Four years ago, the chef Santiago Lastra was an unknown quantity in London. He’d done a residency at Carousel; he’d been — his PR people were very keen on this — involved with Noma Mexico, at one time the most famous pop-up in the world. And then there was what he was here for, to open Kol. A Mexican restaurant, but with no limes, no avocados. A Mexican restaurant, but fine-dining. Eyebrows went up. Lastra seemed to acknowledge the challenge himself, admitting to this paper that he’d originally thought about opening a London “research centre into Mexico” instead. “I think it was a bit of a blessing to open not to know how difficult it would be,” he tells me over a coffee.
But the sceptics have been put to bed: 15 months after opening, Kol picked up a Michelin star and, for the past two years, the World’s 50 Best restaurant list has named it the UK’s finest. So now, as Lastra readies himself to open his second restaurant, Fonda, no one is questioning whether Mexican food is going to cut it. In fact, it seems to be all anyone wants at the moment: when Fonda opens in September opposite Sabor on Heddon Street, it will be the 16th high-profile Mexican opening in a year.“
I believe Mexican food is having a moment,” nods Lastra. “London has this thing, it’s unique, where the growth is exponential. If someone does something really good, others go ‘Why am I not…?’ Like, if someone does a fresh pasta restaurant, and it becomes a really busy place, suddenly there are 20 others. Same with speciality coffee.” And Mexican? He grins. “It is the right time for Mexican food. After we opened Kol, there’s been some things, and the market has grown a little bit more.”
Fonda, which is named after an unpretentious, home-cooking style of restaurant found across Mexico, is set to be “a restaurant for people to really, really have the best time. I cannot wait to share it.” With whom? “Groups of friends, dates for sure, just whoever wants to have a good time. I want it to be fun! A place for people who just wanna go out. It’s the meaning of Mexican culture to celebrate life and just not be… stuffy. Just fun. That’s the vibe I want to have: margaritas, Mexican music. But everything will be really high quality, without being boring.”
That’s the vibe I want to have: margaritas, Mexican music. But everything will be really high quality, without being boring
It will, then, not have the formality of Kol, which serves a £175, 15-course tasting menu. Instead, the menu is made up of tortillas, quesadillas, tacos, tostadas, gorditas, all adhering to Kol’s ethos of British-only ingredients (“we’re not changing suppliers and we’re using the same producers”). There will still be no limes, still no avocados, though in Fonda “a cheeky bottle of olive oil, it’s not the end of the world”. He’s come a long way since he was a British-only zealot. “I’d just set myself into a role. It was just me getting immersed — like Heath Ledger playing the Joker!”
Food-wise, “it’s going to be a combination of home cooking, market cooking, then just a few things that I really like from different places in Mexico. Like street food — we have baja fish tacos but made with really high-quality fish.”
Lastra also highlights “these massive scallops from Scotland, as a ceviche, with cucumber and elderflower. And there’s this beautiful charred monkfish, with different chillis and sliced new potatoes and spicy seaweed and butter sauce. And there’s a rice pudding, a Mexican rice pudding, that we fold a crème anglaise made with mezcal in, and we’ll serve it with cherries.” He sounds excited.
Of drinks, he says, there’ll be plenty of tequila and mezcal drinks, including margaritas made with rhubarb. Lastra estimates a meal will come in at about £60 a head with drinks, with room for 70 on the ground floor, and 25 below that.
“The good thing about this style of cooking is that you can have it every day. When I was a kid, I would go to a fonda every day,” he says. “I’m excited that it can be a special location, or it could be a place you just go to and grab some lunch.”Crucially, Lastra says repeatedly, he wants to show that Mexican food can hold its own, even when it’s informal. “Mexican food around the world unfortunately has this connotation of, like, these low-quality kind of burrito places,” he says. “The reason I moved here in the first place is because I wanted to share Mexican food and the quality of it, and get more people to understand that.“
Mexico, it’s like 3,000 kilometres long and every region will have a different approach [to cooking], a different taste, and different ingredients too. But the food will still taste Mexican. I realised, maybe Mexican food is a philosophy. So then for me, it’s an opportunity to make some sort of statement of saying, okay, well, you can make Mexican food outside Mexico and you can make it really high quality. And the dream is for people to just embrace it.”
