‘It’s simple to repeat one thing good, nevertheless it’s onerous to create one thing good from scratch,’ chef Santiago Lastra tells me over dinner in Mexico Metropolis, the place we’re travelling a couple of months earlier than the opening of his new London restaurant, Fonda. ‘You may make a technically good copy of the Mona Lisa, and that can be a “good” portray, however to face in entrance of a clean canvas, create one thing authentic and know by the tip that you’ve got created one thing worthwhile? That’s a problem.’
It’s a problem Lastra has already confirmed he can meet. As a younger chef, he left his native Mexico and spent years working at among the world’s most famed eating places, together with Mugaritz in Spain and Noma in Copenhagen, earlier than settling in London and opening his personal restaurant, Kol, in 2020. If Lastra’s finish aim is to create one thing authentic, Kol is actually that, a wonderful eating restaurant that makes use of solely British components to translate the flavours and methods of Mexico into genre-defying dishes. To the query of whether or not it’s worthwhile, nicely, you’ll be hard-pressed to discover a extra rousing endorsement than a Michelin Star and the quantity 17 spot on the world’s 50 Greatest Eating places in simply 4 years.
Fonda, a London restaurant impressed by ‘scrumptious’ Mexico
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
However with Fonda, Lastra and his crew are doing one thing totally different nonetheless –taking the standard fonda – a small, family-run restaurant usually in a transformed storage – and turning it right into a wonderful eating expertise that works for a London crowd. The menu, like at Kol, is spectacular for its revolutionary interpretation of Mexican delicacies, however it’s extra informal and accessible than its forebear. Some stand-out dishes embrace a roasted pumpkin seed mole and rectangular totopos that could be one of the best chips and dip you’ve ever had; and the Baja tacos with beer-battered Cornish cod and Lastra’s personal interpretation of guacamole constructed from pistachio and cucumber as a substitute of avocado.
In step with the essence of conventional fonda cooking, corn and a comal machine used for producing tacos and tostadas, is the driving drive behind the menu. The corn used to create the tortillas is sourced in collaboration with Tamoa, a social enterprise based by the couple Francisco Musi and Sofia Caserin that connects native corn farmers from Mexico with eating places in domestically and overseas to maintain endangered species of corn in demand. For Fonda, which means not solely supporting communities that develop numerous heirloom crops however utilizing the highest-quality corn potential as the premise for each dish, with a much more complicated flavour profile than your normal yellow cob.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
For the interiors, Lastra labored with Alessio Nardi of A_nrd Design Studio to create an area with the vibrancy and welcoming, relaxed ambiance of a conventional fonda however translated into a contemporary code. On each desk is a sala stand, a regular characteristic of any fonda, though this one is rendered in black stone and stuffed with three speciality salsas. The bottles for the tequila and wine, all Fonda’s personal model, are adorned with labels impressed by the graphics of Mexico Metropolis’s subway system.
The Mexico Metropolis-based designer Fernando Laposse was important to the design of the area, having created a number of bespoke items for the restaurant, in addition to introducing the crew to different Mexican designers who contributed. Laposse is finest identified for remodeling pure supplies like loofahs and corn leaves into impressed design objects, and for Fonda, he created three patchwork panels dyed with pigments constructed from crushed cochineal bugs and marigolds. In a approach, the piece is a stand-in for the paper social gathering flags present in conventional fondas, with its interaction of assorted colors and mild motion across the room, however reimagined in a recent design context. Laposse additionally designed ‘Wild Beast’ for the area, a brilliant pink sloth whose shaggy coat is woven from agave fibres utilizing conventional methods from Oaxaca.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
Different notable design options embrace the work of MA Estudio, whose founder, Melissa Avila, collaborates with native artisans round Mexico to create her items. All of the craftsmen and girls Avila works with nonetheless use ancestral methods to make their designs, and by creating a brand new marketplace for their work, Avila hopes to assist protect conventional craftsmanship round Mexico and create a sustainable earnings alternative for the artisans.
‘Each restaurant is an ecosystem,’ says Lastra a day earlier than Fonda’s official opening and what he has performed on this case actually proves that to be true. The meals, the ambiance, the service, the inside designers and the suppliers all work collectively in direction of one central aim – to have fun Mexico because it actually is, a spot that’s, in Lastra’s phrases, ‘scrumptious, stuffed with individuals who like to have a very good time and stuffed with color’.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Fonda)
Lastra is positioned at 12 Heddon St, London W1B 4BZ, fondalondon.com
Supply: Wallpaper
