Friday 15 April 2011

Barbecoa (from Gastro Grrrl)

Despite not eating meat since I was 11 (a massive 18 years ago, disturbingly) I new I had a try and get a table at school-meal-guru Jamie Oliver's new colaboration Barbecoa. In conjunction with Adam Perry Lang (who appears to be a butcher-must google him for more info) the airy 6th floor meat-fest inhabits One New Change Place, almost my local as the no 17 bus stops virtually outside. Home to a good few shops, ONCP is smack bang next to St Paul's Cathedral in the City, so a great location in terms of new restaurant openings (tourists abound at all hours and hungry city hoards Mon-Fri). What's especially interesting to me, is that Jamie was given one of 2 prestigious slots at the new-build along with Gordon Ramsey, who's gone further and further down that slippery duck-fat lined slope over the past few months and years. So much so, Gordo's latest bid on this side of the pond still doesn't have any shop fittings in it. It's sad to see, and time for the funders to pull the plug on Ramsey and find a new bidder willing to put the work in and deliver more exciting gastro-results for our capital. Ramsey meanwhile seems to only have eyes for the US, where they still seem to find him somewhat palatable...

And so to work. My meat-loving mother was down for the weekend so three of us were dining. When you enter the restaurant it's by no means obvious just how big this place is. You have to walk a substantial way around the building before you reach the main dining area, great for the cocktail drinkers to have a good oggle at your outfit. There are some decidedly odd (let's call them retro) looking seats (think pale pink ridges leather booths) which looked like a casual dining area, despite there only being one main menu. The main dining area is quite stark, with floor to ceiling windows facing onto St Paul's. It's so close you can almost touch it, sort of. Perhaps we booked the cheap seats, but we were placed in the middle of the room so had the many and numerous staff members milling about us all evening. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually kept and eye on what the table needed, but I had to ask to have my wine topped up and there was no sign of the actual bottle for me to do it myself.

We started with some prosecco cocktails, the most notable being the Fleur Royale with elderflower and black raspberry-good if you like them fruity. We ordered the bread board and the most unimaginably tasty ginormous green olives I've ever had. The bread was an interesting mix of door-stop, very heavy solid rye, garlic soaked and fantastic thin-but-soft seeded flatbread. The latter was amazing, the former more useful for home emergencies like plugging gaps in walls.
Sharing plates including oysters (pretty large and well-shucked) but I had to ask for tabasco which usually comes as standard. The OH chose crispy pig cheeks which my mum tried to steal from him to no avail, so they must have been good. I don't have an issue with people eating meat around me, especially not if it's been well-reared and humanely killed, but I was pleased that the cheek meat had been pulled from the bone and was served more as a patty than a piggy.

For mains there was only one fish option and apparently no veggie option at all. I didn't fancy a whole baked sea bream so I went for another starter, the crab salad, which was nice and not that small. After all that bread I'd have struggle to finish a large main anyway. The only trouble with the crab was that it did have shell in it, and when you're paying Jamie Oliver's prices you expect the sous chef to have shelled the crab better.
The OH went for rump steak with charred aubergine, shallots, tomato, chilli and sweet marjoram. He enjoyed the aubergine but was less forthcoming on the steak, which looked to have been cooked well and rare as he'd asked, but I felt slightly guilty as he'd wanted the burger and I encourages him to go for the steak. Oops. The same has happened before with fish and chips and I really should know better by now-so not Jamie's fault this time. Mother went for pork belly, no surprises as she always chooses this if it's on the menu. It was served with a bramley apple compote and she really enjoyed it, although she had to give half of it away to the OH who has the powers of finishing any meal presented to him no matter what.
I probably could have managed a dessert but we'd just bought some wonderful cakes from Greenwich Market (including the most notable-a salted caramel brownie, delish) so we skipped over the passion fruit and campari (retro??!) sorbet and headed home £140 poorer. I didn't think it was too bad considering, but there are a few finer points that they could improve on, especially since there were almost as many staff as diners who all seemed to just be hanging around. Jamie gets 7/10