Where the Chefs Eat: Nieves Barragán Mohacho’s favourite restaurants in Spain

We chat about how different the world is since Sabor opened in 2018, thanks to Brexit, Covid, and now, the sky-high cost of running a restaurant, and Nieves is wasting nothing if she doesn’t need to. Aside from the economic sense that nose-to-tail dining makes, it is also a far more sustainable way of eating, much like the one she herself grew up with. “It’s crazy, and the ingredients are so expensive now. It’s becoming increasingly painful to consider the difference between what I paid before the lockdown and now. It is like, wow!” So, “we can’t just use the premium cuts of animals and fish and that is something I learned from my mum; it is my heritage. You have to use the brain, trotters, and liver. Of course, we use the lovely cuts like the lamb chops, but I want to enjoy every single cut of the animal as much as possible. So it’ll be the traditional way of Spain but with my own touch, if that makes sense. It’ll be traditional Spanish cuisine made in 2025 in Shoreditch!” Her enthusiasm is infectious, and I’m utterly caught up in it, even as she starts to talk about stuffed trotters. “It’s more important than ever to be using everything,” she insists. “You can stuff [trotters] with prawns or mushrooms, and then they can be deep-fried. I hate the word “deep fried,” but my mum used to make them with a romesco sauce underneath, and it’s fantastic. Of course, it means much more work, but I love settling into the cooking, even if it does take time. We need to be more sustainable, everyone, in every possible area. Even with dessert, for example, I’ll make the Classic Leche Frita using leftover bread but with my own spin.”

Nieves has always cited her mother as her biggest influence. She reminisces on her childhood in Bilbao and tells me that she “used to go shopping with her every Saturday morning in the market in a small town outside of Bilbao. I’m from an area where we are very famous for sardines – that’s why the logo of Sabor is a sardine. We have the very best sardines around the world, and she would teach me how to shop. She would make me look at the fish’s eye to work out whether or not to buy it. She gave me incredible advice that I still pass on to my team. It’s the simple basis of everything – if you get the ingredients right, then you can make something tasty.” Having grown up with hearty dishes of “kidneys and livers in stews”, she describes herself as coming from “a normal family, so we couldn’t afford to buy costly things. [My mother] would create incredible flavours from basic things, and this is the heritage I now have.”

Aside from Spanish food, it is the interior design that also excites Nieves and she has been heavily involved in the construction of Legado itself – not only its menu, but every aesthetic detail a nod to her heritage. “I designed the ovens in the new restaurant for the suckling pig,” she enthuses, “and we’re going to have wood fire ovens for the lamb and the empanadas. I went to Spain to design the oven doors, which are very chunky and made of iron, making them super traditional and rustic. They are just heaven. It’s pretty much like my dream come true.”