Santiago Lastra: My career in Five Dishes
The young, innovative and much-loved chef discusses the memories and epiphanies that have inspired his cooking, his passion for his home country and its cuisine, and what’s in store for him next in London
Published: Wednesday 17th July 2024
Mexican. Locavore. Internationalist. These three adjectives are Santiago Lastra’s unique approach to cooking, distilled; an approach that saw him leave his home town of Cuernavaca in Mexico at a young age before working in kitchens across the globe, plying his trade as a foraging chef preparing fine dining inspired by his youth, and then finally landing in the world’s most cosmopolitan city, where he opened his restaurant KOL in Marylebone. Sometimes, artists benefit from setting certain parameters to operate within – choosing a canvas and a medium to work from – and this is patently the case at KOL. Here, a multi-course Mexican flavour odyssey is prepared using only seasonal, responsibly sourced British ingredients, to the acclaim of Michelin, La Liste and World’s 50 Best, as well as GQ, which awarded him Best Chef at its Food and Drink Awards in 2021.
When Lastra was 24 years old, he had an epiphany, and realised that he had a story to tell. As a chef de partie at Restaurant Bror in Copenhagen, Lastra would refuse to prepare Mexican food for other staff, citing the lack of ingredients, until he realised that he could borrow the ethos of New Nordic Cuisine to create Mexican food that is hyperlocal and hyperseasonal, adapting it to the produce and larder of whatever country he found himself in. “I couldn’t sleep that night because I was like ‘Oh my god, I might have something special.’”
After working with Andoni Aduriz at Mugaritz in San Sebastian and René Redzepi and Noma in their seven-week residency in Tulum, Lastra was attracted to London and its openness to new things. “Even if you have your own style, you just need to be open to the world,” he says.
Lastra didn’t feel singled out as a foreigner upon moving to the city and felt part of an open-minded community with a progressive culinary culture. “Everybody knows about the amazing scenes in cities like New York, San Sebastian, Copenhagen, Paris, and Tokyo,” he says, “but London was emerging at the time.”
Lastra found cooking in London to be a perfect market study because chefs have to consider palates from all corners of the globe in order to thrive in the city, catering for manifold ethnicities, nationalities, and points of view. When asked about Mexican food in London, Lastra believes that it’s only going to get better.
The city gave him the opportunity to pursue both his love of creating new things and act as an ambassador for his native country. While innovating new flavours may get him out of bed in the morning, he’s excited to champion Mexican cuisine. He’ll be opening his second restaurant in the city, Fonda, later in the year on Heddon Street in Mayfair. “Where KOL is more focused on indigenous cuisine and fine dining, Fonda will be focused on the regions and the contemporary cuisine of Mexico.” Whatever the approach, you can be sure London is hungry for more of it
Langoustine taco
KOL
“My death row meal would be a lobster taco that I ate in Puerto Nuevo, Baja California, in Mexico. They’re famous for lobster tacos, which are cut in two and fried on the half-shell with pork fat, then served with salsa, rice, beans and flour tortillas. Back in the UK I was visiting a producer in Scotland and had some tortillas and chillis with me in my backpack. At the end of the day, I believe that the most powerful dishes come from a powerful memory – if you want to make something really impactful, you need to translate that moment to the guests. So, in Skye, I was like, ‘Okay, we need to make a bonfire and do the tacos here because this is just so beautiful.’ It was super windy. We harvested sea buckthorn berries and mashed them to make a little sauce with the langoustine heads, and added sauerkraut. I think it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had – the memory of these tacos from Baja recreated on a beach in Scotland. It makes me think that if I were to travel a bit more with chillis in my bag, I could come up with some better dishes!”
Buñuelos and Tunworth
KOL
“When I was in culinary school, I learned to prepare different types of Mexican sweets and pastries. I’d go home to my aunt’s tiny apartment for Christmas and roll buñuelos and then fry them to make a big stack. I was similarly inspired by the street markets of Oaxaca, where they do these big fried dough buñuelos set with piloncillo syrup. The idea of the dish is to have a celebration at the end of the meal. So I was thinking, how can we recreate that festive vibe but also bring in some of the British ethos as well, like the cheese course at the end of a meal? I found a cheese called Tunworth, from the north of England, which is very similar to brie. We make an ice cream with that, served with walnut oil and a jam made from different berries, depending on the season. When you put them all together, it kind of tastes like a cheese board would but also it reminds you of those celebratory moments in Mexico.”
Crab chalupa
The nomadic Chef
“The crab chalupa was the first dish I ever made, when I was 14. I went to the supermarket and found a Ritz cracker box with a recipe for crab dip on the back of the packet. I bought all the ingredients and cooked them at home; my family really enjoyed them. I remember seeing the joy in their faces and thinking, ‘This is special. I will make sure that I have this crab dip all the time at home.’ Six months later, my dad, my grandma and my grandfather all passed away in the same month. I went back to the supermarket and kept buying recipe books and experimenting. And so, this has been a dish that I’ve been developing throughout my entire career. In Mexico, we make a corn shell called a chalupa that people sell in little plastic bags in the market and usually eat with guacamole. We’ve put our own take on that by making guacamole with pistachio, then adding crab with a little enoki mushroom, and then dressing it with fermented gooseberries, charred scotch bonnets, and a mousse that is made with brown crab meat.”
Pea and onion nicuatole
KOL
“When I started cooking at restaurants in Mexico City around the age of 17, I would do meals for family and friends at home, and one of their favourite dishes was a classic sopa de frijol bean soup with plantains. It became a signature, my family would ask for it all the time, no matter whether it was summer or winter. I wanted to recreate this dish with British ingredients through the lens of KOL, so we use five different varieties of peas from Somerset – the texture of the peas is similar to Mexican beans – and then swap out the plantain with a custard made with fermented onions and corn. We then pour over a pea blossom broth, so that it’s a kind of soup, and garnish it with wildflowers and herbs, so that a sopa de frijol becomes a representation of springtime in Britain.”
Pulpo
Fonda
“We had this period after the research trips where we were like: ‘Let’s cook!’ We had a test kitchen in East Acton where we were inventing, and trying out different ingredients and recipes. We had some friends come over on a sunny summer day and sparked up the grill and I happened to have octopus and bone marrow in the freezer. There’s a lucha libre spot in Mexico City with a taqueria nearby and they’d do these incredible tacos with potatoes and bone marrow. My father was from Galicia in Spain, where they do octopus with potatoes. So, it’s like when you introduce two friends at a party and a few years later they end up getting married. We prepared it as a whole octopus served with potatoes and a grilled bone marrow and carrot salsa. It became a signature dish for us when we opened KOL. We moved in a different direction with more courses and smaller dishes rather than a sharing concept, but this is a dish in a similar style, presentation and sharing concept that we want to pursue at our new restaurant: Fonda.”
