Look at the menu at Cervecería Los Primos and you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled through some sort of Interstellar-style wormhole to a time when things weren’t nearly so expensive for restaurant operators and diners alike.
A little plate of crisps costs £2, a gilda is £2.50 and a portion of jamón croquetas is £7. Nothing on the food menu is more than £10. The drinks are just as inexpensive, with wine from £5 a glass and a small beer (caña) for just £2.50.
Being able to get change out of a tenner for a drink and a few snacks would be notable anywhere in the UK, but Cervecería Los Primos – which is set to launch later this month - occupies one of London’s most sought-after restaurant locations moments from Borough Market in the Borough Yards development.
The prices are all the more striking when you consider the business behind them. Cervecería Los Primos is the latest project from Harts Group and is located within the same site as Barrafina Borough Yards.
Barrafina has always felt relatively accessible, but it could hardly be described as cheap - its original Soho restaurant held a Michelin star for the best part of a decade, and its Covent Garden sibling was named the best restaurant in the UK in 2015.
The project represents a significant change of tack for one of London’s best-known independent restaurant groups, which currently comprises 11 premium restaurants including six Barrafinas, three-strong Mexican group El Pastor and Soho private members’ club and restaurant Quo Vadis.
Replacing Parrillan
Cervecería Los Primos takes over the space in Borough Yards where Parrillan opened in 2022. Harts Group co-founder Sam Hart and his cousin Anna Watkins, Barrafina’s managing director, are clear that there was nothing wrong with Parrillan itself. The original Parrillan continues to trade well in King’s Cross.
But having two premium Spanish restaurants next to each other made less sense as the area started to explode with similarly priced places to eat.
“There are 25 million people visiting the market each year,” says Hart. “What percentage of those, after going around the market and buying a few things, want to go and spend £70 on lunch? What percentage want to have a drink and a snack, sit down, put their feet up and spend £15 or £20?”
“We felt that, rather than competing against ourselves, there was this huge group of people being somewhat underserved by the wonderful influx of new but more premium offerings.”
Harts Group helped turn Borough Market and its immediate surroundings into a restaurant destination, taking a punt on it in 2016 when it opened its first El Pastor at a time when the area was not considered a prime location despite its famous food market. That’s difficult to imagine now, with the market and its surrounding streets now a hot spot for quality indies and small groups.
“We love Borough Market and have always done well here but these days competition is intense,” continues Hart.
“It differs from a lot of other key restaurants areas because there are a lot of disparate landlords. There’s no urban planning. Usually, you’d see restaurants balanced out by shops, other amenities and offices. That doesn’t hasn’t really happened here it’s pretty much all restaurants.”
A case in point is Café François, which launched right next to the Harts Group’s complex a few years ago in a large site that has previously been given over to retail. Just last month, Dishoom opened in the former The Hop Exchange building, which is just across the street from Cervecería Los Primos.
Keeping it in the family
The part of the Borough Yards development that houses Barrafina and the group’s soon-to-launch new project is also home to Bar Daskal, named after Hart and Watkin’s grandfather, the artist Vladimir Daskaloff. Cervecería Los Primos continues the family theme, with los primos meaning ‘the cousins’.
“Sam and I came up with the concept relatively quickly. We were both very clear about what bit of the market we wanted to go after,” says Watkins.
Cervecería Los Primos takes its cue from Spain’s neighbourhood cervecerías, often rough-and-ready affairs that are probably best understood by a British audience as a cross between a pub and a tapas bar. Hart and Watkins have both lived in Spain – both their mothers are from Mallorca - and know the source material well.
As the name suggests, beer is the main draw, typically ordered by the caña, a small glass of around 200ml. At Los Primos, it comes in a third-of-a-pint measure, or about 190ml.
“They are neighbourhood by definition,” says Hart. “You wouldn’t say, ‘I travelled 30 miles to go to a cervecería.’ They tend to be local neighbourhood bars that are accessible to everybody, of all ages and all budgets.”
Cervecerías often open early for coffee and breakfast (although opting for a beer first thing certainly isn’t uncommon, particularly for older generations) and trade through the day.
Food is always part of the mix and ranges from the very basic to the very good. While not unheard of, it’s rare to find a chef doing something gastronomically ambitious in a cervecería.
One of Hart and Watkins’ favourites is Cervecería El Palmar, a beachside bar on the Costa de la Luz near Watkins’ house. “There, because it’s Andalusian, there’s more of a lean towards fried seafood, fried fish,” says Watkins.
