“There’s no good Mexican food in London” is a phrase beloved by Americans visiting the city. It’s their equivalent of a British person rolling their eyes at American history, having drunk at countless pubs older than the Liberty Bell and the Declaration of Independence. These days, it’s not a valid complaint. With the recent surge of Mexican restaurants and bars opening in London – from Little Fires, a new late-night bar on Bethnal Green Road with vibrant drinks created in collaboration with renowned Oaxacan cocktail bar Sabina Sabe, to Shoreditch burrito merchants Bad Manners and Heddon Street’s bustling Fonda – the future of Mexican food in London looks more promising than ever.
To work out where London’s Mexican dining scene is heading, it’s important to look to the past. The first Mexican restaurant to open in London – and reportedly the UK – was Cafe Pacifico in Covent Garden, founded in 1982. Its menu included guacamole with corn chips for £1.75, chicken enchiladas for £3.50 and even a ceviche with marinated fish, sliced avocado and corn for £1.50.
Reviewing Cafe Pacifico for Bedfordshire on Sunday in 1982, journalist Jeff Katz describes a tortilla as the “basic factor of Mexican food” and “a kind of pancake”, which gives a rough idea of the general public’s familiarity with the cuisine. Despite the newness of it all, Katz declares the food to be “very tasty”, especially when “washed down with a glass of reasonable house wine for 75p”.
In 2025, the restaurant that best sums up how far Mexican food has advanced in London is Santiago Lastra’s Kol, a slick spot in Marylebone boasting a Michelin star and a £185 tasting menu of seasonal British produce reimagined with traditional Mexican flavours and techniques. The restaurant is so popular it recently turned its downstairs mezcal bar into a dedicated dessert and drinks space, where guests are invited to enjoy the “final act of their meal”.
“In Mexico, if you’re in someone’s house, you don’t just eat and leave,” Lastra tells Broadsheet. “You eat, and then maybe you’ll go to the living room to sit down and have more drinks. In Oaxaca or Guadalajara, you finish your meal, and then you go and have some drinks in a mezcaleria.”
Lastra’s recreation of that experience at Kol is a sign of a confident chef and restaurateur who understands that customers have moved on from the pastiche version of Mexican cuisine presented by high-street chains like Chiquito.
“When I moved here in 2017, there weren’t as many … high-quality restaurants or brands offering Mexican food, apart from a couple of really established ones, like Wahaca and El Pastor,” says Lastra.
“It’s great to see so many new openings and the demand growing. The better we do things, the more people are going to like Mexican food.” And, he says, the public’s perception of Mexican food – often clouded by Tex-Mex – is changing. “It wasn’t an accurate representation because it’s not what Mexican food is, and it’s not what Mexican food should make people feel. Mexican food should make people feel joy and happiness.”
It’s not just high-end Mexican restaurants like Kol that are thriving. Great takes on tacos – which, back in 1982, Katz described as “two fried tortillas filled with sauce, cheese, onions, lettuce and tomatoes” – can be found all over London.
La Chingada and Sonora Taqueria have been popular taco spots for years, offering toppings that range from slow-cooked birria to tender nopales, while Walthamstow’s Comalera and Guacamoles in Peckham joined the roster more recently. At Guacamoles, in Rye Lane Market, the corn tortillas are made fresh by hand daily, with fillings based on recipes from chef Manny de la Torre’s family cookbook and inspired by the flavours of Papantla, Mexico.
Alongside London’s taqueria boom, even burritos are starting to make waves. Max Fishman and Rodrigo Cervantes’s Bad Manners has a new site set up in the grounds of Shoreditch Church on Shoreditch High Street. Specialising in all-day breakfast burritos loaded with sausage and beans, as well as a rotating menu of seasonal burritos at lunch, Bad Manners is leagues above your high street Tortilla or Chipotle.
“We’re trying to find our place and our time,” says Cervantes (ex-Smoking Goat, Kiln and Dom’s Subs). “We draw inspiration from Mexican American culture – Chicano culture specifically, like LA diners and food trucks. [It’s] often looked down on by Mexicans as not being ‘real’ Mexican food, or burritos not being Mexican at all. We see the American version of burritos as an amalgam of two countries, and in our very humble way, we try to draw inspiration from that formula and apply it to what we cook.”
The Quetzalcoatl-length queues Bad Manners draws during lunchtime are further evidence that Mexican food is having a moment. Yet Fishman isn’t entirely certain what’s behind the trend. “Mexico is booming so much that it feels like the bubble is going to burst at any moment and markets are going to crash,” he says. “It’s hard to know what’s driving this growth. It seems that Mexico has become a popular holiday destination, so there’s a demand from people looking to get their hit of Mexican food when they’re back here.”
It seems that Londoners who have visited Mexico City and Oaxaca are demanding a higher level of “authenticity” from their Mexican food. Plus, an influx of quality suppliers like Masafina – which imports Mexican ingredients to the UK – has upped the ante for chefs and restaurateurs, giving them more tools to work with than ever before.
A few years ago, you’d have to go to a specialist shop in Notting Hill to get dried chillis. Today you can find a decent selection of chipotle, arbol, and guajillo chillis at the supermarket. Still, the most popular Mexican home-cooking recipes remain the classics: quesadillas, fajitas and chilli con carne.
“I think the next evolution is for people to make Mexican food at home,” says Lastra. “Not just the restaurants. Now we’ve got good taquerias and good restaurants setting the standard, it’s time for people to start cooking real Mexican food at home for their kids. That’s the next level.”
