Santiago Lastra – Food for Thought

The story of Santiago Lastra’s unstoppable rise to the heights of hospitality began with a packet of Ritz crackers. After flirting with various ideas of becoming a mathematician, a painter, footballer or basketball player, it was when a fifteen-year-old Lastra happened across the disc-shaped crackers and its recipe for a crab dip that the budding chef decided his fate would be written in the Michelin stars.

For the gourmands amongst you readers, Santiago Lastra may need no introduction. He rose to stardom after launching Noma’s — the “gastronomical mecca” and perhaps the best-known restaurant in the world — in Tulum. He then went on to finesse his reputation at Carousel – the award-winning creative hub home to a revolving door of guest chef collaborations.

Lastra now sharpens his knives in his coveted restaurant KOL in Marylebone, London. The two-storey restaurant aims to reflect the “intricacies, innovation and diversity” of Mexican cuisine through championing the best of British ingredients. Recently awarded a Michelin-star, KOL appears to be the hottest ticket in town and securing a seat there feels as strenuous as an Olympic-style feat.

Born an hour outside of Mexico City in Cuernavaca, Lastra first cut his teeth at a local Italian restaurant where he spent his after-school hours. To start with, he couldn’t help but feel a “sensory overload” where the kitchen was clouded with smoke and steam from the pasta, fused with the warm, yeasty smells of fresh bread and pizza. “Weeks spent in the kitchen turned into months,” explains Lastra, “and I soon realised I wanted this to be my profession.”

The furnace-like kitchen would soon become a place of solace for Lastra after his grandfather, grandmother and father tragically passed away in the same month. “I would bring over leftover ingredients and wine from the restaurant, and that’s when I clocked the positive impact food can have and how it can filter through homes,” he says. “I thought if I can achieve this for my family, it’s something I want everyone to feel.”

After moving to the bustling streets of Mexico City for a stint in a restaurant that coalesced Asian and Mexican flavours, Lastra globetrotted from one country to another, working in top-rate kitchens all over the world. In ten years alone, the unashamed nomad had added 27 different countries to his roster. But in 2017, he finally returned to Mexico when, in an epoch-making moment, he was asked to help launch Noma Mexico in Tulum.

“Initially, I felt pretty underprepared and overwhelmed as there was so much that needed to be done,” he says .“I remember when I first met Rosio Sanchez (Noma’s former pastry chef) and Rene Redzepi (the chef and co-owner of Noma) I felt like an outsider as I didn’t have any operational experience. But I had the will, and I think Rene saw that in me.”

Redzepi framed the experience as an opportunity to explore the compendium of flavours all over Mexico. So for months, Lastra travelled far and wide and met with individuals and communities to discover just that. “The whole experience went by so quickly, and by the end,” he states, “I was excited and proud to be Mexican and to have discovered so much about my country.”

Lastra then moved to London, and after a “life-changing” experience at Carousel, he thought to himself that one day he’d like to open his own restaurant. After years spent watching how restaurants like Noma harnessed local ingredients to reflect another cuisine, he thought why couldn’t he do the same with Mexican food?

To shake up Western misconceptions that Mexican food comes in the form of store-bought guacamole, tex-mex, or Old El Paso tortillas, Lastra sketched plans for a restaurant that not just promoted the idea of Mexican culture and cuisine, but that showed you could use a whole library of ingredients to emulate it.

Ever since, Lastra’s “Mexican-British” fusion at KOL has been an instant success and winning a Michelin star has only solidified the chef-patron’s reputation as a savvy and innovative restaurateur.

“At KOL, we want to share pieces of our travels and personal memories of Mexico, crafting moments through flavours and techniques,” says Lastra. “We have a list of Mexican ingredients that we break down based on flavours and build them back up again using replacement ingredients.”

“We use sea arrow grass which is like coriander but better, bell peppers with elderflower and Kombucha to create mango. Instead of avocado, we use pistachio that we blend with roasted garlic. Instead of banana leaves, we use chestnut leaves to make tamales. All fresh produce is sourced within the UK. The crab and halibut are from Cornwall; the caviar is British, the beetroot, rhubarb, and gooseberries are from Oxfordshire. We take all of these ingredients and dress them up as if they were Mexican.”

This approach to Mexican food is what Lastra labels “adaptation”, which focuses on flavour profiles as supposed to “fusion.” He explains further: “Take a mango; it’s fleshy, juicy and floral. Then break it down and consider how to achieve the colour and flavour experience without using a mango itself. For the floral notes, we would take elderflower, add a little vinegar for tartness and cook down some yellow bell pepper with butter for sweetness so that altogether, it creates a pulp which we use as if it were mango and create a sorbet or a sauce to add to things. This is just one example of how we represent and embrace a specific ingredient we want to make more Mexican at KOL.”

Designed by London-based studio A-nrd, the terracotta-walled interiors of KOL harvest influence from Yucatán, Oaxaca and Mexico City. The colourful architecture of Mexican architect Luis Barragán is said to have influenced the ground-floor dining room, where walls are awash with burnt-orange, pink and yellow stucco.

