Fonda

Classical hands on Heddon Street

The salsa reaches the table first, three preparations held in black stone. Fonda in London begins the meal before the first taco is folded. Santiago Lastra is the executive chef and driving force behind the room, carrying a pedigree from Kol, where he earned a Michelin star and a number 17 ranking on the World's 50 Best Restaurants within four years. The London brief is plain: Mexican method carried through British produce, without flattening either side into novelty. The bench language is direct: tortillas, mole, salsa, batter, cheese, heat. The room may be bright, but the cooking asks for a slower reading.

Mexican method, British larder

Fonda's kitchen builds its argument through substitutions that keep the technique intact. The restaurant describes its cooking as Mexican cuisine made with 99% British ingredients, a figure that matters because the dishes depend on translation rather than imitation. Pistachio and cucumber stand in for avocado in the guacamole; Cornish cod goes into Baja tacos under a beer batter; local cheeses move through tacos and quesadillas where the pull, salt and fat have to do the same work as their Mexican predecessors. Short rib mole sits in the deeper register, with the sauce carrying the patience of roasting, grinding and balancing before it ever reaches the plate. Costra ribeye tacos bring cheese to the griddle until it catches and sets around the meat. Queso de aro keeps the dairy program close to the centre of the meal. The format stays shareable, small plates and a la carte rather than a single procession, so the craft arrives in passes: totopos and salsa, tacos, mole, something cold or sweet to close.

A bright room for the pass

The room gives the cooking space to move. Light wood, ceramic tile and foliage keep the air lifted, with colour used as a working material rather than decoration laid over the top. Fonda occupies a lively Mayfair address on Heddon Street, close enough to Soho for the room to carry that pace, but the noise stays conversational. The counter and the pass sit within an upscale casual rhythm: plates cross the room in clusters, cocktails lean toward mezcal, tequila and paloma, and the table becomes the station where diners assemble their own sequence. That matters for this food. A taco loses something when it is overexplained from the kitchen. Here, the final fold happens in the hands.

What holds after the first rush

The early measure of Fonda is not only the colour of the room or the confidence of the menu, but whether the British larder can keep answering the Mexican method across seasons. Michelin reads the place as a busy Soho-edge room from the founder of Kol, which sets the expectation without setting the standard. The kitchen has already set out the terms: local sourcing, a curated wine program, agave-led drinks, and a set of dishes that ask for repeat work rather than one-time surprise. At Fonda, the costra ribeye tacos say the most with the fewest parts: cheese, beef, heat, tortilla.