To put together the menu for Los Primos, Hart and Watkins held a cook-off with seven of Barrafina’s executive and senior chefs from different parts of Spain.
The resulting menu mixes cervecería staples such as ensaladilla rusa and fried squid with a few less obvious ‘more foodie’ dishes, including crispy pig’s ears and a bomba, a fried ball of mashed potato filled with chistorra sausage.
Los Primos will open at 11am, when footfall around Borough Market starts to pick up. While the same menu will be available all day long, the pair are hoping that churros with hot chocolate will be popular first thing. The concept will be strictly walk-ins only, with food ordered at the bar and either handed over there or brought to the table.
For the design, Hart and Watkins took their architects to Barcelona, where they sought out cervecerías with interiors from the 1950s to the 1970s.
“Within less than 24 hours, I think we visited 25 cervecerías,” says Watkins.
It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.
“We felt it could look a little bit theatre set,” says Watkins of the idea of recreating an old-world cervecería. “We wanted it to be authentic and seamless with the area. There’s more modernity in terms of the Borough Yards architecture.”
Making ends meet
So how does Los Primos plan to make the sums add up? Part of the answer lies in the ingredients. Los Primos will use some of the same suppliers as Barrafina but will be more flexible about what it buys
Take the jamón: Barrafina serves top-grade acorn-fed ham, while Los Primos will follow the lead of most cervecerías by buying a less expensive grade of jamón, likely from one of Barrafina’s regular suppliers.
“We’ll still be very mindful about sourcing ingredients,” says Watkins. “We don’t want to be seen as cheap and cheerful.”
A tight drinks list keeps service simple and gives Harts Group more scope to negotiate on price. Four beers, two reds, two whites, a rosé, cider, vermouth and sherry are all on tap, with a short selection of spirits alongside. “We love the idea that you just get the wine in a glass or by the carafe,” says Watkins. “No bottles.”
Then there’s the staffing model. Barrafina’s kitchen has five sections and cooks everything to order, so it needs a bigger brigade even when things are quiet. Los Primos has a simpler menu that two chefs can cook, with a third on for a busy service.
“From an economic point of view, the way it’s set up, probably the minimum staffing is going to be one person behind the bar and two in the kitchen to offer the full menu, because you order at the bar,” says Hart. “If there are 10 people in the afternoon, the two chefs will be doing the prep for the evening anyway, and one bartender can pour them a beer, serve the coffee, hand out the dish and clear the table.”
“Accessibility has been an absolute key driver to this concept from the beginning,” says Hart. “We’re going to work very hard to keep the prices where we want them to be.”
Labour pains
Staff costs are front of mind for the wider business. Rising employment costs recently caused Harts Group to scale back its workforce by around 20%, equating to 100 roles across the group.
“Sadly, as the cost of employment goes up, we have to do the same work with fewer people, otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” says Hart, who cites the hike in NICS in the 2024 Budget that has now come into effect as a key factor behind that decision.
“It’s taken me a while to get my head around it all,” he continues. “You do something for 23 years and it should be X. Then, over a four-year period, tax changes put a bloody great hole in that. Until regulatory change happens, we’re going to be where we are. It’s a great shame, I feel, for us and for the business, but also for the country and the economy as a whole.”
With higher employment costs squeezing its UK business, Harts Group has followed in the footsteps of a number of other restaurant groups by looking overseas for growth.
Early this year, it opened its first Barrafina outside the UK in partnership with Anthem Hospitality Group, bringing the Spanish restaurant’s signature counter dining to Dubai.
Just over a month later, Iran fired missiles at the UAE and other Gulf states in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes on Iran. The opening hasn’t been plain sailing, then, but Barrafina has been luckier than some: the restaurant has fewer than 60 covers and is in the Dubai International Financial Centre, which Watkins likens to Canary Wharf, drawing Emiratis and expats who live in the city and therefore not reliant on tourists.
“Amazingly, thanks to our super smart and commercial partners there in the UAE, we are now back to budget, which is phenomenal,” says Watkins.
The pair have not given up on the UK, though. Hart says he is looking at a couple of other sites in central London and is also actively looking for a location for El Pastor in Manchester following a site earmarked for the brand falling through at the last minute earlier this year.
And though it was developed specifically for Borough Yards, the pair are now starting to think that Cervecería Los Primos is something that could also scale.
“It was never conceived like that,” Hart says. “But then we thought ‘hang on a second, we could probably do a few more of these.’”