Barrafina Coal Drops Yard in Camden

I always make sure to come here when visiting London. The food is always delicious, and the service was on point. We ordered Negros Arroz (squid ink rice), one of the best rice dishes, pan fried gambas with garlic, grilled sea bream (got the last one before they ran out), mushroom croquettes, and pimiento padrón. They were all great.

Tortilla - pretty yummy, filled with prawn 🍤 😋 but when contrasted with squid ink rice, it becomes plain, since the squid ink is really salty. The squid ink rice was yummy and fruity though.

The place is very packed and seating is uncomfortable. The food is okay, but not worth the relatively high price.

Barrafina is always exceptional food although on the expensive side. They have the absolute best ham croquetas in the world. This location is not as atmospheric as the other ones and perhaps their sister grill restaurant next door, Parrilan, is a better option this side of town.

Good Spanish food, very close to Kings cross and st Pancras stations. Definitely book in advance as the place is fairly small and it can get busy very easily, particularly on the weekends or during the holidays. The black rice was delicious. It is a bit overpriced, but the quality of the ingredients is good.

Amazing experiences with amazing chefs good services come to barrafina and have a fun

I’d heard great things about Barrafina. Sadly, we left really disappointed. I don’t usually leave reviews but this was meant to be a treat celebrating with a friend and our experience was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Staff were stressed and unfriendly. Shockingly, I was even told to be quick selecting a drink as they were ‘really busy tonight’ (accompanied by a few chivvying claps in my direction) - I was speechless. We really enjoyed the ham croquetas but everything else felt really overpriced and underwhelming. Other tapas bars in town spring to mind for a warmer welcome and heartier food.

10/10 food , ambience , service and experience. My favourite Spanish restaurant in London :)

Smallest prawn I have ever seen for £24.5

I went there with a friend after work and we were seated at the bar. The food was delicious but I was a bit disappointed with the portion vs the price. I know this is tapas but this is quite pricey overall. In terms of decoration and all, this was pretty standard and nothing specific caught my eye. Thought it was nice to see the people working in the kitchen and preparing in front of you.

⭐️ Food was incredible ⭐️ Great venue & vibe ⭐️ Service slow, had to wait ages for some dishes, I did complain as nobody kept us updated. Appreciate it was busy, but they could have told us when we ordered the wait times rather than us waiting. Will definitely return 🙌

Fabulous food, great service, the vibe is top notch! Thanks to Polina who answered all our questions and recommended great wine for our tapas. What a great evening!

I want to express my gratitude to Polina for her professionalism and kindness! She made our visit to Barrafina Coal Drops Yard truly special. Polina was very attentive, quick to answer all our questions, and gave excellent menu recommendations. Thanks to her care, we felt extremely comfortable, and the dishes she suggested were absolutely delicious! A huge thank you for the fantastic service – we’ll definitely be back again!

What we ate was very delicious, but there was no explanation on the menu, we had a little difficulty ordering, the service was fast

Pauline was extremely nice and helpful. Great food🤩

Don’t think you can better Spanish dishes anywhere else in London.

Always good this place ! best croquettes in London and always great value, best thing about this place is the service. Such an intimate way of eating being on the counter and if your lucky enough to be served by the lovely Isabelle then you'll be sure to have an amazing time.

Spanish tapas place. Every single dish was good. Would go back in a heartbeat. Service was friendly but not over the top. What did I order? Croquetas Olives Chipirones Mackerel Arroz negro (squid ink rice) Crema Catalana

I keep returning here, not only for the top quality food but also the extensive wine list, the attentive service and the extra touches on special occasions. The menu highlight is the tortilla, rich and runny in the middle. Their specials menu always offers something new to try, especially for lovers of fish.

First time today in this location. Food was great and service was fantastic. We were assigned to a lady with blonde hair and super white teeth, she was great!

Absolutely amazing service Big up Isabel who looked after us for the evening

Paulina was a very kind and careful waitress, thank you!! Will be happy to come back again

Pretty disappointed in this place after hearing good things. Food was poor quality, under seasoned and the seafood tasted a bit off… I think they were just rushing things out as it was a Saturday. Would definitely expect nicer food and fresher ingredients for the price point. Service was good and the room at the back is nice. However, wouldn’t go again…

‘great food, service from alex was amazing and will be back next time we are in london’

Went for lunch recently, served by the lovely Alex - she was super attentive and made sure that we were happy with everything. The food was delicious! Faultless experience.

