Fonda, London: ‘An exuberantly good meal’: restaurant review

Fonda, 12 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BZ. Starters and small
plates £7-£14, larger plates £23-£29, desserts £6-£11, wines from £39

At Fonda, a new Mexican restaurant off London’s Regent Street, the staff have vital information and, boy, are they determined to impart it. Usually, speeches about ingredients and the best way to eat your lunch, feel like a nail puncture purposefully engineered to let all the air out of any fun you were hoping to have. Lunch becomes an exam to be passed. Am I doing this right? Will the staff approve? Oh, the social anxiety. Today, however, there is an enthusiasm to the tableside chat and an engrossing level of detail. I’m all in, at least for now. Tell me more.

On the table is a stand, custom-designed for the three glazed, ceramic salsa pots that arrive at the start. As each is placed in its holder, like some religious icon brought to the altar, we get the incantation. There is the tart, guacamole-green salsa verde made with fermented gooseberries, pickled jalapenos and Thai chillies. There is the rust-coloured salsa roja made with scotch bonnet and arbol. And there is the standout, the salsa macha, a toasty mess of ground cascabel chilies and sunflower seeds, much like an Asian chilli oil, but with earthier, adult tones. We are invited to experiment; to splodge and dribble as we see fit. At times during lunch, I am reminded of those occasions when I have stood bathed in the nonjudgmental spotlight of my opened fridge, staring at the top shelf which is 90% sticky condiments, and wondering which of them to use on my latest improvised kitchen creation. Our waiter has awarded us a licence to do the same here and decorate and embellish.

‘Bathed in a vigorous chilli and butternut squash dressing’: sea trout ceviche. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Fonda is the second venture from Mexican-born chef Santiago Lastra, whose ambitious restaurant Kol, near London’s Marble Arch, opened amid the crashing waves of Covid. It has gone on to win a Michelin star and world rankings. There he serves a £185, 12-course tasting menu using mostly British ingredients for “reimagined” Mexican dishes, such as tacos of langoustine with smoked chilli and sea buckthorn, or lamb with rye koji, wood sorrel and bueno mulato.

Here, the regional menu is a more relaxed affair as befits the name Fonda, the Mexican term for a humble family-run restaurant. Though given the bespoke plates, the Ziploc insulation bags for the grill-warm corn tortillas, the sandy-coloured interior and the hanging sculpture of a happy sloth made from pink rags, this is only a fonda in the way the River Café is a café, which is to say, not at all. Larger dishes are around £25 each. It is the weekday BMW run-around, to Kol’s weekend Ferrari. It is a profoundly comfortable place to be. Order a paloma, a mix of tequila, grapefruit soda and lime, or give the mezcal list a shakedown and cancel any plans for the rest of the day.

‘Deep-fried in the laciest of batters’: taco of cod fillet. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

There’s a beauty to the dishes here that never overwhelms the imperative of flavour. Dense cubes of sea trout ceviche come bathed in a vigorous chilli and butternut squash dressing with balanced acidity, split with ocean-fresh kelp oil to remind you where the star ingredient once lived. It’s topped with thin, precisely cut discs of squash so it looks like a 1970s lamp shade.

From the list of small dishes cooked on the comal or griddle, there’s a Baja taco of cod fillet, brushed with Marmite, then deep-fried in the laciest of batters, the colour of the best gold jewellery. It comes with shredded cabbage and, for lubrication, a bright green, tart sauce made with finely blitzed pistachio. The soft wheat tortilla has the necessary strength for full enclosure. This taco is the veritable supermodel of the fish finger sandwich world; the Heidi Klum and David Gandy of soft-crunchy, fried fish wraps.

‘The nearest thing to an over-adornment’: quesadillas with black truffle. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

‘Long-braised’: shredded beef short-rib. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Throughout lunch, there’s a little understated theatre. Here comes a tightly fitted stack of closed pots. The top contains another insulated bag of corn tortillas in white, pink and black. Beneath is an earthenware bowl of long-braised and shredded beef short-rib, surrounded by the blousy crimson of pickled red cabbage. Slumped over the top, sprinkled with sesame seeds, is a Mole Poblano, that insanely delicious, glossy, thick brown sauce. It’s the product of a caramelisation process edging towards controlled burning, in which the multitude of ingredients become its own discreet flavour of earth, field and sunlight. It has a Mariana trench-depth and a sultry, dark-chocolate sweetness, but also a subtle heat.

‘Steamed in a corn husk’: sweet tamale. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer

Alongside we have their refried beans, which here are purée-soft and velvety. We are encouraged to use the refried beans to “butter” the tortilla. We top it with the mole-drenched short-rib and, for crunch, the red cabbage. This is conversation-stopping stuff. We mutter simple sentences that demand no reply like, “This is good” and “Oh my”.

Dessert must fight to make itself felt against all this drama. There is a nice enough warm rice pudding, dotted with chewy discs of caramelised quince. There is a soft, sweet tamale, or corn cake, steamed in a corn husk. It comes with a frothy butterscotch mousse, which cannot help but make British people of a certain age grin. Because after all these profound thrills and all this exotica, this waiter-narrated ballad of salsa and chilli and mole, an exuberantly good meal has ended with something which recalls nothing other than the childlike joys of butterscotch Angel Delight. And if that doesn’t sell Fonda to you, honestly, nothing will.

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