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Barbecoa: a long way from Pukka

10/1/2011

21 Comments

 
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We didn’t really enjoy our meal at Barbecoa that much but I doubt it will bother Jamie. By all accounts, the restaurant is so successful that just two months after opening they’ve already modified their plans to increase dining capacity. The original idea had been for a take away outlet on the lower floor but the restaurant has proved so popular this plan has now been scrapped in order to relocate the reception and cloakroom there instead and extend the upstairs dining room from 150 covers currently to 200 including increased banquette areas and a private dining area. Here the maths is simple, 200 covers turned (conservatively) three times a day at £50 a head: daily takings of £30,000.

The City has historically suffered a dearth of good restaurants because City folk keep business hours. Go back even a few years and many of the local pubs would close by 9pm as the suits migrated West, and as for weekends, it was a ghost town. The rise of Canary Wharf then bifurcated the deep wallet trade and suffered similar problems of its own. That left restaurants with the prospect of a five day week, a good lunch but only a modest dinner service (if lucky) and hardly enough income to pay their way. Good restaurants in the City can as a result be counted on one hand.

Jamie though has hit a sweet spot with his informal but still pricey BBQ proposition. The City workers give him one if not two lunch time covers (the banquettes have City written all over them), possibly an early evening cover also, then after about 7:30, as they migrate back to Notting Hill, the tourists take up the slack with the last bums leaving the last seats at a staggering 1am. For a restaurant in the City this is unprecedented but there again, so is Jamie Oliver. Before Christmas, his 30 Minute Meals book was selling 80,000 copies a week (a copy sold every 7 seconds) so making him the second best selling author in the UK after JK Rowling. The City venue then, once a graveyard for most prospective restaurants, seems a brilliantly smart move on the part of Oliver. Sadly, it’s not very good.

The interior is substantial with a mish mash of styles to accommodate all tastes: vanilla tables for small parties, red leather banquettes for small groups and metal cages for larger groups who like that kind of thing. And with a cooking style aiming to deliver ‘deep, rich earthy flavours’ through the use of ‘fire, smoke, wood and charcoal’ it sounds somewhere between curious and promising so where did it all go wrong?

First out though, we should say that the service was excellent with our principal waitress incredibly friendly and accommodating. The view too over St Paul’s was as good as any from a London restaurant (except perhaps Tower 42). But the food, well, that was just lacking.

Our starters were Baby Back Ribs (crunchy apple, coriander, shredded cabbage, jalapeno & citrus salad), and Crab Cake (blackened tomato and chilli salsa, citrus mayonnaise). We also ordered Pork Scratchings & Mole Sauce to snack on.

Let’s start with the positives. The ribs were really quite good and for me was the best thing of the day. They arrived with a good size portion with supple meat falling easily off the bone and a sticky glaze that gave at least a nod to their cooking mission statement. The apple in the salad too gave a nice cooling offset to the heat of the rib’s coating. Apart from the small serving plate that made things a little awkward, this was not bad.

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On the crab cake though, while we applaud the fact that they didn’t try to fill out the cake with cheap potato rather than crab, the chilli salsa dominated the flavours with the crab disappearing to nothing against such a powerful backdrop. The citrus mayonnaise meanwhile lacked any flavour whatsoever.

In respect of the pork scratchings, they were just bland. They offered crunch and crunch only. Perhaps crunch with a little grease but no flavours, hardly even salty. We returned them to one of the serving staff though they stayed on the bill.

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crab cake drowned out by chilli salsa
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pork scratchings were bland
For the main course we both chose the burger which was properly disappointing. Certainly it could have done with better seasoning but it seemed to lack any intrinsic flavour period. What’s more, it had utterly failed to pick up any of the flavours of the grill. Bland, occasionally slimy with a loose knit rather than firm texture. Then, just for good measure, it was also a little over cooked. On top of the burger was a plentiful supply of cheddar and sweet onions and it was these that provided what taste there was. The bun meanwhile was hard work and chewy. The chips were ok but massively over salted.

We also ordered a side of Curly Kale (rosemary, anchovy and garlic) and for Mrs CC, this was the highlight of the meal with the flavours of the ingredients coming through as flavours should.   
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Curly Kale a highlight
For dessert, I ordered the Banana Split (caramelised wafer, salted butter scotch, praline & vanilla ice cream). What’s not in the description is the substantial piece of walnut & banana bread on which it was served and which was simply unnecessary and weighed the dessert down massively. Discussing this with the waitress she said that most people leave the bread (as did I). Nobody in the kitchen is noticing that it seems which speaks volumes for what's going on here. 
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Co-owner Adam Perry Lang has Daisy May’s BBQ USA rib shack in New York and can surely turn out better barbeque than this. His website says of Barbecoa that it will ‘showcase live fire cooking methods from around the world’ yet on several runs past the kitchen there was little evidence of the live fire and from the taste of our meal, you’d never guess.

Jamie Oliver meanwhile is undoubtedly a brand and he’s running at full steam in developing it but is he reaching the point of merely cynical exploitation of the customer base? Our meal was late afternoon when the kitchen had all the time in the world to get things right yet they didn’t. We wondered what the quality would be like if they were cooking for a full house. And what happens when the restaurant has capacity increased by a further one third?

Nothing we say of course matters because Jamie has his fans who will flock there for years to come while for City workers it’s a welcome if costly break from the daily repetition of Pret A Manger sandwiches eaten at the desk. Accordingly, this restaurant will be a huge success but sadly it just isn’t much good and somewhere like The Hawksmoor does everything so much better.