Great food, nice venue - service very good. Alex was really good with us, nothing was too much for her Will definitely be back 😁

Absolutely loved the place, delicious food, quick and pleasant service. Our waitress Alex was lovely and very attentive, would definitely come back :)

It was wonderful family dinner, Polly made our evening very special with her recommendations. We got Brill with citrus butter sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous!

Amazing food and service. Food was very tasty and good value for money. Very good service form Polina. Will visit again!

The greatest place to try Spanish cuisine! Polly was lovely and recommended us amazing wine!

Great meal! Special thanks to our server Polly, she made the evening very special. Would definitely come again.

Amazing food! Thank you Paulina!

Food was amazing, Polly was great!

A good place, amazing service from a non-British waitress Polina. I liked your cuisine. I will definitely be back next.

Lovely evening last night. The skate wing was particularly epic. Shout out to Polina who looked after us beautifully all evening.

Nice dinner, great service from Paulina, like this place, every time different specials

We came for dinner here for birthday celebration and it was so extremely good we really enjoyed it Divya made our night so memorable we really appreciate that Thank you!

Great place, strongly recommend to try Gambia Rojas, Tapa de Entrecot and Iberia ham, very friendly service from Polly!

Great food, thank you Polina, arroz negro was delicious!

Was down in London for business - a local recommended this amazing place! Excellent food, excellent service (Alex looked after our group) - will definitely be paying another visit when I'm next down

Delicious food and excellent service. Thank you very much Liz...

Food was great, Polly made our evening very special with her recommendations! Definitely come back again!

Great food, delicious gambos, very attentive service from Polly 😊😊😊

Nice food , Liz waitress made our dinner really lovely. Thank you very much

Very nice place and delicious food! Many thanks for Polina, great job and amazing service

We went for dinner at barrafina and we had really good experience over there waitress Divya was really professional and she gave us really good service

Had a great experience here. We were served by Alex who was incredibly accommodating and helpful, she was a great server and we thoroughly enjoyed the food - will definitely be back!

Hello team We had a lunch here and we were vegetarian and DIVYA suggested really good dishes she is really knowledgeable about menu.

The food was excellent and Liz's attention was good.

Just had another lovely dinner at Barrafina Coal Yard, which is definitely the most authentic Spanish restaurant in London.Polly as been so kind and gave us the best service!

The food was delicious😋! The service that Liz gave us was incredible and we are very grateful for the recommendation she gave us. WE LOVED IT🤤😍 ! Liz is very kind and polite☺️. Thank you !

The food was delicious!! Great ambience and the service that liz give us was amazing 🙏🏽

Hi barrafina, Just wanted to thank you for recommending the specials of the day specially thanks to Divya for making our food selection so easy and worth, I really appreciated your help in choosing these options, and they were absolutely delicious. Your guidance truly enhanced our experience, and we had a fantastic time at the restaurant. I’m excited to try more of your suggestions next time!

Hello Divya, I wanted to say thank you for your recommendation of patatas bravisimas and pan con tomate! As a vegetarian, I truly appreciated your thoughtful suggestions, and they turned out to be absolutely delicious. The dishes were a perfect fit, and they made our dining experience so enjoyable. Your knowledge and understanding of the menu really made a difference in our visit. We had a wonderful time, and I’m looking forward to trying more of your recommendations in the future! Thanks again!

- food comes quick but it takes a while to get a waitor’s attention - amazing food, feels like they do each dish with a unique twist to it. Strongly recommends the black rice, cheese tortilla, honey aubergine and cheesecake.

The food was excellent and staff were incredibly kind and attentive. Poliana was taking care of us all evening! Highly recommend.

Thank you Polly for great service. Amazing food and atmosphere

Delicious and wonderful and excellent service and sensational ingredients - top marks to gorgeous servers Polina and Alex

Came for a business lunch. Food was exquisite! Tortilla was cooked to perfection and the best i've ever had, including in Spain. Level of service and questions about food etc was just right, providing great service and not disrupting our conversation. The tuna tartar was also especially good. Am very keen on returning at some point!

The service was amazing! Polina so nice and friendly!

The food here is excellent. The fish special in particular was phenomenal. The tortilla was the best I have ever had. One of my top recommendeds in London for someone looking for something a little bit fancy.

Great service from Kay, great sitting at the bar.

Favourite for a special meal. We have been around 5 times here over the years and love sitting at the bar and enjoying the wonderful food. A bit salty but that is typical of tapas. Can’t wait to go back!

Very good food. Paulina was very attentive!

Thank you for this experience! Food was amazing! Many thanks to Polly!

