Nieves Barragán Mohacho left Barrafina — the restaurant that taught London how to eat Spanish food properly — and opened Sabor in 2018 with a singular ambition: to build something that went further. Not tapas-bar deeper, but Spain's actual regional diversity on a single address in Mayfair. The Michelin star came in the first year. Nothing about that was surprising.
Sabor occupies four distinct spaces across two floors, each serving a different register of Spanish cooking. On the ground floor, La Mesa is the counter where the kitchen is visible and the menu moves through the greatest hits of Galician seafood and Catalan classics — grilled razor clams with mojo verde, slow-roasted pork with membrillo, cuttlefish with ink and potatoes. Above it, El Asador is the room that demands to be planned for: a wood-fired oven space dedicated almost entirely to the ritual of the whole Segovian suckling pig. You order in advance. You arrive prepared to commit. The pig, roasted over oak at low temperature for hours until the skin crackles like lacquer and the flesh almost dissolves, is one of the best things you will eat in the city.
Barragán Mohacho's cooking is disciplined in a way that many of her contemporaries are not. She does not reach for unnecessary technique. She understands that the best Spanish food is about product and patience, and that a great piece of Jamon Ibérico de Bellota needs nothing beyond a white plate. The wine list — organised by region, anchored in small producers — is an education in itself, and the staff know it well enough to guide you through it without condescension.
For a restaurant in Mayfair, Sabor maintains an unusual vitality. The counter seats are the ones to chase: high energy, full view of the kitchen, and the particular pleasure of watching Spanish cooking executed at pace by a team that has absorbed Barragán Mohacho's standards entirely.