Tijuana Yacht Club

The List's Eating & Drinking Guide 2008 is now in the shops. This review is taken from the 2007 edition.

Cooking Mexican food by numbers can be an easy and profitable formula. It's a good thing, then, that Tijuana Yacht Club has been making a concerted effort since its inception to provide a dining experience that's set a bit apart from the rest. Once you've climbed the stairs and taken in the rickety wooden interior, you find a menu that isn't all-encompassing and doesn't try to please everyone. It does, however, manage to offer a dazzling selection of spicy options that leaves diners with a genuine dilemma about what to choose. An appetiser of sweet spare ribs barely needs a nibble before the tender flesh falls off into the mouth. Barbecued chicken skewers rubbed in hot spice retain delicate juicy flesh within their charred edges. While meatballs on many menus often represent the blandest and safest choice to the unadventurous diner, here they are redefined into moist balls of seasoned beef, drenched in a smoky tomato sauce and drizzled with cooling sour cream - deliciously moreish. The owners continue to work consistently hard to keep the high standards of the past well and truly maintained. A triumph.

• High point: Superior quality dining
• Low point: Some dishes presented on TV-dinner style metal plates