It is the first balmy night of the year when I arrive at Fonda, celebrated chef Santiago Lastra's easy-going sibling restaurant to the Michelin-starred KOL, the eatery he opened in Marylebone to offer a more experimental, British-inspired take on traditional Mexican cuisine back in 2020. Walking there from the ever-busy Bond Street, I meet crowds of suddenly revitalized workers who, caught by surprise by the unusually hot, late March weather, have left the office to pour into the streets, now perching around each of London's hyper-central pubs, glass in hand. It is an apt prelude to my dinner at Fonda, which, scheduled for 8:30pm, allows me just enough time to enjoy a couple of drinks at a nearby bar myself, immersed in the evening frenzy of Soho before reveling in the restaurant's own.
Hidden away on the pedestrian road where photographer Brian Ward shot the cover to David Bowie's iconic record Ziggy Stardust in 1972, Fonda is as electrifying as the sounds that made that album one of the most boundary-pushing projects of the last century. Now an evergreen classic, the release took the world by storm by introducing glam rock and Bowie's alien, flamboyant alter-ego to the global music community, both of which continue to inform the work of rising and established artists to this day. Something similar, albeit in the culinary realm, happens at this new eatery, which, since launching in October 2024, has already earned itself a reputation as one of the best restaurants in London through its artful, daring, and mouth-watering reworking of Mexican delicacies.
