Barnacles & Bones

With many places popping up their Festival offerings and trying to bed things in time for the rush of excited punters that will hit the town from the end of this week onwards, it was interesting to run into a place, in the shape of police box eatery Barnacles and Bones, which is launching now with longer term aims.

Taking inspiration from the crab and chip stalls on the south coast, this smartly appointed tardis features a menu of two main offerings, a catch of the day, which today was crab, and something meaty, which today was short-rib beef cooked low and slow in sherry gravy.

These can be served either on a bun (£6), atop a quinoa salad (£6.50), or on tarragon-salt chips (£6) cooked to order in their little deep-fat fryer. It will surely come as little surprise that I opted for the latter, choosing the beef over the crab as the topping.

This was their third day of trading, so we exchanged a few of the usual “early days” questions as items were prepared. Once fully assembled my item looked mightily impressive. I popped over to the nearby steps of St Mary’s Metropolitan cathedral to tuck in.

It was, without question, one of the best dishes of its type I’ve eaten. The beef was sensational with mountains of rich flavour in the fall-apart tender meat. Slaw brought good crunch and the chips were great with the seasoning spot on. It made me very happy indeed.

There was talk of short-rib breakfast hash topped with an egg being on the menu this weekend. I’ll see you there for that.

So overall, Barnacles and Bones is a superb new addition to our al fresco dining options. It will trade as a fixture from this high-traffic spot at the rear of John Lewis from now onwards. I look forward to seeing how the menu develops over the coming weeks and months. Rather handily it’s five minutes from my office, so I suspect I’ll be a frequent visitor.