Barraca By Claudio Costea - Sparta

It is a wonderful looking restaurant with lots of space. Although there are many seats, they seem to have a lot of space for themselves. the staff are friendly and welcome them all warmly welcome them as they happen. as soon as they have experienced all this, the foods come to the pièce de résistance! it is all cooked to perfection with aromen to wake them and it also looks that I am very soon again!

First time and will definitely be back. Friendly service, well presented, exceptional food in a modern environment.

Very good food and good atmosphere. When I was there, the owner was also present and was serving customers, which is a fairly rare thing to see. He made sure everything was good and the food and drink suggestions he had were spot on. All in all, would definitely recommend.

Came here as a group of six after hearing lots of good reviews about the food. They did not disappoint! I had the pork belly bao bun (as pictured), which was tender and full of flavour. My partner had the smoked mackerel pate which was really delicious! Very fishy but not overpowering. For my main course I had a dirty beef burger with sweet potato fries (pictured) which, again, was very tasty. Unfortunately what ruined the meal was the quality of the service. Throughout most of the meal the service was very average, with nobody checking part way through to see if we needed anymore drinks or if the food was okay. After our main dishes were cleared we waited half an hour for a dessert menu, which only came after we ended up asking for it. We then waited another 20 minutes for no one to take our dessert order. In the end we asked for the bill as we decided to get dessert elsewhere. Again, another 20 minutes or so after receiving the bill and we had to actively ask someone for the card machine. Service charge was automatically added so we asked for it to be removed. When the manager asked us what the problem was we explained that the service had been very lacking. His response was I noticed you had been sitting there but some of our staff are in training so I wanted to see what they would do This was not an acceptable excuse, as the customer should be top priority and the new staff could have been given a prompt from said manager. We remained polite and paid for our meal. This was a real shame as the food was delicious and the presentation impressive, however the quality of the service really let them down.

The whole experience was below average. I feel the drinks are significantly overpriced, the service was so incredibly slow. When we sat, there were three other tables seated. It took a good 20 minutes for two drinks to arrive. We ordered our starter and main at the same time, took at least 25 mins for a baked Camembert, and then a further 40 minutes for two mains AFTER the starter arrived. The food, while well presented was average at best. It took a significant amount of force for me to cut my duck breast, the pork crackling for the other main was tasteless and resembled a large quaver, and some of the veg was burnt. I don’t typically mind paying a service charge if I receive a reasonable service and am well attended, however this was not one of those times (also a service charge for two people When we asked to remove the automatically applied service charge, explaining why, we were challenged and the hostess was visibly offended. Whilst the staff weren’t bad or rude, the atmosphere just wasn’t particularly welcoming. I’m afraid we won’t be returning as we had high hopes.