Barbakan Delicatessen Ltd — Restaurant in Manchester

Thos was a great place but has become commercially viable as times have changed. It was a local deli with hand crafted, home made breads and confectionery, but has now become a ready to bake, of the Brake Bros menu. The breads are ready mix, not as health as used to be. A loaf needed slicing but now its so fluffy and light its impossible to work with. Like many businesses, Barbakan has changed to survive, the names of the breads still exist, but a Greek loaf?, Polish bread?, Rye bread? 6 Seed bread have all become enhanced breads. The traditional breads have followed the Dourdough recipe to Named breads but not the Quality. They have survived the economic changes but at a cost to the previous Quality. Service and Staff turnover is a great problem for many in the Quality service industry which is sad to see, but inevitable. I wish everyone a good future but the competition between Supermarket and Local has beaten. I want to thank the Original staff. Service was a joy with the Ladies who offerd kindness which now feels like an obligation to do a job, not a joy. Please enjoy the place as you can, tines have changed and I prefer tradition to the new version. Steffan and staff did great but change was inevitable. Thank you fir the past...

I'm very happy with the food. I don't even think one can grumble too much about the prices.

The staff, however, are among the most obnoxious I've ever encountered.

I'd already had one or two bristling encounters, but my doubts really started to mount in 2022 as a little Rumpelstiltskin fella behind the counter treated anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his reactionary and inaccurate takes on the teachers strike going on at the time. It was quite ironic to hear about lazy teachers not doing a day's work from a man whose tirade of self-opinionated bile was bringing service to a near grinding halt.

Since then, I've noticed a fairly recurring pattern of just rude and obnoxious service from many of the servers. Impatience when you're deciding what to get. Acting like it's your fault when asking what is in some of the unlabelled sandwiches, a seeming inability to ask politely to scan any drinks you've picked up - just hand stretched out and look of contempt, lots of assumptions that you are a mind reader and a general snarky tone.

The wide eyed one who looks like she has been popping a load of Ritalin is particularly obnoxious and a lady with glasses and red hair also has quite a rude...

I think the food is REALLY overpriced and for some reason the prices have recently increased, when it was already very expensive for what you get.

I went in once and asked to get couscous but was told by staff that the product seemed to be not as good quality as it usually is, so they didn’t sell it to me. I respect that approach, however I asked if they’d sell it at a discount then since I didn’t mind, but they told me they couldn’t and so it would get thrown away. I think that’s a huge waste of food.

I thought the staff were generally unenthusiastic and some of the staff members I’ve interacted with I thought were actually cold and rude. I definitely didn’t feel any temptation to spend a large amount of money on a small amount of food, given how unwelcome I felt because of the staff’s attitude.

I really hoped it would have a sense of a nice, friendly small business community, but it felt cold and quite corporate with little consideration for the customer, so I didn’t feel as generous as I would’ve felt had it been more welcoming and appealing.

As for the food’s taste, what I have tried so far has felt underwhelming. Definitely not worth the cost in my opinion. Hope...