There were an incredible number of suits who sat through Friday lunch service with me, to which I presume most (if not all) of these folks occupy cubicles in the offices nearby. If this was the share of the market which Jamie Oliver and Adam Perry Lang were hoping to capture, then by the looks of things, they’ve succeeded. But boy are the reviews terrible. As this restaurant approaches its one year anniversary, I wonder if the two chefs have sat together to reflect on the feedback.
With Saint Oliver’s name plastered across the project, it was always going to attract attention, but it just seems so uncharacteristic of Oliver, it’s in total opposite to his everyman image. Barbecoa has such a premium level feel to it, that it would probably unsettle Jamie himself, if ever he was caught dining here. Now wouldn’t that be a sight for Jamierites out there. I rocked up in jeans and trainers, and I felt a little underdressed. The tricked out designer furniture store look wrapped in red velvet, rivets, shiny brass and double high ceilings is ace, the views overlooking St Paul’s is nice, but it is also intimidating. Since I arrived sans booking, I was shown a high table by the bar, solo diner, even though I spotted a few unoccupied tables in the dining room. After the bartender sat me down with the oversized menu and brought me a pint, I was roundly ignored for a good ten minutes or so. Thank goodness for the beer, I looked around anxiously, enlarging my eyes to track each waiter who passed by my line of sight, but to no avail. It took repeated bouts of flailing arms and an elevating squeak to eventually catch somebody’s attention.
Bread, £4.
It’s not all bad of course, this is a meat joint dripping in testosterone, comes with a background track booming with appropriate primal energy and bread does not come in baskets, but rather, stacked and impaled with a stick, on a wooden board. You’ll appreciate the money they’ve invested in this machismo, the celebration of material success but for the same reasons, the restaurant feels awkward and artificial. So this is what the height of consumerism looks like and in some ways it’s grotesque. A robotic, soulless, money spinning mass manufacture machine.
I understand the sentiment to have the ability to spend my money derived from hard slogging at the office in restaurants such as this, and dressing appropriately certainly imbue wearers with a mysterious power which I think influences the service waiters lay on. It’s an age old stereotype which surrounds the snobbery of eating out, and even though dining out is becoming more egalitarian these days (they even allow you to photograph food now, remember the days when cameras on a dinner table were taboo?) , I believe one still experiences better service if one treats dinner as a dress-up affair. I’ve tested this theory on a few occasions (this one included) , rocking up to Gauthier with shorts, a white tee and trainers once. While the staff were tolerant, I did receive some unfortunate glances from better dressed neighbours. Oh come on, you love it too, you like to dress up for restaurants, but my point is I believe that restaurants should never lose that pomposity, dining out is equally for nourishment and also for celebration, it’s all part of the show, and not every restaurant need be an easy going bistro or a starkly zen eatery.
Pit-smoked baby back ribs, coriander, chilli, £9.
And a whole lotta chilli, I felt it sizzle at the back of my throat, wash that down with cold beer, ahh. Yeah the ribs were fine, sticky, sweet and smoky, I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy ribs from my local Chinese takeaway from Willesden Lane. Make of what you want from that assessment and be mindful that this plate of bones was £9 plus 12.5%.
Top marks for visual flair, a decent chunk of meat with a long trailing strip of skin and fat. It smells great, fire and smoke and griddle lines. But sadly, it was a little overdone for me, the centre was dry. Skin and fat was blubbery where I expected a crispy crackle. It was like eating a fillet mignon wrapped with uncooked bacon. What a shame, the quality of produce was clear, this came from a well-fed pig. But I couldn’t forgive the sorry duck fat chips. So soggy and unappealing that I reverted to the impaled bread instead. The best thing on this dish were the burnt peaches.
I paid a whopping £44.44 for two plates of a bit of meat, chips, bread and a beer. What a sobering figure.
