We went in planning for a snack and stayed for dinner.
Legado Taberna is the front room at Legado, just two minutes off Shoreditch High Street, and once you’re through the door it’s hard to believe you’re in E1. Arched brick ceilings ribbed like the inside of a wine barrel, a bar running nearly the length of the room, low light, a wrought-iron staircase, and lush plants all make it feel like it’s been here for decades.
Legado Taberna has its own menu, separate from the restaurant, and the bar seats are kept for walk-ins, which makes sense for a space like this. We were eager to try a nice Spanish wine and the sommelier pointed us to a Folls Negre, a Garnacha from a small grower in Conca de Barberà, served with a slight chill on it. It was peppery, a bit wild, and it held up against fried food and cured fish.
Taberna’s menu is very much tapas-style, where one plate quickly turns into another and then before we knew it, we’d worked our way through most of the menu. The simplicity of the menu is striking, for example, Gordal olives come dressed with orange, tuna arrives cured until it was almost translucent, sardines arrive under a sharp golden escabeche, and the croquetas didn’t survive long enough to cool down. The one to order on purpose is the talo con txistorra, corn flatbread wrapped around thin paprika sausage, the kind of thing you’d eat off a napkin at a village festival in Bilbao. I haven’t seen it anywhere else here. Churros aren’t on the Taberna menu. Ask anyway, they’ll bring them.
The Taberna kitchen is tiny, and what comes out of it is genuinely out of proportion to its size. The chef and owner Nieves Barragán Mohacho was working across both rooms all evening and kept appearing in the tiny Taberna kitchen. We were really impressed to see her at one point in the garde manger station chopping vegetables. Not walking the pass, not tasting and moving on. All-in prep, the way a cook does it. I’ve eaten in a lot of restaurants with the chef’s name on the door and I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen that.
She also opened the oven for us, which she brought over herself, and showed us the suckling pigs turning inside it. We didn’t get the chance to order one. That’s the whole reason we’re going back.
Note: Legado provided support for the reporting of this story.