B A R B I C A N L I F E
Eating out Barbicania
One of the partly self-generated perks of editing and running Barbican Lifemagazine is that we occasionally get asked to review new restaurants, or sometimes established ones which are perhaps trying to promote new themes, relaunches or focus on a particular aspect of what they are offering. And there are plenty of restaurants within easy reach of the Barbican which will be of interest to readers. Over the past quarter we seemed to receive more than the usual number of such invitations and
instead of one restaurant review feature we have two, the first of which covers the three new restaurants which have opened over the past three months in Western Europe’s tallest building – the Shard. In terms of acceptance, the Shard is a bit like the Barbican (or marmite!). Some love this new
feature on the London skyline and some hate it. There are few who are totally non-committal if asked for an opinion, but even if you dislike it, once inside and whisked by an incredibly smooth elevator to the restaurant levels on the 31st to 33rd floors you only get the view of everything but the Shard – and what a view this is. It certainly makes for a great destination for a special occasion meal, although I suppose those on the top floors of the Barbican’s tower blocks may feel a bit blasé about these elevated views as they have them all the time – but there aren’t that many of you and most of us lesser mortals live much nearer ground level so the Shard views do tend to be impressive – even if only less than half way up the building. However, we did get to cover some other new restaurant openings – at ground level – as well. These
were definitely less costly than the Shard’s restaurants, although even at a modest restaurant nowadays the price of a good wine can send the bill soaring. House wines now come in at around £20 a bottle at most places with any pretensions for serving half way decent food – and those which let you bring your own bottle will charge you perhaps £15 or more for corkage (which can actually be good value if you have expensive tastes in vino.). We also, as usual, have been looking at Barbican flat price movements in the Flatwatch section of
the issue and have come to the conclusion that there are quite a few property millionaires now living in our midst as prices here have skyrocketed – even more than the cost of a restaurant’s house wine. All things are relative though, and perhaps incomes have not risen to quite the same extent, so those among us who may now be millionaires may still not be able to afford to eat out regularly!. This makes one wonder if all these new restaurants can survive. Maybe they do need to offer something special, like the Shard’s views, to do so, or relaunch with a new theme. In this respect one wonders how the previously staid Searcys in the Barbican will fare as Gin Joint – perhaps a change too far - time will tell.
Lawrence Williams 5
Lawrence Williams Editor
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