This isn’t a unique vision of an innovative smokehouse pioneering the art of the American barbecue. It doesn’t even carry the charm of Bodeans, the restaurant is an anonymous upmarket steakhouse at best and food is much too generic for it to command these hefty prices. I cannot see myself returning to One New Change for a romantic evening to unwind. It’s not a place I want to escape to, it’s a place I want to get away from when it comes time to clock out. To me, I feel that is Barbecoa’s major stinking point – it’s great if you work in the area and you have an expense account to spare, and you could even be a regular, but it certainly won’t give you the meat sweats. For that, far superior steakhouses already exist in town – Goodman/Hawksmoor- and failing that, there’s always Bodeans.
The Deets.
Barbecoa
American, Meat, Smoked. £65pp.
20 New Change Passage EC4M 9AG
Tel: (020) 3005 8555
Tube : St Paul’s
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I don’t even know where to begin. Your writing makes no sense at all, a sentence starts in one place and ends somewhere completely different. It reads like the musings of an illiterate, pompous 15 year old writing their diary.
Also someone photographing their food in a restaurant isn’t about snobbery, it’s about manners. A quick shot with a phone or a small camera is one thing, but rearranging a plate to get a shot with a massive SLR, with a shutter that click and a flash is just rude. I would dread to be on a table next to you at dinner, let alone on your table.
I’m still confused about why you went to Gauthier in shorts too? Were you doing it to provoke a reaction? It seems a bit like going to a wedding in a tracksuit.
Mark – gosh, sorry about that mate, was it really that bad? I was trying to articulate the occasion of eating out and dressing appropriately for it, but I guess I didn’t do that. As you rightly put it, it is about manners. With regards to cameras, I completely agree with you – it would be painful sitting near me for dinner, but I try not to be rude. I don’t use an SLR and my camera doesn’t have a flash. It is a fairly small rangefinder …and yes, I was trying to provoke a reaction with the shorts in Gauthier.
“the musings of an illiterate, pompous 15 year old writing their diary.” – hah, yeah thanks, love that. I’ll do better with the future posts, thank you for the feedback.
Mark, you’re full of shit. There’s nothing wrong with the writing in this blog, and it engaged me all the way to the end of the article. That’s more than I can say for most restaurant reviews. The pictures are very good and make your site a lot more visually appealing than most of the crap out there.
Going to the Gauthier in shorts- probably a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean you have to wear a tuxedo every time you go out to do a review (I work as a reviewer and I just wear what I’d normally wear for a restaurant). Frankly, I am baffled by why the above person was baffled by this article.
I know exactly what you mean in terms of places that are nearby which are handy for people on an expense account.
I live in Australia and work for a bank in the CBD and there are loads of places that will sell you an average panini for 15-16 dollars just for the environment as opposed to the smaller cafes selling the same thing for 8-9 dollars.
I suppose there could be something said for the fact that you are dining in a nice environment but the day of the long lunch have long since passed. Now people will just get a bit to eat and run, in those respects i don’t think its worth paying 17 pounds for a meager piece of pork that you have to eat in 40 minutes.
Oh dear….blog wars.
Personally i come to Kangs site every couple of days just to look at the photos Mark, it gives me great pleasure to admire the quality work that he does….it makes me happy …as sad as it sounds.As a result of reading Kangs posts and using his photos as something to aim for myself i have ended up developing my own blog, taking lots of photos in restaurants and getting one hell of a lot of pleasure out of it.Small camera , no flash…point n shoot.I spend many many happy hours at home writing about my experiences , looking at my photos and sharing it all with other people who enjoy similar passions.
Each to their own mate , we are very happy doing what we do and at the end of the day , we could be doing things a lot worse.
Cheers All
Alan ( cumbriafoodie )
How do you get the food so foregrounded? I’ve got a decent camera but can’t work out how to get the blurred background effect you’ve got. Share your wisdom!
Hi,
An interesting read! I was going to pop in for lunch nxt week – do you think the starter plate portion sizes would be big enough for lunch? maybe with a side of chips?
