This new Mexican restaurant serves up regional dishes so well crafted that conversation stopsFonda, 12 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BZ.Starters and small plates £7-£14, larger plates £23-£29, desserts £6-£11, wines from £39At 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.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.

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.From the same list, there is a stuffed triangle of winter-grey tortilla, filled with a lightly sour mix of chorizo and soft, spiced ratte potato, which is described to us, as a kind of Mexican Cornish pasty.Alongside, is a little whipped cheese to drag it through.The nearest thing to an over-adornment is the generous grating of black truffle across the empanada-shaped quesadillas, made with gentle, stringy Oaxacan cheese.

Any attempts at such grouchy critical thoughts dissipate as we bite through the flaky crust.On the side is a bowl of crème fraîche with a hint of chilli, topped with crumbled cheese curds.Now there are choices to be made.Do we add some of the salsa matcha, a dark rust colour against the virginal white of the crème fraîche? Or do we go with the sharper salsa verde or roja? Sod it.Why not all of them? Hefty, pearlescent cubes of Doberman-paw-sized scallop, come in a pleasing mess of a salad made with chopped gooseberries, and a beige sauce of sesame and burnt habanero.

Perched on the top, at a jaunty angle, is a deep-fried corn cracker to be used as a scoop.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.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.Ukrainian restaurateurs and chefs Alex Cooper and Anna Andriienko are to open their first London venture.

Tartar Bunar is inspired by Cooper’s hometown of Tartarbunary in southern Ukraine and in particular his grandmother’s recipes for what he describes as “hearty and comforting” dishes.Cooper, who throughout the war has been in Kyiv, using his restaurants as food distribution centres for those in need, will remain there.The new restaurant on east London’s Curtain Road, will be run by Andriienko.The restaurant will open in March.Follow them on Instagram @tatarbunar.

london.Chef Paul Ainsworth and his wife, Emma, have bought the St Enodoc Hotel in Rock, Cornwall.The couple will add the 21-room business, which operates the St Enodoc Brasserie, to their group which already includes the Mariners pub, Padstow Townhouse and the flagship Paul Ainsworth at No6 (paul-ainsworth.co.uk).

And the year starts with the news of a closure, of which doubtless there will be more to come.Chef Giorgio Locatelli and his wife, Plaxy, have announced the closure of Locanda Locatelli after 23 years at the Hyatt Regency on London’s Portman Square, close to Marble Arch.“With a heavy heart, for reasons out of our control, we are now permanently closed,” they announced on Instagram.“We will miss all of our clients, many of whom have become friends.But when one door closes, another opens, so please check our social media for updates on our new project.

” @locandalocatelliEmail Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Instagram @jayrayner1 This article was amended on 12 January 2025.An earlier version misspelled the name of St Enodoc Hotel and St Enodoc Brasserie.