In the beating heart of the room is an open kitchen with oakwood islands and in-built ovens, stoves and shelves. Toward the back, a fire pit and a comal – a type of grill used throughout Mexico and South America to toast spices, sear meat or make tortillas.

“We see the restaurant as a Mexican house in the middle of London with crafts from different collectors such as Raiz and Artefakto,” explains Lastra. “The interiors are balanced with contemporary accents and terracotta walls which textures similar to traditional Haciendas in Yucatan. Ultimately, we want people to leave happy with a richer understanding of Mexico.”

Head downstairs, and there is the Oaxaca-style Chef’s Table dining room which sits up to 22 guests. From lobster wrapped in tortillas with sourdough, lobster coral and fermented plum salsa to Carnitas (pork belly cooked for hours with crisp crackling, gooseberry and onion salsa and a bean puree), guests can watch Lastra’s thought-process uncoil in front of their hungry eyes.

Adjacent to the dining room is KOL’s in-house Mezcaleria, a beachier room with rattan headlights and cane seats, where diners can head for a smoky tequila before or after their meal. “Mezcal is a big part of Mexico. In Oaxaca, most meals are enjoyed alongside Mezcal, and it’s acceptable at any mealtime. We have a belief that for everything wrong you drink mezcal. It is thought that it has medicinal properties as it makes you feel uplifted. At the Mezcaleria, we want guests to feel like they are in Mexico and to have fun. It’s a completely separate entity that comes after KOL. In other words, when KOL ends, the Mezcaleria begins.”

For his last ever supper, Santiago Lastra picks “lobster tacos from Baja California” for his starter, “they would be freshly caught and fried in pork fat, with a fresh tortilla and a bit of rice and beans – eaten on the beach.” For his main, “a whole turbot. I love turbot and halibut, but there is one interpretation of turbot served in the Basque region with parsley and garlic sauce — it melts in the mouth, and I love it.” For dessert, a “pistachio ice cream from Italy” and for his drink, unsurprisingly, “mezcal”.

“I wanted to do something that hadn’t been done with KOL,” concludes Lastra. “Before globalisation, people relied on what they had to hand and brought with them inspiring ideas and memories from their travels, bringing culture to a local area. Mexican food is meant to be made from scratch using fresh ingredients, not just Tex Mex or cheap burritos. It’s about raising the bar and creating a fine dining experience that sets these previous interpretations right.”

Mextlapique (serves 10)

Ingredients

600 g Turbot clean in portions of 60g each
10 units Tomato thick slices
200 g Fennel slices
300 g Red onion slices
300 ml  White wine (skin contact if possible)
50 g Fine Salt
30 g Sea salt
300 g Corn Husks (60 pieces)

Method

Step 1

Brine the halibut in a water solution of 5% salt for 30 minutes, rinse and put to one side for later and soak the corn husks in warm water and reserve.

Step 2 – Mextlapique (1 per portion)

Line up 2 leaves of corn husk and put two slices of tomato in the centre, followed by 10g of fennel slices and one portion of fish on top of this, finish with 10g of onion slices and dress with 10ml of oil and 15 ml of wine, season with salt (be careful not over season as the fish will have been brined already). Wrap with 2 more corn husks, covering the fish, fennel and tomato completely, the corn husk should serve a similar function to paper in a papillote. To tighten the corn husk wrap using thin slices of corn husk leaves and put to one side for later.

Green pumpkin seed Pipian (300 g)

Ingredients

40g Pumpkin seeds (toasted)
100g Fennel root (cut in quarters)
50g Green gooseberries
40g White Onion (cut in quarters with skin)
12g Garlic cloves (with skin)
6g  Sorrel
6g Chervil 
20g  Parsley 
3g Tarragon
315g Water 
3g Fine Salt

Method

Step 1

On medium-low heat roast onion, gooseberries, fennel and garlic on a plancha without any oil until they are slightly charred on the outside and sweet and cooked on the inside. Peel the onion and garlic and blend all the roasted ingredients with the blanched herbs, toasted pumpkin seeds with the water. Freeze in airtight containers in the freezer and blend while frozen. defrost the mixture and pass through a fine strainer, season with salt and reserve for later.

Roasted Beach Plants (300g)

Ingredients

Step 1

50g Chervil 
40g Ice plant 
40g Samphire
40g Rock samphire
40g Pumpkin seeds
20g Mussel powder
8g Thai chili slices
15g Rapeseed oil
7g Sea salt 

Method

Step 1

Pick all the herbs and in a hot pan roast the chili, rock samphire and samphire with the oil. Remove from the heat and put the mixture in a bowl, mix with the other herbs, the mussel powder and the seeds (season with sea salt only if needed), reserve.

Platting Method

10 units Mextlapique
300 gr Green pumpkin seed Pipian
300 gr  Roasted beach herbs

Cook the fish straight on the grill for 10 min with the tomato side in the bottom, (otherwise the fish will burn) turn and cook another 4 min on the other side. check that the inside temperature of the fish is around 40C, rest for 5 min and serve openly in the centre with the hot pumpkin seed sauce on top and dress with the spicy beach herb mix.