Restaurant Review – The Barbary

The Barbary

4.3/5 overall, food 4.5/5, service 4.8/5, facilities 3.7/5

We went to the Barbary on a friend’s recommendation. 

The Barbary is a north African restaurant hidden in the Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden. We had to use Google Map to find Neal’s Yard and upon arriving there, the restaurant was subtly located near the front of the alleyway.

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The restaurant is quite small; you can see the whole restaurant as soon as you walk through the door. There is a tiny kitchen area in the middle which is surrounded by a circular counter; the Barbary is a counter dining restaurant. 

We have been here twice, but we basically had similar dishes on both occasions. For starts, we usually go with ‘naan e Barbari’ and ‘Zhug, Harissa, Burnt & Pickled Chilli’ which is basically chilli and naan bread. The naan bread is very thin and oily and the chillis are grounded red chilli, grounded green chilli mixed with coriander, pickled whole jalapenos, burnt whole green chilli and beetroot. The grounded chillis are very delicious; they are refreshing and addictive. 

For the mains, we tried the ‘Spicy Squash Chicken’, ‘Steak Chick Chack’, ‘Scallop Hamoosta’, ‘Mashawsha Octopus’ and ‘Pata Negra Neck’. The chicken and the octopus dishes are just average, so average that we don’t have any more memories than the dishes being very average. The scallops came with a unique sauce, which was a little sour and it seemed like yoghurt mixed with spice to give a pastel yellow colour. The steak was very oily, and it was covered with pepper and black spices. It was literally drenched in oil and overloaded with pepper, to a point where we had to scrape off the spices off the top. The waiter recommended that we eat the steak with the sauce from ‘Pata Negra Neck’. ‘Pata Negra Neck’ is pork neck covered in herbs and spices with a little bit of brown sauce. The pork neck is very soft, the spices are smoky, and the date sauce is a little sweet. 

In terms of the service, the waiters are very attentive to a point where they take away tissues as soon as they are used, and they constantly fill up our glasses of water.