New on Wine List Confidential: Barbecoa

Barbecoa – Wine List Confidential Score: 87.4

Seating 200 on rhubarb banquettes in the restaurant with space for 40 barflies, this Tom Dixon-designed meatery in St Paul’s represents the unlikely vision of European-trained US barbecue authority Adam Perry Lang and the UK’s ever virtuous Jamie Oliver.

Allegedly the duo decided the London venue was the best path for protein over a bottle of the super Tuscan Sassacaia.

Opening bites may include tandoori wild prawns or sticky spare ribs with a smoky barbecue sauce, apple and kohlrabi slaw, washed down with Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc.

Continue with St Louis-style ribs with jalapeño pickles from the ‘low and slow’ section of the menu, or rump steak with charred aubergine, Westcombe curd and rocket leaves.

More a dish, one suspects, from Oliver than Lang, Vin Santo ice cream proves wantonly liquerous and resoundingly nutty. It might be decadently pursued by a cleansing snifter of Lang’s own clear corn whiskey, ‘Moonshine’.

Clearly arranged, the concise wine list is often Italianate, with fine old Claret, and even the occasional bottle of smoky Pinotage making an appearance.

A list of eight whites and eight reds available by Coravin gives diners the chance to savour the likes of Billaud-Simon Vaudesir Chablis 2008 (£22 for 125ml) and Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 1997 (£40 for 125ml) without bankrupting themselves on a whole bottle. The list of American whiskies is one of the best this side of the Atlantic.

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