The Times
Giles Coren was the first of the critics into print on the merits of Spanish chef Nieves Barragan’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to her phenomenally successful Sabor. His verdict: “Legado is set fair to be the big hit of winter 2025.”
The stand-out plate for Giles was milk-fed baby lamb, slow-cooked with just a little salt and water, which matched a dish he ate 24 years ago at El Soportal in Padraza, an hour’s drive from Madrid – a “formative dining experience” that is now his benchmark for restaurants.
“I have never even seen such a dish on a menu in England. Not until yesterday,” he said, and Legado’s “amazing” version passed the test: “Truly, you need nothing else in your afternoon (or your life) except something green and a glass of wine.”
With a trio of mates (including Gary Lineker, eating his first lunch out on a Saturday during the football season for 25 years) Giles worked his way through “a million” other courses including more lamb in the shape of both breaded sweetbreads on orzo and kidneys, “the best gazpacho I’ve had this summer”, the ‘Legado sandwich’ (chard filled with cecina and smoked cheese, breadcrumbed and fried), pig trotters with romesco sauce, and a “historic” crema Catalana. There were just a couple of fails along the way: brioche was “stodgy”, deep-fried piglet’s head “really a bit much”, and chocolate cheesecake merely “meh”.
Giles Coren - 2025-09-14Evening Standard
David Ellis, pipped to the post by Giles, was more reserved in his praise for Nieves Barragan’s latest, declaring it “a triumph waiting in the wings” after a meal consumed at “the best seats, in front of the kitchen at the 16-seat counter, a wooden bar with its front carved like the fluttering tail of a kite”.
He enjoyed grilled piparra peppers “as long and curling as winklepickers (squat padróns are creepers)”, a mini “three-sip” cocktail – “the tomato and gin is a beautiful, savoury thing” – and a suckling pig worth “five stars for the skin alone”.
But his meal was “not perfect”: pig trotter came with a “bloodless” romesco; orzo with sweetbreads “offered nothing but garlic”; jamón dashi with mackerel meatballs “felt like it belonged to another dish”. Still, he’ll be back to work his way through much else that he fancied on the “mad” menu: quail, rabbit shoulder, squid stuffed with prawn and girolle mushrooms to name a few.
David Ellis - 2025-09-14The Times
A visit to Nieves Barragan’s new restaurant prompted Jay Rayner to ponder at some length over the ethics of eating a suckling piglet just three weeks old. It was a morally complex question, he suggested, that each diner had to answer for themselves; and there was also the question of whether the piglet served at Legado was worth it.
“The answer is very much so, but only if you’re comfortable with that sort of thing. And if you are, you can range across a whole section of the menu dedicated to it. There’s a dish of tiny roasted ears with potatoes, smoked paprika and capers. Or tiny trotters with romesco. Or a tiny half head with lemon. There’s also a tiny, milk-fed lamb to share.”
Other dishes were less complicatedly delicious, including Morecambe Bay-style shrimps dressed with a Marie Rose sauce and topped with a fried quail’s egg to create “a louche version of a prawn cocktail, one that’s been backpacking along the Costa Blanca this summer”, and churro with cinnamon-heavy dulce de leche that is “as elevated as deep-fried dough should ever get”.
Jay Rayner - 2025-10-12The Daily Telegraph
There was no holding William Sitwell back in his admiration of the new restaurant from Nieves Barragan: Sabor, her first solo venture, in Mayfair, celebrated the food of the Basque Country, while her new Legado (meaning legacy) “is the chef’s offering of her complete Spain and, frankly, it’s a masterpiece”.
Everything William and a greedy friend tasted was delicious, but best of all was “the gorgeous novelty of black fideua (squid-ink pasta), with rock shrimp and alioli. The rich, dark pasta, with the crunch of batter, softness of the shellfish and gently coaxing nature of the mayo, truly make this a strong contender for dish of the year.”
The superlatives did not end there, with William declaring Legado “one of the finest, grandest expositions of Spanish food in the world. In a concrete jungle, in east London.”
William Sitwell - 2025-10-19