On a final note, as we were leaving Barbecoa we saw a sign up on the vacant lot opposite saying ‘Gordon Ramsay, Spring 2011’. More over extension, more exploitation. Lord help us.


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Barbecoa on Urbanspoon
21 Comments
@dini152
10/1/2011 03:18:12 pm

I haven't visited yet, I like to leave it a while for restaurants to find their feet first. The only positive review I've seen to date has literally been a tweet 'thumbs up' from JAtherton to JOliver. I do hope that 'Saint' Jamie takes heed from what reviewers, bloggers and indeed customers write, say and leave on their plates to re-tweak and make this a great London 'dest-aurant'!

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fionasc
11/1/2011 01:10:13 am

Shame you didn't enjoy it, we actually ate dinner here last night and had a really good experience. Service was great. We had the bread (yum - especially the flat bread with Nigella seeds), shared the calamari (perfectly cooked) and I had the lamb skewers with polenta and my husband the rump steak (both good and steak cooked perfectly to order). Could tell that the skewers had been cooked over "live flame". Dessert was ice cream (vin santo ice cream I would highly recommend) and cheese cake - the bite I had was also yum! As always I think that the experience you have in a restaurant depends a lot on what you order. Overheard our waiter talking (flirting!) with the table next door saying that they had made changes to the menu from opening and were planning more in the future.

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Ute@hungryinlondon link
16/1/2011 02:21:51 am

no... not convinced... I don't really like the concept of a 'meat only' (or at least heavily meat-based, there are crab cakes..) restaurant anyway but if only meat than it has to be outstanding. Don't like the look of this burger at all.

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Francesca
18/7/2012 04:44:23 am

Cant believe you feel this way about this restaurant! You must be very harsh critics to be not impressed. Shame on you is all i can say.

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fooody
5/2/2013 09:08:34 am

this sounds to me like a (yet another) scathing attack on Jamie Oliver and his businesses and not an unbiased restaurant review.
your opinion is your own which you are entitled to, i think it is a little far fetched however, to be making assumptions and negative comments with regards to how one runs ones business.
It does'nt make you big or clever to personally attack someone who has done more for the restaurant industry in our country than anyone else making their food available to the greater population!

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fooody
5/2/2013 09:12:35 am

also, i believe if you had spent more time eating and trying, at least, to enjoy the food rather than looking for errors, you might have left the restaurant feeling better than you did.
do you, i wonder, take the same diligence down your local curry house or kebab shop? probably not, keep blogging, you obviously have too much time on your hands!

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tcc
5/2/2013 09:50:55 am

hello fooody,

you are of course welcome to your opinions. however, you should possibly read what we actually said.

You commented: i think it is a little far fetched however, to be making assumptions and negative comments with regards to how one runs ones business

We however in the article call the restaurant a: brilliantly smart move on the part of Oliver.

We think Jamie Oliver is incredibly smart, his flair for business is phenomenal: we just didn't enjoy our meal there particularly. And that's the story.

Oh, one more thing. You shouldn't need to 'try to enjoy the food', it should be good enough to enjoy without trying, especially when you are paying £16 for a beef burger.

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Fooody
5/2/2013 11:31:52 am

It seems that you are back pedalling to some extent, you are now saying that you didnt enjoy your meal there particularly, this sounds like you are saying it wasn't the best you've ever had, but in actual fact, you previously said that you enjoyed 2 of the 4 dishes you had, your comments about the dessert for example are positive then trivially negative, this kind of blogging/reporting suggest that you have an agenda other than the food out in front if you.

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tcc
5/2/2013 11:51:01 am

actually, we were unwaveringly negative about the dessert.

and enjoying the curly kale doesn't excuse a disappointing burger. when a blogger comments on the kale being good, they are searching for the positives. we were clearly trying to enjoy it.

Fooody
5/2/2013 11:39:40 am

Also, your estimated projections of this restaurants financial turnover has nothing to do with you deciding to let people know what you thought of the food, in fact, if you are going to blog about restaurants,

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tcc
5/2/2013 11:56:35 am

AA Gill's daughter Flora doesn't have much to do with restaurant reviews either but regularly finds her way into his column. The restaurant's turnover meanwhile will be of interest to a lot of chefs I'm sure. And it's our blog of course.

And what's your agenda here? This is all well beyond a blog comment. A Jamie Oliver employee perhaps?

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Fooody
5/2/2013 12:02:37 pm

Actually, I'm just sick of people like you who have only negative output making our world a more snobby and pretentious place to be!

Fooody
5/2/2013 11:56:07 am

It should be based on dining experience.
No Matter what you spend on food, if you are willing it to be a bad experience, it will be, simple, had you eaten it while still hot it may have been better!

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tcc
5/2/2013 11:58:49 am

you are simply trolling now.

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tcc
5/2/2013 12:09:22 pm

interestingly, nowhere does fooody indicate that he has actually eaten at Barbecoa. With troll like vitriol now pouring forth, "I'm just sick of people like you", we invite fooody to leave our blog, and no more comments will be accepted.

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Francesca
6/2/2013 03:46:35 am

Oh my goodness the amount of emails I have recieved because of my own oppinoun what I'm entitled to. Please grow up its a comment on where I belive the food is great I feel your far to harsh on them. I have had great nights there

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tcc
6/2/2013 03:59:45 am

We are pleased you have had good nights there. We never suggest our blog contains a universal truth, it's just a blog of our opinions. We have no problem with people having different opinions (while noting that trolls leaving abusive comments will not however be tolerated).

And who is sending you emails? No email address has ever been disclosed by this blog to third parties.

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