We visited on Sunday early afternoon. The food was great (we tried Pan con Tomate, Ham Croquetas, Chipirones (this was the only dish I didnt enjoy), Gambas Rojas, Arroz Negro (the best dish), chicken & cheescake (perfect!). I recommend to order many dishes & share.

We enjoyed a wonderful evening at Barrafina for my birthday celebrations. The food was delicious- especially the cod bunuelos! Our server Polina was excellent- super friendly and attentive and made our night extra special. Thanks Polina :)

Cris was very lovely! She found me a table even when I’ve f up the reservation ❤️

Absolutely loved it, the food was brilliant and our waitress Alex was so cute and so helpful, will definitely be returning. Patatas Bravas *chef’s kiss*. FYI they do not serve aperol spritz.

Wonderful meal in a lovely atmosphere! The food was very nice and our waitress Alex was great!

I ordered the special Hake. I think they forgot it as it arrived 5 mins after everything else had been eaten. It was only warm, this made the salsa verde sauce greasy. The mussels that came with it were significantly undercooked to the point of not being edible. I told the staff of my issue & they offered to re-serve the mussels, which they did & they were fine. On a plus side the chicken thigh dish was very nice. I felt that the food was okay, though overpriced & not worth the visit. I would never come to this restaurant again.

This has been one of my favourite restaurants in London since it opened. The food is consistently excellent but the service has recently become less so. Tonight they were clearly extremely short staffed and waiters were brusque, impatient and bordering on rude.

It was just delicious!! I don’t know if it’s so delicious! However, when ordering from the menu, you don't even write it down. I listened to this and a different menu appeared. I said it came out wrong... I thought it was a mistake. I said it again because all the menus that followed came out wrong... I didn't even say sorry There was no need to check the menu I ordered. The food came out late and I was very disappointed as it was my last meal in London. The system seems a bit bad...

We had dinner here and it was so lovely. The food was great and the service was brilliant- some of the most delicious wine (poured in the traditional manner) I have ever tried! Shoutout to our server - Polly! She was very attentive. Thank you!

The food was good and quite chill and relaxing ambience. We’ve got one of the best service experiences in London from Polly. Her recommendation on food and drinks was brilliant!

I visited yesterday (8/9/24) on a whim, not knowing much about the place, and I’m so glad I did! As a vegetarian, I sometimes worry that I might be an inconvenience, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth here. The staff went above and beyond to make sure I had plenty of delicious options to choose from. The menu was not only diverse but also thoughtfully designed with vegetarians in mind. They took the time to point out the best dishes for me, which I really appreciated. The extensive wine menu was also a delight, with great recommendations tailored to our preferences. What stood out the most was the exceptional service. Every member of the team was attentive and welcoming, making us feel truly special throughout our visit. The overall experience was amazing, and I couldn’t have asked for a better dining experience. Highly recommend this gem for anyone, especially if you’re looking for a place that caters well to vegetarians too and values outstanding customer service. Also my sister loved the Monkfish which she said was the best she has ever had! 😋

Great food and attentive service. Felt a bit overpriced but left happy.

Barrafina is the perfect date spot. The food was perfection, the service was incredibly accommodating, and the cheesecake was to die for. 10/10 would recommend.

The service and atmosphere were great and was served by Kate and Sydney. Very warm, very welcoming, what hospitality should be about. However the only dish I enjoyed was the croquettas. Everything else was poor. We had a mackerel dish on the special that was cold and undercooked was super hungry ignored it. Patatas bravas were chewy meaning potatoes must have soaked in water for a long time, then we had some chippirones and other bits. Also the rush to give the table back which is fine, that hindered us indicating the food was subpar. Years ago I visited the covent garden one don’t remember food being this poor. I would not return for the food.

Absolutely epic!!! Enjoyed the food and vibe so much , I can’t wait to visit again. It’s worth mentioning the place is very busy and they try to accommodate walk-ins as well as bookings, meaning you may end up waiting considerably even if you have booked and on time.

Excellent food and Excellent service.

Utterly and ridiculously overpriced mediocre at best food!!!!!

Absolutely delicious, authentic Spanish food with excellent friendly service. I held a private dinner here for 15 people and it was just perfect. A lovely light room with views of pretty gardens, plenty of very tasty food, great wines and wonderful service from Ulises. Thank you so much for making our celebration such a success.

Lamb Pinxto completely dry baked, much too thick slices of belotta. Very expensive for the quality you get.

