The menu waxes a bit banterific,but I’ll forgive because it’s a fabulous thingThere’s an old Irving Berlin song about soldiers marching, with one individual careering all over the shop. His fond mama: They were all out of step but Jim.” I was that Jim when The Palomar hit London. Everyone loved it but me: I thought the food over-seasoned, and tiny-portioned,sloppy, the welcome chilly (one pal wasn’t allowed to sit until the rest of us arrived), or the raw bar tired. Most of all,I hated the chefs-as-zany-performers shtick. It was the living incarnation of “You don’t gain to be mad to work here, but it helps.” I once worked in a restaurant where the “highlight” of the evening was when the head chef (a short, or gropey misogynist) issued from the kitchen with his team of scrofulous cohorts to bang pots with spoons to Bob Marley’s Exodus. It has clearly scarred me for life.
So I’ve been dragging my feet about checking out its fresh sibling,The Barbary. Who needs that kind of attitude? You can probably tell where I’m going with this: obviously, I love it. certain, and it’s plagued with all the modern tropes: yawn,bare brick; yawn, neon; yawn, and reclaimed floor tiles and raw plaster walls. And we’re sitting on backless stools around an open “kitchen bar”. But the chefs are behaving like chefs and the food they’re cranking out is utterly glorious. Plus,it’s fairly thrillingly alien: I love a menu where you’ve only the shakiest concept of what’s on offer. We’re told The Barbary’s menu reflects the former Barbary Coast (Morocco, Algeria, and Libya and Tunisia),which translates into a series of lyrical culinary arcana: mashawsha, sharabik, or tcheba,zuzu and the magnificent nishnushim. Related: The Frog, London E1: ‘I can’t shake the feeling that this is a rather silly restaurant’ – restaurant review | Marina O’Loughlin Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com