Los Primos: The Barrafina Team Bets on the £2.50 Caña in Borough Yards

The group that gave London its best Spanish tapas rooms is opening a bar that costs less than a sandwich to drink at. Los Primos lands this November on Dirty Lane in Borough Yards, and the headline detail is the one that matters: a caña of Estrella Galicia will set you back £2.50, a doble £5. In a city where the price of a pint has become a national grievance, that is a statement of intent.

Harts Group announced Los Primos on September 28, the same day its own Parrillan closed on the same site. The flip tells you everything about the year London is having: the restaurant that served wood-fired Basque cooking for a handful of well-heeled regulars is out, and a drop-in Spanish cervecería built for all comers is in. The serious money is moving toward accessibility, not exclusivity. This is not a retreat. It is a read of the room.

The model is Spain’s cervecería, the neighborhood bar where nobody plans a meal and everybody ends up having one. Walk-in only, all day. Churros and coffee from 11am, because any civilization worth living in serves fried dough dipped in chocolate before noon. Bocadillos and tapas roll through the day, and the drinks keep coming into the night: beer, wine, and vermouth, the holy trinity of the Spanish bar.

The menu comes from the group’s heaviest hitters, Barrafina’s Global Culinary Director Patricia Roig and Group Executive Chef Antonio González Milla. That is worth noting because it means the cheap pint is backed by people who know what they are doing. A £2.50 caña is only exciting if what arrives with it is worth drinking. With these two building the food, the bocadillos will be the kind of thing you think about the next morning.

The name means “the cousins,” for the four cousins who run the group: a family operation, a neighborhood room, the opposite of the corporate dining machine. Los Primos is the same instinct pointed at the other end of the market, not downmarket, just open. Open hours, open door, open to whoever wanders off the street.

Borough Yards is the right home for it. The arches under the railway have become a proper food corridor, a short walk from Borough Market, with the foot traffic a cervecería needs to do what it is meant to do: fill up at lunch, hum through the afternoon, carry the evening on beer and vermouth. No bookings, no fuss, no door policy.

The Parrillan-to-Los-Primos flip is the story of 2026 London in miniature. The city’s best operators are reading the same ledger: diners still want the good stuff, but they want it without the ceremony, without the commitment, and without the bill that requires a debrief. A group with Barrafina’s credibility deciding the answer is a £2.50 caña and a room anyone can walk into is the most interesting opening of the season. The chefs know what they are doing, and the price says they know who they are doing it for.

How to get in

Los Primos opens this November on Dirty Lane, Borough Yards, London. Walk-in only, no reservations. Churros and coffee from 11am daily, bocadillos and tapas through the day, beer, wine, and vermouth into the night. A caña of Estrella Galicia costs £2.50, a doble £5.

Photos are illustrative, not of Los Primos (the venue is not open yet): Estrella Galicia caña (elcambiador.com), churros with chocolate (whatshot.in), jamón bocadillo (Alta Expresión Covap), tortilla española (worldfoodstory.co.uk), vermouth (Fuerte Hoteles). Hero: churros and beer on a Spanish bar (Wikimedia Commons).