For Zoë and Layo Paskin, going to a good restaurant should feel like being invited to a dinner party. It’s a welcoming philosophy that the siblings have embodied in all of Studio Paskin’s openings, from their iconic (now closed) London nightclub The End, to debut restaurant The Palomar, which opened in 2014, to Covent Garden favorite The Barbary, which opened its doors in 2016, to Michelin-starred fine dining spot Evelyn’s Table. Now, the hospitality group has expanded west with The Barbary Notting Hill, a lively restaurant that is notably bigger than all of their prior endeavors, but still retains that intimate dinner party vibe.
“I’ve always enjoyed having people to my home,” Zoë tells Observer. “So that’s, for me, how it all feels and how you’re making someone feel. And they need to feel better when they leave than when they arrive, so when they walk out that door, they think, ‘I just had a great time.’”
“It’s a bit like music,” adds Layo. “You need all the classical professional things to be there, but a little bit of the jazz that goes on top and feeling with the people who are serving you or welcoming you or are being present in that moment with you is quite important. You need to feel the whole thing is engaged.”
The Barbary Notting Hill seats 75 guests (the original has only 24), and expands on the sharing plates and flatbreads beloved at The Barbary and its sister restaurant, The Barbary Next Door. The dishes and ingredients are inspired by the Barbary Coast, a 16th-century region that comprised North Africa and southern Europe, although the dishes are modern and forward-thinking. It’s helmed by head chef Daniel Alt, who has included both classics and new offerings on the menu, which is accompanied by a 250-bottle wine list.
Guests for lunch and dinner can currently partake in two types of flatbread, accompanied by small plates like fried artichokes and dips like hummus and spinach borani. There is a range of fish preparations, from scallop aguachile to monk fish tempura, as well as larger plates of meat and seafood cooked on the fire (a personal favorite was the coffee rub organic chicken). These can be served with vegetable sides, although there’s no wrong way to order. It’s all intended as a convivial, collective experience, which Zoë describes as a “feast of flavors.”
“In London, you’ve got a lot of reinvention of Thai food and Indian food, and with lots of cuisines here right now, you get the layering of lots of different dishes and flavors,” Layo says. “It’s a really fun way to eat, because you get a lot more food. Don’t get me wrong: It’s nice having one dish and one thing. But we’ve all been embracing, over the past few years, this option of having loads of dishes together.”
Zoë and Layo chatted with Observer about the two-year journey to opening The Barbary Notting Hill, how the menu was brought to life and where they like to dine when going out in London.
Observer: Why did you decide to open in Notting Hill?
Layo Paskin: We asked ourselves the same question. All of our places, and even going back to when we had our nightclub The End, are in central London, but neither of us live centrally. With the pause that happened during Covid, we focused a bit more on our own neighborhoods. So when we started to think about doing [another restaurant], we decided to step away from the center of town, although Notting Hill is a central neighborhood. So that started the conversation. And then, really, what often happens is, you see the site. We saw this site when it was an art gallery and it was a beautiful room. It was quite an immediate reaction to the site. A bit like when you’re searching for a flat and you see something you love. Galleries are nice because you get a sense of peace from the space. So straight away, we got a nice energy from it.
Zoë Paskin: We always hoped one day to do a corner site. The combination of that and a blank canvas was quite exciting.
How challenging was it to develop the restaurant once you found the site?
ZP: First, we had to secure the site. There were various people going for it. And then the lease took a long time, and the license had to be sorted out because it was a change of venue [type]. We actually went on a high-risk journey with this, evolving what we wanted to do but always knowing we may not quite get there. But once we started designing the restaurant, it was about what we wanted to draw from The Barbary’s core and essence. Obviously, it’s many years later in a very different location. When you find a space you always get informed by it, too. The Palomar was an old restaurant called The Spice Bazaar. The Barbary in Neal’s Yard was a skate shop.
LP: In the back of our minds, it was always to take some elements from The Barbary. We wanted to have a kitchen bar still, but we always wanted to have these bigger tables. You put down all of the things you want to include, and then you try to incorporate as much of that into the design as possible.
Sitting at the counter is a big draw at the original restaurant. How did you balance having tables and a counter here?
LP: One of the biggest functions in this restaurant, from our perspective, was that the kitchen and the kitchen team could really work. So the positioning of the kitchen and the back of house informed a lot. The kitchen had to be in a certain position, which dictated where the bar is. There were two possible entrances to the restaurant, and we picked the one where your immediate reaction when you walk in is the drinks bar, with the tables to one side and the kitchen bar to the other. These are subtle things, but you think about where the thoroughfares are. If you’re sitting at a table, you don’t want a ton of people always walking past. The reality is you can’t overcome every obstacle, but I think we’ve achieved a lot of what we wanted.
How does it feel to finally open a restaurant after going through all of that?
