Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
It is not chefs who determine where’s good to eat in London, but landlords and estate agents. Shoreditch is having another of its revivals. Whoever’s been representing Montacute Yards is on a roll: first they nab the reborn Singburi, and now they’ve talked JKS Restaurants into opening here with Legado, Nieves Barragán’s follow-up to the perpetually packed-out Sabor. Quite the get; Barragán is that rarest of things, a chef’s chef who doesn’t bore the public. Anticipation for this one has been matched only by expectation.
Unlike Singburi, Legado’s site does not feel like a store cupboard wildly out of control. Here is a huge, double-height room of pink plaster and zellige tiles, and a terracotta floor that sparks memories of slanting rooftops in those parts of Spain that look like the end of the world. But the best seats are in front of the kitchen at the 16-seat counter, a wooden bar with its front carved like the fluttering tail of a kite.
Where once chefs thought it fashionable to narrow in on one region of a country with great specificity and intensity, happily they have come to realise most diners’ interest in food has more to do with taste than geography. Barragán confined Sabor mostly to Andalusian and Galician cooking, but Legado is content just to be “Spanish”. Which is not to say a night at Legado is one of paella and bullfighting (though a boy can dream). Instead, Barragán has drawn from every corner of the country.
The breadth of the menu reflects this. By which I mean: it’s mad, and as confounding to navigate as a maze. There are nine different sections to consider, three of them alone are for meat. Prices vary wildly: there are mains for £12 and others for £85. There is no financial incentive to buy a bottle of wine over a glass. Decisions here are best made either after hours of considered study — beforehand, the restaurant is cheerful and lively, but not a place to hear yourself think — or by closing your eyes and stabbing a finger. You could always ask the staff, I suppose, if you’re feeling sadistic.
Still, it likely doesn’t matter if you choose blind or after a night of homework; the chance of a bad meal feels slender. Barragán is too good a cook, and evidently trains her team with similar aptitude. Pleasure can be found in the simplest of dishes: fresh piparra peppers are as long and curling as winklepickers (squat padróns are creepers), here arriving in a messy pile, green skin charred to white on the grill. Have them with a “three-sip serve” — three for amateurs; pros will find they can throw them down the hatch in one. The tomato and gin in particular is a beautiful, savoury thing.
There is more to life than peppers. With the goats’ cheese tempura, beyond the crunch of batter was the cheese cooked to helpless runniness, with a honey warmer and sweeter than sunshine on skin. Thick slices of octopus came with mild caper berries and a spill of oil, orange from all the paprika poured onto it. We sniffed in it greedily. Lamb sweetbreads, listed for some reason under the rice dishes, delighted.
Some dishes must be bought and paid for before arrival; we coughed up for the suckling pig. It felt tame until manners were abandoned in favour of tearing the crisp, salty skin off its flesh and eating these strips like bar snacks. Five stars for the skin alone. And with that devoured, the meat and its juices suddenly found their personality, and we tore at it with eagerness, gorging mouthfuls between gulps of wine.
This was not a perfect meal: pig trotter arrived with a bloodless romesco; orzo with sweetbreads offered nothing but garlic; a jamón dashi with mackerel meatballs felt like it belonged to another dish. That quarter of a suckling pig is £85: with no sides at all, it feels parsimonious when a restaurant like this should seem generous. But, mad as it may be, the menu has so much to return for — quail, rabbit shoulder, squid stuffed with prawn and girolle mushrooms. The Legado sandwich, where the bread is substituted for panko-covered, deep-fried cheese, is on my mind so much a lawyer could fairly name it a co-respondent. Barragán, then, has a triumph waiting in the wings; a little tuning and it’ll be there. Would be better in another building, mind. Bloody estate agents.
Meal for two about £300; legadorestaurants.com
