Jamie Oliver Barbecoa

Ok this is not a food blog but all I've done lately is scarf down monstrous levels of food.  Smee was pretty eager to show me the goodness of Jamie Oliver's latest venture, Barbecoa after having a steak night there with the boys a few weeks ago.  I haven't eaten at any of Jamie's other restaurants which typically specialise in rustic Italian, so I was pretty excited.  As the name suggests, there's something barbeque-y about this restaurant and yep, they were chucking (mainly) meat on the barbie. 

We didn't have a reservation but when you walk in to a restaurant at 9pm, there's a pretty good chance of getting a table.  

We settled in with a glass of red. I had the Italian Vallone Salice Salentino while Smee opted for the Argentinian Altos Las Hormigas Malbec.  Despite my recent wine classes, I still didn't feel like an expert... but I liked the wine!  That's all that mattered.   

Let's eat until we explode was our choice tonight.  To start, we shared three entrees:

(L-R) Beef tartare with anchovy aioli and foccacia, scallop ceviche with yuzu lime, chilli, garlic, pomegrante, shoots and cresses and crispy calamari with smashed avocado, lemon and mustard greens.  All yummy, although Smee reckons that there should've been more calamari on the plate.

Our mains:

My fillet steak with bone marrow (mmmm blood cell goodness), smoked bearnaise, shallot and herb salad.  I did a pretty good job at cleaning out that marrow.  Smee had a serious case of food envy.  My steak was pretty damn awesome. 

Smee's sirloin.  Nice, but not as nice as my fillet!!  

I was full but I had to keep my explosion promise and ordered dessert.  Smee knew when to stop and he politely declined.

I'm not even sure what ice cream flavours were present.  I saw the woman next me to eating it and said 'I want one of those.'  Some berry based ice cream for sure.  The scoops were very generous and I struggled to finish it. 

All up dinner was about £140 including service charge.  (Or what I like to call a 'discretionary'-but-forcing-you-to-tip-and-make-you-feel-obligated-to-pay charge).  Verging on expensive but still considered moderately priced by London standards and more so for a celebrity restaurant.  It was well within the range of SOS, Gaucho Grill and other similar upmarket steak restaurants but c'mon, we did go overboard with having three entrees and eating an unnecessary dessert.  More impressively so, Barbecoa has it's own butchery located downstairs where meat is cut on-site.  In line with Jamie Oliver's attitude, I would say they would go to some effort to ensure the meat is well sourced.  Barbecoa is definitely not something I can eat everyday but if you like your beef, it's well worth checking out!