Fuego via Deliveroo: Review

Until we ordered from Fuego, the home delivery food orders that we’ve placed through Deliveroo were fantastic. The brand works only with restaurants that do not normally offer a delivery service, and currently delivers to a limited area (Broadmead, Clifton, Redlands, Cotham, Montpelier, Cabot Circus and Central Bristol) – but has plans to expand throughout Bristol in the coming months. We’d already placed orders from GBK and Tampopo and were impressed – both by Deliveroo’s service and by the quality (and temperature!) of the food that we had ordered.

Sadly, while Deliveroo still performed well for our third order, we really weren’t that impressed by the quality of Fuego’s food. It’s a shame, as we’d only heard good things – I’m wondering if it’s just that we ordered the wrong thing…

The Deliveroo system was just as easy to use as before: simply input your postcode and the time at which you’d like your order to be delivered, and you’ll be shown a list of restaurants alongside the estimated time that it will take for the food to be delivered. Craving burritos, we opted for Fuego (menu here) – both choosing one of their meal deals that include a small burrito served with both esquites and Fuego slaw for £9. What did surprise us, looking at the menu, is that the vegetarian burritos are charged at the same price as the meaty options – I’d have thought the price should be lower.

As I’d already registered an account with Deliveroo, it was easy to login and have my details pulled up automatically, input my card information and watch while the system told us whereabouts our order was at that time, and how long it would take to be delivered.

Our order turned up bang on time, but while we’d had polite and friendly delivery drivers arriving at our door with previous orders, this time we were faced with a man who only actually said one word when he met us at our door, and didn’t smile once. While this was unusual, based on the Deliveroo drivers that we’d previously encountered, the worst was still to come.

There’s no denying that the slaw – crunchy and crisp – and the esquites – a cold sweetcorn salad with chilli, lime juice, garlic and cheese – were fantastic. Both were packaged well, avoiding any spillage, and both flavours and portion sizes were great.

The problem, sadly, was with the burritos themselves. Each burrito had been wrapped in just a single layer of thin foil, the choice of filling scrawled in pen on the outside so that we knew which was which. This inadequate wrapping meant that they were cold by the time they arrived, with the ends a little soggy where the fillings had started to leak out.

Chris’ Bar-ba-cow-a burrito – smoked beef braised with dark beer and Mexican spices – promised a great deal in terms of flavour, but the richness and fullness of flavour that he was expecting just weren’t there. I had the same issue with my carnitas burrito: while tweets that I’ve seen from Fuego have claimed that the recipe is still the same as the old My Burrito days, the orange and achiote-braised pulled pork was nowhere near as good as before.

On top of that, we found that almost all of the meat had been piled at one end of the burrito, making the mostly bread and rice-based other half an even more disappointing experience.

Some people I know have raved about Fuego, talking about dishes such as their Mofongo that have blown them away. Others, like me, lament the fact that the burritos have declined in quality, and miss the burrito bar that used to be in place in the old My Burrito, where you could see your burrito being made in front of you and choose which fillings you wanted as you went along.

Up until this point, Deliveroo had fed us well, providing us with two cracking meals. We’ll certainly use the service again, as it runs very smoothly and works with some great restaurants – but unless we hear of dramatic changes, we’ll be avoiding ordering from Fuego in the future.

Please note: our order was discounted, but this in no way impacted on our opinion. We were not obliged to write a positive review, and the venue did not see this review before it was put up on the site.