Had a wonderful meal there. Hostess, who I think was Spanish, brown hair with glasses, got us seats on a busy night even though we did not have a reservation. She was absolutely lovely. And the waiter who served our table, Asian chap, was adorable. Very forthcoming with information and wonderfully friendly at the same time. They were both so refreshing. Loved the food and the wine too. Try the gambas. Even though you have to peel the taste is heavenly. And no need to go for an expensive wine. The cheapest white wine, still 40 quid, is delicious. Would definitely go again based on this experience.

The food here is excellent. Unfortunately the service lets down the experience. Clearly they were having issues in the kitchen because food didn’t arrive or was given to a different table or didn’t arrive until it was almost time to leave. Instead of telling us that they were having problems (which would have been acceptable) they kept making excuses. For that reason I wouldn’t go there again.

Delicious tapas, great service. Highly recommended.

The service was efficient, but my low rating is directed towards the team behind the restaurant concept. It was an embarrassing visit for both myself and the restaurant team. I invited a vegetarian friend after noticing a large selection of dishes under the 'Vegetable' section of their tapas menu. However, once we were seated and had the menu explained, we discovered that the vast majority of these 'vegetable' dishes included meat or fish. Even the patatas bravas we ordered contained chicken stock, which seemed unnecessary since the tomato sauce didn't taste significantly different. We have started a bottle of wine already so leaving didn't seem like a right thing to do. While the team did a good job of assisting us through the menu, a standardised menu marking, commonly seen in every good restaurant in London, would have been much more helpful. What was meant to be a lovely dinner with a friend I hadn't seen in a long time turned into a confusing and unnecessarily uncomfortable experience.

Won’t sit you if you have kids. They only will sit you outside, regardless if it’s dangerously hot or dangerously cold for a baby. They have seating inside that is no where near a grill and perfectly safe for children, which they don’t let you use. Food and space looks great if you’re not a family though.

Just another overpriced and underwhelming tapas place. Really not sure what the hype is about, food is very average and expensive. Service was also nothing special - they forgot to bring us a dish and then at least gave us the dessert on the house but that’s about it

This place is not good. The meat is tough, martinis are bad, service is bad. Apparently every part of my order was very amusing to our waitress who couldn’t decide whether she wanted to speak to us in English or derogatorily speak to us in Spanish. Her snide attitude mixed with the toughest meat that makes you acutely aware an animal lost its life combines to make this a 1 star place. Interestingly I’ve been to other Barrafina locations and they were fine.

Dinning room at the back is perfect for a work meeting. Monkfish is exceptional as is the orange wine. Excellent service as well.

In the past, when I visited London, I would definitely set aside time to eat seafood snacks at my favorite restaurant, Barrafina. At that time, it was hard to find a place and it was common to queue for more than 20 minutes. When I came here, I found that he has opened branches all over the country. Wherever I go, there are traces of him. There is no need to queue at all. In fact, there are many empty seats. The grand scene of customers sitting in rows and dining next to each other in the old store is no longer there. See. It’s still delicious, but the people are weird. I just think the food tastes better in a restaurant that’s full🤣. Coal Drops Yard may have just opened and is still cultivating a customer base, but every dish is above par.

Extremely good service and food. Was lucky enough to sit in the back area with only 4 tables. Nice sunshine (on that rare summer evening) and plenty of space.

Really good food, nice atmosphere, good service. The only thing is it’s expensive for the portion sizes. I don’t mind paying more for good food but at the prices they charge, I would expect more food. Some examples include: £10 for padron peppers, £14 for one courgette flower (really a portion size for one), £40 for one grilled fish (again more of a portion size for one). Delicious food though and I would still go back.

Delicious food, and wine. We had a lovely time and the staff are all very lovely. The croquetas are a must!!! It is a bit pricey, so would only return for a very special occasion.... The menu was missing a garlic mushroom dish in my opinion.

Had a wonderful time at Barrafina, the service was impeccable, patient and professional throughout. The food was fantastic and the drinks especially the vermuteria rojo was incredible. Had a lovely experience throughout, felt very comfortable the whole evening.

The food is overpriced but tastes horrible.

What an amazing place to eat, i love the way everyone sits at a bar and eats together, and you can see the kitchen and all the cooks. Staff are all amazing.

The place and people were nice but the food was extremely disappointing. The chicken and monkfish were okay. The black rice has 1 tiny tiny piece of squid and essentially tasted like just cream and rice which was very disappointing. The asparagus came with a brown sauce which was also not pleasant. The asparagus also didn’t come with the rest of the meal so it was a bit of a shame to just eat at the end as a last course. Overall this was quite an expensive restaurant and given the price, the food tasted like your average food market (possibly even a little worse). Very disappointed, would not recommend!