplicity.

But in the end, when two grown men can’t bring themselves to finish a single order of salad, something’s not quite right. Our advice to La Perla would be to down the parmesan, up the croutons and keep on trying.

Overall, 6 out of 10.