Barnaby's Padstow — Restaurant in England

Having read all the extremely positive reviews here I had high expectations and decided to bring my family to Barnaby’s while they were visiting me on a little Easter break.

What a disappointment.

First of all, I tried to call several times beforehand but had no luck. I left a voice message but no one ever called back. Already a bad sign. I should have known better.

However, I wanted to give it a go out of curiosity and once we made it there I should say that staff were nice and the place looked well presented too. We felt really intrigued.

Sadly though, apart from these, the food was a total joke: ‘tapas’ dishes shamelessly stripped of their original southern European concept to be reinvented in a ridiculously overpriced form.

We ordered a £45 portion of lamb which had literally 4, and I do mean 4, small chunks of a not so tender or particularly tasty meat, on a bed of aubergine béchamel. The dish was basically the sauce and the meat on top was so tiny we felt the chefs were clearly taking the piss.

We also ordered potatoes as a side, which was suggested to be served with the lamb after a series of ok-ish, nothing amazing but really, really tiny servings (again, we are not talking true tapas here, more like being stingy and getting away with the tapas idea) in the smallest tray ever, filled with their left overs: the remnants of potatoes that withstood a long day of Easter meals!

We were shocked and I felt so bad for coming up with the idea of taking my family there.

Honestly, there is no excuse to treat customers this way.

While I understand things may run out - we went for dinner and the place was about to close down in an hour or so, we would have appreciated an apology.

What we got were oily, overcooked and burned bits of potatoes, nearly inedible but we were so hungry after the meagre portions we received until then that we managed to eat those too.

This was our last order - and straw.

Watch out for the starters too: the bread and butter serving costed £5 and was made of super slim 4 half slices of sourdough bread (1 per person) with a dollop of butter.

The labneh we ordered came with nothing to go with and we ended up eating it by the spoon (not the Middle Eastern way for sure) while the ‘boquerones’ were literally 2 anchovies split in half. How depressing.

I could go on and on but will stop here.

Needless to say, if you are in the area and wish to check out this place in the middle of the Cornish countryside by any means please do.

If you want to eat some nice food made with local produce in a genuine atmosphere and with an acceptable balance between value and expenditure then do yourself a favour and head...

Just stupendous. The dream team behind Prawn on the Lawn have done it again with Barnaby’s at the Vineyard. Such a relaxed, friendly vibe and yet the front of house team are fully ‘on it’ - you get that feeling you’re in safe hands so you can just chill.

The new pop up venue is a beauty with airy indoor seating and views out over the vineyard’s wildflower garden. I could happily sit there all day and very nearly did.

The food was on point. A really nice balance of inspiring and imaginative fish, veg and meat small plates with larger fish and meat sharing plates. On the day of our visit there was monkfish, Padstow lobster, cull yaw lamb and an insane pork chop. OMG that pork chop ❤️

Other high points were the scallops (of course) and a charred leek dish which tasted so much better than any leek has a right to taste.

Cap it off with an interesting and reasonably priced wine list and I think it’s fair to say that team Barnaby’s...

Came here bank holiday August to celebrate my mother in laws birthday. We had a lovely meal 4 weeks earlier in their sister restaurant - prawn on the lawn.

Let’s start with the food. The Bread was very nice but didn’t come with anywhere enough olive oil. The mackerel was fantastic. The deep fried oysters are a must. The deep fried courgette flower in honey was amazing. The Ganard fish was just sublime and the T bone steak perfectly cooked. Beetroot dip was interesting but I wouldn’t order again. Sides in general were lovely.

Let’s talk about the service. One of the waitresses was charming and friendly. However our experience was marred by another waitress who I honestly don’t understand why is working here. She was rude and made several unnecessary snide remarks. She made us feel very uncomfortable about having our children there even though they were very well behaved. As a result, sadly don’t think we will be coming...