I usually – by which I mean always, unless I’m meeting a friend or out really late the night before – bring my own lunch to work. I’ve taken to eating salads and like making my own as I can put in exactly what I want. But I’d heard colleagues at work raving about a new place they bought lunch that did the most amazing and filling salads, so one day I decided to go along with them.
Barraka describes itself as serving Mediterranean street food. ‘Barraka’ means ‘blessing’ in Moroccan and the owner wanted to carry on a family tradition of blessing people with ‘good energies and food’. It’s located down a little side street opposite Liverpool Street Station and doesn’t have much room inside – there are a few stand-up tables where you can stop and eat, but it gets quite busy at lunchtime and people are sometimes queuing out the door.
When I went, staff were offering tastes of different items on a platter so I tried a piece of chicken schnitzel and a piece of Mediterranean chicken. One of my colleagues had tried the halloumi salad and thought it was wonderful but I decided to have chicken schnitzel. The staff take a large plastic bowl and spread some houmous on the bottom – something I’ve never had before in a salad but it combines really well with the salad leaves on top.
There was a choice of four or five types of salad, from mixed leaves to chopped tomato and cucumber; then it’s topped with a generous portion of hot chicken schnitzel, which was freshly cooked while we were there, and drizzled with a choice of dressing. They also do the same filling in a baguette or wrap. It was delicious, really filling, and nice to have a salad with hot breadcrumbed chicken on top – if you can find this place down the alley (Artillery Lane) I highly recommend it!