When Legado opened, the reviews noticed what was missing. No croquetas, no padrón peppers, none of the greatest hits a Spanish restaurant abroad usually feels obliged to play. In their place came half a suckling pig's head with jamón powder and lemon, morcilla with quail eggs, black fideuà with rock shrimp and aioli, and a sandwich that takes two days to make.
Few chefs have shaped how London eats Spanish food as much as Nieves Barragán Mohacho. Born in Bilbao, she arrived in London at 19 with no English, rose to executive head chef at Fino and Barrafina, and won Barrafina a Michelin star. In October 2017 she and her long-time business partner José Etura opened Sabor on Heddon Street; its own star followed in 2018.
Legado, at Montacute Yards in Shoreditch, beneath the Overground line and next door to Singburi, is her largest project to date and her most personal. The name means legacy, and the menu draws on all of Spain: seafood from Galicia, stews from Asturias, whole-animal cookery from the asadors of Castilla y León. The butchery is done in-house. Two wood-fired ovens, built in Madrid and assembled on site, do the heavy lifting, one for IGP lechazo from Zamora and one for Segovian suckling pig, both familiar to anyone who has eaten at Sabor.
Barragán has said there are many dishes she loves that she has never seen outside Spain, and she wants to bring them to London. The sourcing follows the same instinct, from the Señorío de Montanera jamón ibérico she ate as a child to small-scale producers.
“The greatest hits of the tapas bar are not the point. The rest of Spain is.”
How to get in
There are two ways in. Tables in the dining room are booked. Seats at the kitchen counter are kept for walk-ins and have the best view of the ovens. The Taberna, the bar and terrace under a fluted arch at the front, is for pintxos, a glass of fino and the kind of afternoon that turns into dinner without anyone deciding it should.
What to order
The dish to order is the Legado sandwich, from her grandmother's kitchen: chard, cecina and smoked cheese, crumbed and fried, two days in the making. Elsewhere there are raw quisquillas from Cádiz with their heads cooked crisp, Cantabrian anchovies on smoked cheese brioche, confit lobster under a soft Spanish-style egg, and saffron ice cream finished with olive oil. Drinks open with the 3-Sip Serve, tiny ice-free cocktails of Spanish fruit and vegetables poured into ceramic cups, each one standing for a region. After that comes sherry, including rare en rama selections and almacenista bottlings from Lustau, alongside txakoli, Corpinnat, a vertical of Muga's Prado Enea and classics from López de Heredia.
The room
The building is new, and the room works hard to feel older than it is. The dining room is double height, in exposed London stock brick with sage-green tiles and a terracotta floor, and a steel balcony nods to Bilbao's industrial past. Tables are topped with jumbo terracotta terrazzo or with slate that doubles as a chalkboard, and the palette runs to rustic wood and deep green leather.