There were an incredible number of suits who sat through Friday lunch service with me, to which I presume most (if not all) of these folks occupy cubicles in the offices nearby. If this was the share of the market which Jamie Oliver and Adam Perry Lang were hoping to capture, then by the looks of things, they’ve succeeded. But boy are the reviews terrible. As this restaurant approaches its one year anniversary, I wonder if the two chefs have sat together to reflect on the feedback.
With Saint Oliver’s name plastered across the project, it was always going to attract attention, but it just seems so uncharacteristic of Oliver, it’s in total opposite to his everyman image. Barbecoa has such a premium level feel to it, that it would probably unsettle Jamie himself, if ever he was caught dining here. Now wouldn’t that be a sight for Jamierites out there. I rocked up in jeans and trainers, and I felt a little underdressed. The tricked out designer furniture store look wrapped in red velvet, rivets, shiny brass and double high ceilings is ace, the views overlooking St Paul’s is nice, but it is also intimidating. Since I arrived sans booking, I was shown a high table by the bar, solo diner, even though I spotted a few unoccupied tables in the dining room. After the bartender sat me down with the oversized menu and brought me a pint, I was roundly ignored for a good ten minutes or so. Thank goodness for the beer, I looked around anxiously, enlarging my eyes to track each waiter who passed by my line of sight, but to no avail. It took repeated bouts of flailing arms and an elevating squeak to eventually catch somebody’s attention.
Bread, £4.
It’s not all bad of course, this is a meat joint dripping in testosterone, comes with a background track booming with appropriate primal energy and bread does not come in baskets, but rather, stacked and impaled with a stick, on a wooden board. You’ll appreciate the money they’ve invested in this machismo, the celebration of material success but for the same reasons, the restaurant feels awkward and artificial. So this is what the height of consumerism looks like and in some ways it’s grotesque. A robotic, soulless, money spinning mass manufacture machine.
I understand the sentiment to have the ability to spend my money derived from hard slogging at the office in restaurants such as this, and dressing appropriately certainly imbue wearers with a mysterious power which I think influences the service waiters lay on. It’s an age old stereotype which surrounds the snobbery of eating out, and even though dining out is becoming more egalitarian these days (they even allow you to photograph food now, remember the days when cameras on a dinner table were taboo?) , I believe one still experiences better service if one treats dinner as a dress-up affair. I’ve tested this theory on a few occasions (this one included) , rocking up to Gauthier with shorts, a white tee and trainers once. While the staff were tolerant, I did receive some unfortunate glances from better dressed neighbours. Oh come on, you love it too, you like to dress up for restaurants, but my point is I believe that restaurants should never lose that pomposity, dining out is equally for nourishment and also for celebration, it’s all part of the show, and not every restaurant need be an easy going bistro or a starkly zen eatery.
Pit-smoked baby back ribs, coriander, chilli, £9.
And a whole lotta chilli, I felt it sizzle at the back of my throat, wash that down with cold beer, ahh. Yeah the ribs were fine, sticky, sweet and smoky, I enjoyed it as much as I enjoy ribs from my local Chinese takeaway from Willesden Lane. Make of what you want from that assessment and be mindful that this plate of bones was £9 plus 12.5%.
Porkchop, bourbon peaches, braised greens, £17. Duck fat chips, £4.
Top marks for visual flair, a decent chunk of meat with a long trailing strip of skin and fat. It smells great, fire and smoke and griddle lines. But sadly, it was a little overdone for me, the centre was dry. Skin and fat was blubbery where I expected a crispy crackle. It was like eating a fillet mignon wrapped with uncooked bacon. What a shame, the quality of produce was clear, this came from a well-fed pig. But I couldn’t forgive the sorry duck fat chips. So soggy and unappealing that I reverted to the impaled bread instead. The best thing on this dish were the burnt peaches.
I paid a whopping £44.44 for two plates of a bit of meat, chips, bread and a beer. What a sobering figure.