It’s a dream that seems to be within reach, given this year’s swell in demand for Mexican cooking. This month’s Supernova Burger — which is to say, the hype job of the minute — is CDMX Tacos (1 Green’s Court, W1F 0HA, cdmxtacos.co.uk), a white-tiled hole-in-the-wall with no seats that promises, according to owner Billy Sengupta, “the most authentic” tacos, as done in Mexico City. Just as Lastra does, CDMX prides itself on the heirloom corn used for its tortillas.
But it isn’t the only place that opened last month offering Mexican street food with a sense of doing it properly: in Hackney Wick, canal-side, is Lucia’s (43 White Post Lane, E9 5EN, luciase9.co.uk). A slightly different approach — posts on Instagram? Zero so far — but the word is spreading that it’s very good indeed, offering beef barbacoa with diced white onion, and spicy monkfish.
Other Mexican spots making their mark this year include Camden’s casual El Cenote (2 Inverness Street, NW1 7HJ, elcenotecamden.com) which, with its happy hour, £6 margs and messy tacos, seems custom-built for gig-goers at the Electric Ballroom, all of 30 seconds’ walk away. Notting Hill, meanwhile, since March has had Trejo’s Tacos (299-301 Portobello Road, W10 5TD, trejostacos.co.uk), from Hollywood tough nut Danny Trejo; his thing is healthy, with plenty of vegetarian and vegan options (and, too, zero-proof tequila, a nod to Trejo’s 55 years sober). Both follow last year’s Sonora Taquería (208 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 7HU, @sonora.ldn) and the ahead-of-the-curve La Chingada (12 Rotherhithe New Road, SE16 2AA, lachingada.co.uk), both generally taken as the benchmark for tacos in London.
Not that this year’s revolution is all tacos: London’s first churreria — dedicated to Mexican-style churros, which are served with hot chocolate, as well as churro ice-cream sandwiches — came in the form of Aguamiel (24 Wellington Street, WC2E 7DD, @aguamiel.ldn).
Meanwhile, small groups are getting in on it too. Los Mochis opened in the city in April (100 Liverpool Street, EC2M 2AT, losmochis.co.uk), where Mexican flavours are fused with Japanese techniques (“where Tokyo meets Tulum”). And El Pastor expanded into Battersea with its fourth site (Unit 21-22, Battersea Power Station, SW11 8EZ, tacoselpastor.co.uk). Its managing director, Crispin Somerville, thinks the last few years have seen a change in perception, away from the hoary ideas of Tex-Mex. “I love the deceptive complexity of Mexican food, that within these dishes you are often witnessing illustrations of unchanged and ancient cooking techniques and cultural histories,” he says.
But the clamouring for Mexican is benefitting more than monied players or new kids on the block. Existing places are noticing it as well: in April, Dalston cult favourite Corrochio’s (70-74 Stoke Newington Road, N16 7XB, corrochios.com) announced plans to quadruple in size, from 30 covers to 120, three years after first opening. “It was both demand and necessity,” says its chef Daniel Corrochio. “People are starting to realise Mexican food is not just burritos and quesadillas, but a vast range of regional dishes; our focus.”
Like Corrochio, Adriana Cavita expanded her eponymous restaurant this year (56-60 Wigmore Street, W1U 2RZ, cavitarestaurant.com), adding a bar two years after Cavita launched. Telly has helped, she says. “There have been great Netflix documentaries: Taco Chronicles, Eva Longoria’s Searching for Mexico, and the episode of Chef’s Table in Mexico City. This was a real motivation for me to start Cavita, to share authentic cuisine of my home country in an elevated way.”
Ah, that’s it — Londoners are finally getting the real deal, avocado or not.
