Nieves Barragán Mohacho has been confirmed on the World's 50 Best Restaurants' Best Female Chef shortlist for 2026, the organisation announced this week. The chef-patron of Sabor in Mayfair is among six chefs shortlisted for the award, which will be presented at the World's 50 Best ceremony in June.
Barragán Mohacho opened Sabor with front-of-house partner José Etura in 2018, bringing the food of northern Spain — the Basque country, Asturias and Galicia in particular — to a London audience through a counter-led format that positioned the kitchen as the focal point of the restaurant's architecture and energy. The restaurant was awarded a Michelin star in the same year it opened, making Barragán Mohacho one of a small number of chefs whose debut solo venture achieved the recognition in its opening year.
"To be recognised at this level is something I never expected when we opened Sabor," she said in a statement. "We just wanted to cook the food we believed in and make people feel the way we feel when we eat at home in Spain."
Sabor's Identity
Sabor occupies a site on Heddon Street in Mayfair and operates across two floors with distinct identities — a ground-floor counter for tapas, pintxos and the rotisserie-roasted meats that have become among the restaurant's most celebrated dishes, and an upstairs dining room for a more formal experience centred on the wood-fired asador cooking of the Spanish interior.
The restaurant has been consistently ranked among London's best since opening and has attracted both the food cognoscenti drawn to the technical precision of Barragán Mohacho's cooking and a broader dining public who respond to the warmth and directness of what is, at its core, a deeply personal expression of Spanish culinary culture.
The Female Chef Recognition Debate
The World's 50 Best Female Chef award has attracted sustained debate since its inception, with critics arguing that a separate gender category implicitly suggests that women compete in a different division from their male peers. Barragán Mohacho herself has been measured in her public response to the debate, acknowledging the award's value in visibility while being consistent that she cooks without reference to her gender.
"I want to be recognised as a chef," she told one interviewer previously. "Not as a female chef. But if this recognition makes it easier for the next generation of women in kitchens, then I understand its purpose."
The full World's 50 Best list will be announced at a ceremony in June. Sabor holds one Michelin star and appears consistently in the upper reaches of London and UK restaurant lists.