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Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is an interview with Sonora owners Michelle Salazar de la Rocha and Sam Napier, who this week closed their Stoke Newington taqueria, following its most successful year.
On Monday morning, a little under a month since announcing that Sonora Taqueria in Stoke Newington would close at the end of October, its owners Michelle Salazar de la Rocha and Sam Napier wrote on Instagram, ‘Thats’ it.’ Last month, they noted the toll it has taken on each of them – and how running one of London’s most hyped food businesses for the better part of the last decade has stressed them out, animated them and ultimately become their lives. ‘We are exhausted!’ they wrote on Monday. ‘We could have never imagined that what originally was a tiny project for a visa sponsorship would eventually become our entire lives, give us a purpose and immense satisfaction.’
Sonora has done something rare in the London restaurant industry: closing unexpectedly right at the top of its game. For many food writers and amateur taco enthusiasts it was the best taqueria in London, eschewing trends and developing its own take on Sonoran cuisine (it was also the sole Mexican entry in last year’s * Vittles 99). *The irony of closing just as the business has begun to thrive in a moment when many others are struggling, is not lost on Michelle and Sam. But they’ve always done things their way.
I first met Michelle and Sam at Pollo Feliz, the stall which came before Sonora in east London’s Netil Market in early 2020. I got to know them better during the Covid-19 lockdown when calling on them weekly for Michelle’s peerless flour tortillas, initially their USP, which Sam would deliver on his bike. In the two years or so following, since I worked in an office building nearby, I witnessed first-hand the queues at the market in the post-Covid era – they were a constant. I always enjoyed the tacos, the Friday burrito specials, the moments of innovation. But even before they moved to their first bricks-and-mortar site in Stoke Newington in 2023, it was Michelle’s quiet fastidiousness and Sam’s candour that set them apart and kept me and so many others engaged.
Both Michelle and Sam have always been publicly honest about how hard they’ve found doing a thing they never meant to do, while at the same time reluctantly acknowledging that they’ve advanced Mexican cuisine in London maybe more than anyone else in the last decade. Though there’s no sense of what, if anything, might come next, it felt like a good time to talk to them about the last few years and the last few weeks. I wanted to really understand what’s it’s been like behind those grills, how they’ve dealt with taco hype, what happened with their concept Mexa at Arcade, the cease and desist from Taqueria in Notting Hill, and the Sonora superfan lawyer who got them off on a technicality.
We hope you enjoy the episode. Let us know what you think in the comments! Adam Coghlan
The Vittles Podcasts is free for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. We’d be very grateful if you can like, share and rate wherever you get your podcasts since it all helps us to continue to put it out for free. As ever, a massive thanks to Lucy Dearlove, our producer, and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.
A reminder that all of recent episodes – including the interview with Quince and Clementine founder-baker Anna Higham – are available to ▶watch on YouTube. Huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter for their hand in those.
Thank you for listening, reading, watching and supporting our work.
Coming up…
In the coming weeks, we’ll have interviews with Viewpoint’s Hussein Ahmad, the only London restaurant accountant you might already have heard of; Luca’s Dan Willis and Johnny Smith on life before, during and after The Clove Club; and what the future of Bao looks like with Erchen Chang and Shing Tat Chung.
The
Vittlespodcast is hosted by Vittles Restaurants editor.[Adam Coghlan]
Lucy Dearloveis an audio producer, sound designer and writer originally from North East England, now based in St Leonards-on-Sea. Her food podcast,, is a two-time winner of the Fortnum & Mason Podcast of the Year Award.[Lecker]The full
masthead can be foundVittles[here].
