Barrica, Goodge Street

 
Barrica
62 Goodge Street
W1T 4NE

Date of Last Visit: Friday December 11th, 2009

The Victims: Al, Louise, Darsh, Abha

The Damage: About £40 each

The Background: Let me skip right to the punch. My food at Barrica was good. But my experience with their service was pretty terrible. It was some of the worst service I've ever experienced in London.

But before I tell you what happened with the service, I should briefly cover the food. It was fine. It was Spanish. I like ham. But the croquetas were anemic looking. Tiny. Miserable. And the patatas bravas were just so…gunky.

And now back to the service. It started out fine. We liked the guy that waited on us and took our order. But then he swapped out and left us with a young Spanish girl, who while very sweet, didn't understand a word we said. Dishes arrived that we didn't order. Other dishes arrived in multiples.

And then we made the mistake of ordering a 2nd bottle of wine. 20+ minutes later and it still hadn't arrived. But our food had. After waiting a bit for the wine, we decided to just eat while we tried to flag down a server. No joy.

Let me clarify that Barrica is NOT a big place.

I then embarrassed everyone at the table by going up to the bar to get our bottle of wine and open it myself. The staff balked and promised it would be right over. Time went by. Still no wine. At this point, the food was gone and we don't want the wine anymore. (We're at the 40 minute mark now.) So I flagged down a server again and canceled the wine order and we all ordered some sweet wines. My face must have said it all because the dessert wines arrived immediately. Our original server explained that the girl waiting on us was brand new–only four days on–and while I am sympathetic to that, it does NOT take 40 minutes to pick up a bottle of wine, open it, and walk it 10 steps to our table. I'm sorry. That's just not acceptable.

They waived the dessert wines. Kind of them.

The Verdict: Probably won't be going here again.