tasty, tasty, very very tasty

Its unforgiving brutalist style punctures the skyline with 3 towers of hard-lined grey concrete. Love it or hate, everyone knows it. One of London’s many iconic buildings, The Barbican is recognisable and visible from any high vantage point across London and certainly always one of the first landmarks I look for.

One of the restaurants in the complex has recently undergone an overhaul and The Barbican Foodhall (previously Waterside) has been redesigned and rebranded by architectural practise and design consultants, SHH. They have stripped it back of all the ‘modernising’ to its original concrete-ceilinged glory. There is both restaurant and deli style food-market facilities, with a choice in seating; outdoor, counter-top, booths or long canteen-esque tables. The flooring mimics the outside paving tiles and the 600 old olive jars imported from the middle-east make for impressive lighting ‘walls’ which sucessfully divide up the space.

I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to go and try it out and I got it a couple of weeks ago. The perfect place for a cup of the best coffee in London (Monmouth Coffee), a piece of their shortcake which must be the biggest slab of shortcake in London, good conversation in beautiful surroundings. To be honest, I love everything about The Barbican anyway so I’m going to be pretty biased. I went a lot with my mum when I was younger (she taught students at the Guildhall) and so I have fond memories and associations of it, therefore I’m hard pushed to find a bad word about it. But I am genuinely liking the Foodhall a lot.