Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
Fame is a weight that warps. When in 2020 Santiago Lastra opened his restaurant Kol, it seemed a curio — Mexican, but fine-dining. No avocados, sombreros kept to a minimum. Six courses for £70. At once it went from curio to celebrity: Michelin came and left behind a star, and the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list declared it the UK’s finest. Now its menu runs to 14 or so courses, £185-a-head without the supplements. Progress and change are not always the same.
But Kol was not set in its mould when it opened. Before it did, affable Lastra was considering granting it a split personality: on some nights formal, other nights not. It never happened, but that second iteration was not forgotten and three weeks ago materialised on Heddon Street as Fonda. The intention is relaxed, easy, unpretentious. There is a suggestion of simplicity. “Fondas are family-run restaurants,” says our waiter. “Almost like if you opened the doors to your home.” In Mexico, in fact, sometimes they’re run out of a garage.
You’d have to have some garage for it to look like this. One attached to a desert palace, perhaps. The room is a bona fide beauty of pink silks and zellige tiles, of hessian detailing and mottled glass. Everything is the colour of faraway trips, of copper soil, jade trees and candle-flame sunsets. You do not suspect its owner was thinking of somewhere to smash a few margs and bolt a plate of Baja tacos, no matter what Lastra might say. There’s not really space to either, with no bar, which feels an omission. It’s not like they’ve skimped on the drinks. A classic michelada had a current of mezcal running through its breezy tomato taste. The lager used is Chela and, in keeping with Lastra’s ethos — Mexican food, (mostly) British ingredients — is brewed in the UK. But make no mistake, you’re coming here for a meal proper, not a night on the lash.
The menu is a vague circle of proposals: starters, dishes cooked on the comal — a sandstone grill — mains, specials, sides. Though Lastra has been vocal about his determination to change public perception of what Mexican cooking is about, if there are hints of variation, they are misleading: in the end, a meal here amounts to a succession of tacos. There are other bits — like quesadillas — but, well, come on. They’re taco-adjacent. Variety is not the name of the game.
Everything is the colour of faraway trips, of copper soil, jade trees and candle-flame sunsets
It does not necessarily need to be, given the evident quality. Ceviched sea trout — sensibly tortilla-free — came under papery discs of butternut squash in a tide of pepper spice. Cooked on the comal, Costra — they name the dishes here — offered a length of ribeye on a wheat tortilla, topped with cheese grilled to an autumn brown. We slathered it in hot, muscular salsa. Might this be an all-time great of a bar snack? It certainly beats Mini Cheddars. The crisp, shattering batter on the cod in the Baja taco confirmed the presence of serious talent in the kitchen, the guacamole too (a clever illusion, not from avocado but pistachio). Quesadillas under a woodpile of Wiltshire black truffle were stuffed with a British-made take on Oaxaca cheese. “It’s subtle,” we were told. Or perhaps warned. But spooning in crème fraîche unlatched a bright, fresh, pleasing thing.
There is a heaviness to these dishes: by the time of the mains, I could feel a nap coming on. But corn tortillas arrived, kept warm in cloth sleeping bags, and urged us on. Sticky, slow-cooked short-rib on a happy mush of refried beans comforted like an old familiar jumper. Adobado — charred monkfish in a kelp butter — was elegant and lemony in its brown bowl. In a tortilla, it confused. A soupy sauce did not take kindly to being wrapped up.
I had wrongly anticipated a bit of a party. No. This is not the place. Not with a 10pm close. It is Kol with the tasting menu cuffs undone. It is cheaper, but still expensive. It is beautiful, and the food extremely good, for the most part. Impeccable, ingratiating service. Go knowing this, and it should deliver. Expectations warp things too.
12 Heddon Street,W1B 4BZ. Meal for two about £200; fondalondon.com
