LONG READ
“This is Mexico’s moment”: Santiago Lastra on the rise of his national cuisine
Santiago Lastra is beaming like a proud new father. The Mexican chef is perched on a stool in the sunshine in Heddon Street outside Fonda, his beautiful new restaurant that doesn’t open for another month when we meet but which looks like it could throw open its doors tomorrow if he so wished. A contemporary Mexican restaurant of such ambition as the one he is opening is something of a rarity in the UK, but not as rare as one that looks to be ahead of schedule.
It’s all the more satisfying for Lastra given that when he made his London debut with fine dining Mexican restaurant KOL back in October 2020 his experience was the polar opposite. Opened after the lifting of the first wave of Covid lockdowns (and unaware of the impending second lockdowns) issues with the space on Marylebone’s Seymour Street had already delayed its opening. KOL was nothing short of a baptism of fire.
“It’s good to be a little innocent, but I didn’t know quite how difficult it was to open a restaurant in London,” he says, recollecting the early days of the project.
“I hadn’t realised how hard it would be to move here and not know anyone and open this big place and staff it.
"Plus, it was an insane time, we had the pandemic, Brexit, train and tube strikes, and the cost-of-living crisis. It’s been a roller coaster of unexpected things.
“It never crossed my mind that it would fail, I was so excited, but I was blinded by that. In a way that was a blessing. If I’d known how hard it is I wouldn’t have done it, I would have stayed in Mexico.”
Fortunately for Londoners, Lastra’s crystal ball was faulty, and the rest is history. KOL became an almost instant hit, winning in a Michelin star in 2022.
This year it became the highest-ranking UK restaurant within the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, placing at an impressive 17th and being one of only two UK restaurants to make the feted list.
A sibling to KOL
I’m with Lastra to talk about Fonda, his new restaurant designed to showcase the evolution of Mexican cuisine, and which will bring the cooking of the restaurants, markets and homes across Mexico to Mayfair. Taking its name from the family-owned restaurants in Mexico that serve traditional dishes, Fonda is KOL’s more casual sibling and potentially tricky follow up.
Yet, as it turns out, the two concepts could have both launched at the same time four years ago. When Lastra pitched the idea of KOL to backers MJMK he told them of his plan to also open something more accessible down the line. They then found the cavernous two-storey Seymour Street site, which was so big they contemplated doing KOL on one floor and Fonda on the other (the basement is now home to its bar The Mezcaleria). In the early days of KOL’s creation Lastra even conducted menu tastings for Fonda, and it was only when he was later advised that it was not a great idea to open two concepts at the same time that he made the decision to delay it.
"If I’d known how hard it is, I
would have stayed in Mexico"
The search for a site for Fonda eventually began two years after KOL opened, and two years after that it has now become a reality. Those four years have been informative for Lastra, and the Fonda of today is very different from the one that nearly opened back in 2020.
“What I was planning didn’t feel natural at the time, I was forcing the concept at the beginning because I was more focused on KOL,” he says. “The idea was to make more casual versions of the KOL dishes, but they were too close to each other.”
Today KOL serves a 12-course tasting menu plus snacks for £185, but when it opened its menu comprised just five-courses for £55. “The portions were bigger, so it was difficult to say, ‘actually I’m going to make another type of food’. At that time, I did not have enough experience. Now Fonda is more elevated than before but also doesn’t get in the way or be seen as similar to KOL. There is no clash at all.”
Evolved Mexican cuisine
Fonda’s menu is still relatively tight with dishes that are more recognisable than at KOL. Menu items include slow-cooked short rib with mole poblano; confit pork shoulder carnitas; quesadillas made with Oaxaca cheese, Wiltshire black truffle, salsa verde, and crème fraîche; adobado with charred monkfish, ratte potato, and spicy kelp butter; and a gringa (a variety of quesadilla made with wheat tortillas) made with lobster al pastor, and Spenwood cheese.
“I have this craving for these dishes, they are something you eat in Mexico every day but not something we could do in KOL,” says Lastra. “They are quite nostalgic.”
Beyond that, the menu features a few starters, including tetela - corn tortillas filled with chorizo, new potato, and hispi cabbage; costras and tacos filled with either aged ribeye, and grilled cheese; or beer-battered Cornish cod, and chipotle; and a tostada of baked beetroot, seaweed oil, and elderflower vinegar, as well as sides of refried beans and pickled vegetables.
“I see Fonda as an opportunity to express a side
of me as a chef I haven’t been able to do before"
Desserts, meanwhile, include Santiago’s cheesecake made with blackcurrants and meco chili; rice pudding with quince, cinnamon, and mezcal custard; and a chocolate sorbet with smoked pasilla chili oil.
There has been some inspiration from KOL. The pork shoulder carnitas, for example, is a take on the pork cheek version that was on the KOL menu for three years and which came out of the early Fonda tastings. “It started in Fonda, went to KOL, and now it’s back to Fonda,” he says.
“Fonda allows me to be more like a cook. Some dishes you start making as home cooked but then you refine them and make them more fine dining. But it also works other way round; you start with a fine dining dish but say this will work really well in a more accessible format.
