#BarbounShoreditch

[onejamtart]

Barboun

We’ve been on a bit of a Middle Eastern kick lately and so we thought we’d keep it going by trying out Barboun in Shoreditch.  Pretty much directly across the road from Gloria (read what we thought about that here), Barboun is an eastern Mediterranean restaurant with a wood fire grill.

We started the evening with smoked eel with carob molasses and split pea.  This was really tasty.  The eel was really tender and had an intense smokiness to it.  I really liked this.

Next up was the dolma.  Clearly not the most photogenic of dishes but fairly tasty.  These were dumplings of sun dried aubergines stuffed with sour cherry, garlic yoghurt and bulgar wheat.  I thought it was a little underseasoned but apart from that, the flavour was good.

As always, when bone marrow is on the menu, I order bone marrow.  This was topped with what seemed like bacon bits and some breadcrumbs which was a nice little touch.  The only thing about this was that they were pretty stingy with the bread.  No way was the 3 or 4 thin slices of sourdough enough for all that amazing bone marrow goodness. 

For our slightly larger plates, we got the beef short rib that came on this pitta like flatbread with a yoghurt and an iskender sauce.  The beef must’ve been cooked for a hell of a long time as that thing was soft!  You definitely didn’t need a knife for this.  The flatbread was really nice and the sauces complementing each other, the iskender a little spicy and the yoghurt calming things down.  The beef itself was a little bland though which was disappointing.

The other large plate we ordered was the sea bass.  It came pan fried on a bed of fermented yoghurt and saffron cream.  The fish was cooked really well with a crispy skin and the saffron cream was subtle but yummy.  A pleasant enough dish but nothing too special.

For dessert, we had a sesame fondant with hazelnut ice cream.  This was delicious.  The fondant oozed out hazelnut sauce when broken into and the coating of sesame seeds made the whole thing smell amazing.  The ice cream was also really good quality ice cream which is always nice to have. 

We also ordered a kunefe that came with kaymak (which is like a clotted cream) and pistachios.  This was delicious.  It wasn’t too sweet and underneath the deep fried pastry skin was stringy cheese.  What with the cheese, the pastry and the deep frying, this was a great dessert.  I’ve had kunefe a few times before but I think this is my favourite version so far!

Barboun is pretty good.  The eel was my favourite of the smaller plates we started with and while the larger plates were disappointing, dessert more than made up for it. 

Barboun, 61-67 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3HU

Cheers, JL