The Restaurant
Kol opened in November 2020 on Seymour Street in Marylebone, a quiet residential block five minutes' walk north of Marble Arch, and earned its first Michelin star in 2022 — the only Mexican restaurant in the UK to hold one. Chef-patron Santiago Lastra, a Mexican-born and Copenhagen-trained cook who previously ran the Noma Mexico pop-up in Tulum for René Redzepi, designed the kitchen as a deliberate philosophical experiment: cook Mexican technique with no Mexican ingredients, sourcing every component from British farms, coasts and growers. The dining room seats about forty across pale-stone walls, an open-fire kitchen at one end, and an L-shaped chef's counter at the back where seven seats face the work directly.
The eleven-course tasting menu rotates with the British seasons and runs the cooking that has built Kol's reputation. A langoustine taco on a hand-pressed corn tortilla with a sour-cream emulsion; a tomato-ceviche course with a Sardinian-style mahogany clam; a smoked-eel chicharrón with hibiscus and beetroot; a Cornish lamb barbacoa wrapped in chard leaves and slow-cooked for eight hours; a corn-husk-baked turbot with green mole built on British herbs; the kitchen's signature mole rosa — a pink mole made with rose petals, beetroot, and pumpkin seeds — served over a slow-cooked Highland venison shoulder. Desserts close with a smoked-milk-and-cocoa course and a corn-leaf ice cream that has become the room's calling card.
Downstairs, Kol Mezcaleria is the world's largest mezcal bar outside of Mexico, with over two hundred and fifty agave spirits and a Lastra-designed cocktail programme. The pairing options include both a wine pairing built largely on small-producer European bottles and a mezcal-and-low-intervention pairing that has won the room a separate award circuit. Reservations for Kol's main dining room open six weeks in advance and book within hours for Friday and Saturday seatings. For a London dinner that signals taste, originality, and a deeper engagement with the city's restaurant evolution than another Mayfair tasting menu, Kol is the answer.
Why This Is London’s Impress Clients Pick
Kol works as an impress-clients table because the restaurant is doing something that does not exist anywhere else: high-fine-dining Mexican cooked exclusively with British ingredients, served at a Michelin level. The originality is the impression, not the price tier. For a London-based client who has already eaten through the city's familiar tasting rooms (The Ledbury, Core, Sketch's Lecture Room), Kol is the room that reorders the conversation. The Marylebone location is hotel-row convenient (the Chiltern Firehouse is two blocks away) and the dress code reads as serious but not stiff.
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