“I see Fonda as an opportunity to express a side of me as a chef I haven’t been able to do before. I can do it at home, but this gives me an opportunity to do it in a restaurant setting and loosen up a bit.”
Constant evolution
If Fonda gives Lastra the chance to loosen up, he’s doing the opposite at KOL. In recent years the restaurant has doubled down on its ambition to use only British ingredients - it previously used dry ingredients such as seed and spices from abroad but now only uses what is grown on these shores, with the exception of chillies and corn.
“Limitations allow you to be more creative,” he says of this stance. “At KOL we want to do something that hasn’t been done before, the limits allow us to discover things that otherwise we wouldn’t have.”
“London is such a competitive city in terms of restaurants that if you do fine dining you have to do something new. The UK has some of the most innovative restaurants in the world. If you want to stay open you need to innovate and at KOL, we are constantly trying to move to the next level and think outside of the box.
“It is a constant machine of evolution, but that’s what the people who work in KOL are there for. It’s not about putting any extra pressure on anyone, but the desire is to grow. That’s what we sign up for in these big leagues.”
This focus on only British ingredients has led to him and his team to innovate and discover new preparations. The restaurant uses hemp seeds to make many of its ice cream and sauces, Lastra saying that when they are toasted, they taste like peanuts. It also makes a guacamole with courgettes and hemp seeds as well as a guacamole ice cream.
“It’s a creative element of food we want to keep discovering. It drives the creativity of the team and everyone who works at KOL.”
Lastra has a similar approach to locavorism in his home kitchen. He eschews balsamic vinegar and soy sauce but has transgressed slightly after someone in Croatia gave him some olive oil. “I took it home and put in on my food and realised that there’s a reason why people love it,” he admits. “I now put it in everything.”
At Fonda he is also a little more relaxed with sourcing from further away, with olive oil, dates, and pistachios all appearing on the menu.
Mexican movement
When Lastra opened KOL back in 2020 it was perceived by many to be a brave move. Fine dining Mexican cuisine was almost unheard of in the capital and an attempt three years previously by Mexican chef Martha Ortiz with her Park Lane restaurant Ella Canta had failed to prove otherwise. The cuisine has enjoyed more success in the casual sector, thanks to the likes of Wahaca and Will Ricker’s La Bodega Negra, but a tasting menu concept was not deemed something that Londoners wanted.
Having proved his critics wrong, Lastra has been at the forefront of a shift in interest in higher-end Mexican food across the capital alongside the likes of Santo Remedio’s Edson and Natalie Diaz-Fuentes and Cavita’s Adriana Cavita. At the same time, more casual Mexican food has become more commonplace thanks to operators such as Michelle Salazar de la Rocha and Sam Napier and their Sonora Taqueria, Walter Opitz and his Surrey Quays taqueria La Chingada, and Tacos Padre’s Nick Fitzgerald to name a few.
Does he feel that this time round rather than pushing against the tide as he did with KOL, Fonda can ride this newfound wave of interest in Mexican food? “One hundred per cent,” he says. “There is a lot of things going on with Mexican food, when I moved here there was not a lot. People from the UK are the second most frequent visitors to Mexico after Americans and that helps. There are some traditions from Mexico that people here also like, such as day of the dead and drinking mezcal. I see them as small wins.”
“The reason I moved to UK was to showcase the quality of Mexican food. There are people already doing that and I want to be part of that change. Accessibility on the price and the format can make a difference.”
Serving Mexican food in the UK is not without its challenges, however. Lastra admits that the cost of sourcing ingredients and a lack of a Mexican population provide obstacles. “There are no Mexican immigrants in the UK, not a Mexicotown like there is a Chinatown, which makes it harder.”
Then there’s perceptions of how much Mexican food should cost, with UK consumers having to be weaned off the notion of the $1 taco believed to be found in taco trucks across the US and Mexico.
“At KOL we want to do something
that hasn’t been done before"
“There are some bad places that are really cheap, but because they are cheap it’s OK,” he says. “A guest once told me that happiness is directly related to expectations, and expectations are directly related to price. As soon as you are fulfilling that expectation you are fine. They can be really low - something you get for £1 at 3am is fine if that’s what you are expecting. But there is also a way to do high quality that deserves to be sitting down in a beautiful setting and have a lobster quesadilla with Cornish lobster, handmade tortillas and amazing cocktails. There is scope for that.”
He says it was important he opened KOL first to get people to trust in what he is doing and the quality on offer. “It would have been more difficult to do a more accessible place first and then fine dining. KOL gives people trust, and now they trust us do something else.”
He also believes that quality begets quality, and that Mexican food in the UK is just at the start of its upward trajectory. “The more people realise what is the real deal the more they want it. The moment a restaurant makes fresh pasta there’s a queue outside, so now everybody has to make fresh pasta. It’s the same with sourdough bread, Neapolitan pizza, speciality coffee. The moment people have something good there is no way back.
“That’s what is happening with Mexican food. The more we do better, fresh, high quality Mexican food the more people will like it, and the more places will open. I am very positive this is Mexico's moment.”
