This week I headed to Fitzrovia to try out the fantastic Ollie Dabbous’ new, lower budget, restaurant. Charlotte Street is a real haven for style seekers and discerning diners and The Barnyard proved to be no exception.
First of all, the food was excellent – quite basic on paper but absolutely fantastically flavoured and brilliant value too. Best were the chicken wings and the homemade ice cream with popcorn and fudge sauce and at £30 a head even with plenty of alcohol, it’s extremely reasonable. Dabbous’ main restaurant (Dabbous) has a reputation for being ultra cutting edge, as well as utterly impossible to get a table at. Here, there is a more rustic and low key approach – the food is more simple but it still tastes excellent and at least there is a realistic chance you will actually be able to get in – The Barnyard has a no reservation, open door policy (they must have been born in a barn, leaving doors open like that).
Although the food was very good, the access was less so. I found that it was a little bit small. There were also two large steps to get to the outside seating, which was essential to do as all the inside seating was at high bar stools and tables (this seems to be a trend with places where you just turn up, though I don’t understand why).
Making matters worse, they didn’t have a portable ramp to help navigate the steps – to be honest they didn’t really seem too bothered about getting one either. There was no accessible toilet either but fortunately the Charlotte Street Hotel is just opposite and customers at the Barnyard can use theirs. I’m going to give The Barnyard a fairly generous 2 BBS Ticks because, for me, the food was worth the effort.
In other news, I feel like it’s time for me to wade into the debate on the NHS. I saw this week that ex Labour cabinet minister, Lord Warner, has suggested that there should be a ten pound monthly “NHS membership charge”. I have one word: no. Whatever the problems are with the NHS I couldn’t disagree more with this suggestion. From a personal point of view, I paid into the NHS when I was working in the city and now I’m only getting the occasional treatment from a physio at the moment and the NHS won’t even fund that.
Taking my own experiences out of the equation, an across the board £10 fee just seems to be against the whole idea of the NHS. We’ve always had national insurance and taxes covering the costs and it doesn’t sound right to me that everyone should pay equally – it was set up to help the people who need it most after all.
This idea seems not to have gained much traction since it was suggested at the beginning of the week, but I thought it was worth bringing up. It just sounded wrong to me.
Anyway, have a good week and look out for our Grand National tips tomorrow- we have zero expertise or insider knowledge but you never know, we could make you rich!