Evening Standard
David Ellis headed to Heddon Street, which week by week enhances its claim to be the epicentre of gastronomic Mayfair, to visit chef Santiago Lastra’s follow-up to Kol, the all-conquering and decidedly upmarket Mexican restaurant he opened to universal acclaim four years ago. Fonda, is named after homely family-run spots in Mexico, is pitched as a more casual operation, with much of the cooking done on a ‘comal’, or sandstone grill.
Lastra has been “vocal about his determination to change public perception of what Mexican cooking is about”, David noted – and Fonda, it seems, undermines this intention: “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.”
So what’s the verdict? Well, David is polite about the place, but it clearly fails to excite him: “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” – hardly a ringing endorsement.
David Ellis - 2024-10-27The Times
Giles Coren pretended he was going to review Chinese restaurants in Sheffield, in order to mess with Times reader metrics that show severely limited interest in out-of-London reviews, before swerving back to a “superfashionable” new Mexican joint in Mayfair’s Heddon Street, “the very epicentre of world dining”.
Chef Santiago Lastra’s follow-up to his hit restaurant Kol is nominally a ‘fonda’ – in Mexico, a humble family-run spot – although Giles pointed out that it “looks great, all mellow earth tones and smooth curves, like the second half of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and is “fancy as f***”.
The cooking and vibes were also pretty fancy, with “insane skill levels” required to produce Mexican cuisine with 99% British ingredients – Lastra’s self-imposed restriction – hence no avocados or lime. This resulted in a guacamole substitute created with pistachio and cucumber or courgette and hempseed: “Either way, it looks right (that classic shade of 1980s toilet suite) and feels right in the mouth. And do avocados, honestly, taste of anything?”
But for all his polite enthusiasm, Giles was clearly unconvinced by the basic premise of Mexican-with-British-ingredients. Something was missing: “I did not personally feel the slap around the chops I always hope to get from this sort of cooking, the sharpness and fire that strafes me out of my fine-dining complacency and makes me yearn for Oaxaca.”
Giles Coren - 2024-12-15The Times
Tim Haywood was thrilled by his meal at Mexican chef Santiago Lastra’s new Heddon Street spot boasting “a tightly brilliant menu that’s actually within our reach” – unlike Kol, Lastra’s meteoric flagship, “where you or I couldn’t get a seat.”
House-made salsas and tortillas fresh from the comal – the “unifying root” of Mexican home cooking – set the tone for a meal here. “The trimmings are refined at Fonda, but God, the roots are deep in the home.”
As for the refinement, Tim wondered with approval whether Lastra was “putting all the immoderate, florid abundance of Mexican flavour through the Japanese filter of seemly restraint? Is that what’s going on here, because if it is, I’m there for it.”
Tim Hayward - 2025-01-05The Observer
Jay Rayner was not the first critic to be enthralled by the new hotspot from Mexican-born chef Santiago Lastra – less ambitious than his high-flying debut Kol, but still a “profoundly comfortable place to be”. In Mexico, a “fonda” is a humble, family-run restaurant, while “this is only a fonda in the way the River Café is a café, which is to say, not at all”.
“There’s a beauty to the dishes here that never overwhelms the imperative of flavour,” Jay purred, as plate after plate met his approval. “This is conversation-stopping stuff. We mutter simple sentences that demand no reply like, ‘This is good’ and ‘Oh my’.”
Jay Rayner - 2025-01-12Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was the latest critic to lavish the highest praise on Santiago Lastra’s homage to the family-run restaurants of his native Mexico – although “there’s nothing downhome about the cooking” here, whose smart presentation is as important as taste.
“Lastra is a master at melding British ingredients with Mexican technique”, so a battered finger of Cornish cod makes a fish taco “worthy of a Baja California beach shack”, while ‘guacamole’ is made of cucumber, pistachio and mint (no avocados), and very British Swaledale and Spenwood cheeses both crop up in unlikely Mexican contexts.
“Under a lesser chef, this cross-cultural mishmash could be an international disaster,” Tom reckoned. “But Lastra is a cook of exceptional talent, and Fonda doesn’t just fly. It downright soars.”
Tom Parker Bowles - 2025-01-26
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