WHEN YOU ASK A GREAT CHEF HOW THEY DISCOVERED THIS WAS THEIR CALLING – spending gruelling, 16-hour days in the kitchen brigade, sweating over their station to the endless chorus of “Yes chef!” – most have an origin story, a nostalgic childhood memory of eating their first oyster in France with their father (Anthony Bourdain) or helping “the cook prepare school lunches” (Merlin Labron-Johnson, see p137).
But, “I don't have a romantic story of being the son of a fisherman or my grandmother doing fresh pasta,” says Santiago Lastro, chef-patron of the Michelin-starred KOL, in London. “I'm from the millennial generation in Mexico – when I was a kid a microwave was something new. So women were able to work because they didn't have to cook.”
But Santi, as he is known, was curious about food. The first thing he ever made was a crab dip, using borrowed ingredients and a recipe off the back of a Ritz cracker box. “I'd make sure we always had that crab dip,” he says proudly, “so everyone who came to the house would have it.”
Which is how, when other millennial teens were playing Xbox, he could be found making his own pasta. “Every recipe was like playing a game, you unlock characters, you unlock recipes. Suddenly I could make bread and risotto, I went up the levels, and I had the power to unlock flavours and share them with people.”
So, at 15, his mother took him for an interview at a local Italian restaurant and they took him on.
“I loved it,” he says, “but the turning point was when my father and my grandfather and my grandmother all passed away in the same month.” He says it matter-of-factly, but it quietens the table.
“I'd been working in the restaurant for four months – I was going to school at 7 am and finishing at 2 and then going to the restaurant at 3 and I'd finish at 11 pm every day. But when this happened to my family, I stopped going to school for a while, and I just went to the restaurant. I felt safe there. I would bring food home to my mother and my brother and I remember seeing them from the kitchen, looking happy in a moment when we were so sad, and I thought ‘I will do this for the rest of my life.’”
And that is Santiago's origin story.
His restaurant, KOL,