ZP: In the middle of a service, you feel like you’ve taken this vessel out to sea. In a marvelous way. I quite like standing in the middle of the restaurant and seeing it all come together and all of the respective chatter. But, of course, it is a bigger restaurant to captain, in that sense.
LP: The nicest thing about a bigger restaurant is that there’s more places to be in it. Take our restaurant Evelyn’s Table; we can’t really be in service unless we’re actually in service because it’s so small. So it’s quite nice to be in the room orchestrating and working with the team, but not feel too in the way.
How did you determine which dishes to bring from The Barbary and which dishes to introduce as new?
LP: We’ve been testing dishes all of this year. So we’ve got a big bank of recipes that work seasonally with different things, and that will react to how people in the area respond. But we tried to take all of the things that were important to take while also wanting to develop. We didn’t want to open the same restaurant in a different neighborhood. The Barbary and The Barbary Next Door are so small that there was a lot more to the story we could tell, and by doing that in a bigger restaurant with a bigger kitchen, we could have more scope. And none of it is hard and fast. It’s always evolving. That probably makes life harder work-wise, but it probably makes the restaurants have more longevity.
ZP: One of the things about the menu is the buildup of lots of flavors and lots of dishes, which is my personal favorite way to eat. I like the way they all complement each other.
LP: I like that we can also do bigger dishes. We could do a whole fish for two, which is just not feasible in any of our other places. And we’re only just beginning how we’re doing that. We’ve worked on it a lot. Even with our flatbreads, we’ve got lots of toppings and ideas, but because we have a brand-new team, we want to give them a bit of time to feel their way in. Those are the biggest changes in the dishes we’re doing—the rest of the evolutions of dishes that we’ve done and other things we’ve worked on in the same vein.
Has the concept behind The Barbary shifted since you first opened the one in Neal’s Yard?
LP: It’s developed. With The Barbary Next Door, we haven’t got a fire there, so it’s more about raw and slow cooking. That made us look at the cuisine in a different way. With The Barbary Notting Hill, we’ve gone farther into Europe than we have before. It’s the same geography of southern Europe and northern Africa, but we’ve moved that around a little bit. There’s more from southern Spain and southern Italy than we have in the original Barbary.
Did you travel to research those places?
LP: Yeah, that’s the best bit of the job! We went to Sicily. We went to Seville. San Sebastian. El Palmar de Vejer. Costa Brava.
ZP: It’s slightly more complicated now that we’ve each got children, but it’s one of the ways we get into a creative space together.
What’s your favorite thing about opening a new restaurant?
LP: When you see it all come together and you feel that atmosphere and you see all the work, from yourselves and the team, come together. And all of that time and energy and creative endeavor comes together. It feels really, really good. And maybe you get a nice moment with a customer, either re-booking or coming up to you and saying they had a great meal. That’s when you feel, “Okay, we’re in the right area of where we want to be.”
ZP: At the end the night last night, I sat down to have some food at the bar on my own before driving home, and I managed to get to chatting with the couple next to me. I just had such a wonderful conversation with them. They had lived on Shelton Street near The Barbary and had loved it and recently had moved to Chelsea. They were so complimentary about their relationship with The Barbary and how they felt about the one they were now sitting in. It was just a magical moment. Very, very special.
It’s a nice idea to think about people having living relationships with restaurants.
ZP: They are living things, aren’t they? Like I said earlier, you’ve got this vessel and you’ve got the bar, the kitchen, the kitchen porters, the runners, the guests. People are waiting for a table patiently or impatiently. People won’t get off their table. There’s this whole improvisation going on every day where the core elements are the same but they’re completely different every day. And that’s bit where, hopefully, all of the good stuff happens.
Where do you both like to go out to eat in London?
LP: Thinking about it like relationships, I have different places for when I want different things. I like going to Bistrotheque if I’m having lunch in east London. On a night out, I’d choose somewhere like Chiltern Firehouse. If I want turbot, I’d go to Brat. If I want dim sum, Royal China Club. If I want Turkish, there’s a place in Dalston called Number 34. For takeaway, my favorite in Islington is called Afghan Kitchen. We go to all of the new openings, but some I repeatedly enjoy. For me, it’s a personal choice about what I’m in the mood to eat.
ZP: I have my favorites, too. Most recently, I keep wanting to go back to Farang. I live quite near and I like strong, spicy flavors. For old favorites in town, I love Barrafina.
What’s the most memorable meal you’ve had recently?
ZP: Whenever we order a ton of oysters and my partner shucks—that feels like a real treat at home. Or we go to the Japanese fish market near us, and we do a massive plate of sashimi at home. When I was at the end of my pregnancy, those were the two experiences I was asking for most.
LP: This summer, I was near Saint Tropez and near Dubrovnik, and both times I had lunch in beachside restaurants. Grilled fish and bottle of rose by the sea. If I can picture what my last meal should be, it’s that. Being in those moments, surrounded by friends and family, and feeling that sense of relaxed, late afternoon sun.