This isn’t a unique vision of an innovative smokehouse pioneering the art of the American barbecue. It doesn’t even carry the charm of Bodeans, the restaurant is an anonymous upmarket steakhouse at best and food is much too generic for it to command these hefty prices. I cannot see myself returning to One New Change for a romantic evening to unwind. It’s not a place I want to escape to, it’s a place I want to get away from when it comes time to clock out. To me, I feel that is Barbecoa’s major stinking point – it’s great if you work in the area and you have an expense account to spare, and you could even be a regular, but it certainly won’t give you the meat sweats. For that, far superior steakhouses already exist in town – Goodman/Hawksmoor- and failing that, there’s always Bodeans.
The Deets.
Barbecoa
American, Meat, Smoked. £65pp.
20 New Change Passage EC4M 9AG
Tel: (020) 3005 8555
Tube : St Paul’s
Did you enjoy reading this? You can subscribe to the Newsletter. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the RSS feed.
Comments (7)
I don’t even know where to begin. Your writing makes no sense at all, a sentence starts in one place and ends somewhere completely different. It reads like the musings of an illiterate, pompous 15 year old writing their diary.
Also someone photographing their food in a restaurant isn’t about snobbery, it’s about manners. A quick shot with a phone or a small camera is one thing, but rearranging a plate to get a shot with a massive SLR, with a shutter that click and a flash is just rude. I would dread to be on a table next to you at dinner, let alone on your table.
I’m still confused about why you went to Gauthier in shorts too? Were you doing it to provoke a reaction? It seems a bit like going to a wedding in a tracksuit.
This who article just baffles me.
Mark – gosh, sorry about that mate, was it really that bad? I was trying to articulate the occasion of eating out and dressing appropriately for it, but I guess I didn’t do that. As you rightly put it, it is about manners. With regards to cameras, I completely agree with you – it would be painful sitting near me for dinner, but I try not to be rude. I don’t use an SLR and my camera doesn’t have a flash. It is a fairly small rangefinder …and yes, I was trying to provoke a reaction with the shorts in Gauthier.
“the musings of an illiterate, pompous 15 year old writing their diary.” – hah, yeah thanks, love that. I’ll do better with the future posts, thank you for the feedback.
Mark, you’re full of shit. There’s nothing wrong with the writing in this blog, and it engaged me all the way to the end of the article. That’s more than I can say for most restaurant reviews. The pictures are very good and make your site a lot more visually appealing than most of the crap out there.
Going to the Gauthier in shorts- probably a bad idea, but that doesn’t mean you have to wear a tuxedo every time you go out to do a review (I work as a reviewer and I just wear what I’d normally wear for a restaurant). Frankly, I am baffled by why the above person was baffled by this article.
I know exactly what you mean in terms of places that are nearby which are handy for people on an expense account.
I live in Australia and work for a bank in the CBD and there are loads of places that will sell you an average panini for 15-16 dollars just for the environment as opposed to the smaller cafes selling the same thing for 8-9 dollars.
I suppose there could be something said for the fact that you are dining in a nice environment but the day of the long lunch have long since passed. Now people will just get a bit to eat and run, in those respects i don’t think its worth paying 17 pounds for a meager piece of pork that you have to eat in 40 minutes.
Oh dear….blog wars.
Personally i come to Kangs site every couple of days just to look at the photos Mark, it gives me great pleasure to admire the quality work that he does….it makes me happy …as sad as it sounds.As a result of reading Kangs posts and using his photos as something to aim for myself i have ended up developing my own blog, taking lots of photos in restaurants and getting one hell of a lot of pleasure out of it.Small camera , no flash…point n shoot.I spend many many happy hours at home writing about my experiences , looking at my photos and sharing it all with other people who enjoy similar passions.
Each to their own mate , we are very happy doing what we do and at the end of the day , we could be doing things a lot worse.
Cheers All
Alan ( cumbriafoodie )
Hey. I love your photos!
How do you get the food so foregrounded? I’ve got a decent camera but can’t work out how to get the blurred background effect you’ve got. Share your wisdom!
thanks.
Hi,
An interesting read! I was going to pop in for lunch nxt week – do you think the starter plate portion sizes would be big enough for lunch? maybe with a side of chips?