London’s Mexican food scene is going from strength to strength, and it doesn’t get any better than Michelin-starred KOL, writes Carys Sharkey
Sacks filled to the brim with scarlet mounds of chillies sit in Ocean Spray cranberry juice boxes in the oppressive midday sun of Oaxaca City. Up top, bags of pre-packed chillies hang like prizes at a carnival. This is a standard sight across Mexico, a country that reveres the chilli in a way few other countries do. And their role in Mexican cuisine goes far beyond heat: the heart-shaped ancho, a dried poblano pepper, has a fruity sourness; the guajillo brings brightness in colour and flavour, the chipotle, a smoked and dried jalapeno, can be campfire intense; the cascabel rattles like a baby’s toy. This is just scratching the surface. After a trip to Mexico, my cupboards are now stacked with bags upon bags of chillies.
Santiago Lastra, chef and co-owner of Marylebone’s acclaimed KOL, says that Mexican food without chillies is like “a beach with no sand”. Which is why, when formulating the concept for a Mexican restaurant that uses British ingredients, he would make an exception for chillies. Oh, and corn.
At Michelin-starred KOL, produce and provenance push conceptions of Mexican food in a totally new direction. With a background cooking at Mugaritz and then in Copenhagen, Lastra’s cooking has a distinctive Noma bent. The lateral thinking that asks: how can we make a dish using totally different, and often unassuming, ingredients? So much so that the thrill of eating lies in the idiosyncrasies of components.
Set just off Oxford Street, KOL is a beautifully open restaurant with a central kitchen and low-slung leather booths. It’s the sepia-toned Mexico of movies. Lastra has created a tasting menu that gestures to some of Mexico’s greatest dishes while feeling entirely new. I first ate here just a couple of weeks after eating my way around Mexico, and was struck by the uncanny echoes – sometimes so loud I was back eating tamales in Oaxaca, other times so faint I could barely hold the thread. This lilting to and fro, or a tightrope between the known and unknown, makes KOL such an exciting addition to London’s food scene – and a reason it ranks in the World’s Top 50 Best Restaurants.
A short rib quesadilla of sweet, rich masa comes served on the bone and topped with Wiltshire truffle. It’s a deeply satisfying bite of Flintstone kitsch, with bruising beef cut by an English red onion xnipec (a Yucatan salsa with habaneros and orange that translates as ‘dog snout’) The scallop ceviche is laced with rhubarb and gooseberry to bring acidity in place of limes, but they also bring incredible texture and a floral edge that works so well with the fleshy shellfish. With the signature dish of a langoustine and chipotle taco, Lastra uses sea buckthorn, the bright-orange berry from the seaswept shrub, for sourness. After a few courses, the up-until-now unthinkable strikes you: This is Mexican food without coriander, lime or avocados.
After a stint working for a Noma pop-up in Tulum, Lastra set his sights across the Atlantic. London felt like a perfect fit: cosmopolitan, well-travelled and with a love for spice. There was also a gap in the market. Americans love to razz on London’s indistinct Mexican food scene, and while we’re never going to be LA, there have been some really exciting openings and well-established spots changing the narrative, very much spearheaded by KOL. Sonora Taqueria in Stoke Newington serves incredible flour tortilla tacos like cabeza (head) and barbacoa (slow-cooked beef); Bake Street does some of the best everything in London, including lamb birria tacos; Guacamoles in Peckham’s Rye Lane Market does great corn tacos and chilaquiles; in Brockley, Cantinera – a ‘neighbourhood cantina’ – opened just last month; and just down the road from KOL, Carousel has transformed into Cometa, a contemporary Mexican seafood spot that nods to Mexico City icon Contramar.
Back at KOL, a pozole (a chicken and hominy soup) is made with mussels and mushrooms. Rye mochi adds a chewiness that mimics the hominy (nixtamalized corn) and also makes the dish feel almost Korean. A sprinkle of toasty chapulines (dried crickets) adds a puffed rice texture to a dish flaunting textural know-how.
It was in Puebla that I learned just how important mole is to Mexican culture. Mole is a sauce made from an apothecary’s shop of ingredients: spices, nuts, chillies, dried fruits. It’s dozens of ingredients cooked down into viscous brown matter. Bitter and sweet and highly aromatic, mole is profoundly complex and not always easy. At KOL, Lastra pairs duck with his mole that straddles the Atlantic. Made with koji (inoculated rice fermented in-house), rye and chillies, it strikes a deep, bass-rumbling chord of umami, and feels like a stand-out stand-in for what Lastra’s cooking is all about.
Onto the sweets and a paleta – a type of ice lolly served everywhere in Mexico – uses butternut squash in place of mango. The signature dessert is a ‘pastel imposible’, or impossible cake, so named because the layers of flan and cake batter swap positions as it cooks. What you’re left with is a delicate sponge topped with the set, eggy custard and tiled with forced-rhubarb, which is a bit of a hero ingredient at KOL.
The tasting menu – priced at £145 – can be paired with some of the most exciting drinks pairings in the capital. Go soft for nectar-like pear juice from Germany and in-house kombuchas, or wine to try pairings like Hecatomb, a brambly Cabernet Franc made in collaboration with cult-favourite Christian Tschida, that goes unbelievably with the mole. But being a Mexican restaurant, you’d be remiss not to try a little Mezcal. A gun-smoke spirit that blows you away.
The cultural influence of Mexico on London looks only set to get stronger. You may have noticed that every man and his dog seems to be in CDMX at the moment. As one of the host nations of the World Cup, I’m predicting a summer of micheladas and aguachile (weather dependent). And the Tate Modern’s summer blockbuster show ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’ will showcase over 30 of Kahlo’s most iconic works. Mexico’s most famous daughter in full technicolour on the Southbank. So it should come as no surprise that Lastra will be there cooking his food at the gallery’s restaurant. The three-course menu centres on a short rib tamal – masa steamed in corn husks – with Lastra’s signature mole. Dark, complex and Mexican to its core, it’s an apt pairing for Kahlo’s paintings.