BarBerry

I come here occasionally because it’s on my block and it’s a nice corner to sit and have a glass of wine. I wish they offered better wines by the glass… options are boring and not the best quality. The little food I’ve tried here has been ok, but overpriced.

Awesome lobster rolls and chocolate soufle!

Aw… I feel like this place is getting a bad rap. I had a great time with my friend — sitting on the side street, sipping wine, waiting for our 45-​minute-​away table at the Maison Première. Nice, polite waitress, drinkable wine, and an adorable cigar box for the check. Overall, a nice, easy spot to wait for your fancy table nearby.

We walked by and decided to try it for brunch because it was cute, but I think this is the worst $ 80 brunch-​for-​two I’ve had in Williamsburg. The drinks were fine enough and our server was nice but we should have known something was up when there was literally nobody else eating there at prime brunch time.
The french toast is smothered in yogurt and soggy. The bacon is some sort of overcooked and extremely thick-​cut horror. Never have I had bacon with less flavor. The burger was underwhelming. The only really edible thing we were served was the potato wedges.
Sad brunch. :*(

BarBerry: An establishment of questionable repute. Cash-​only yet feels no need to inform its patrons until the bill. An ATM that didn’t give receipts and spat out only 80 of the $ 100 it charged me.
Plus, $ 3 per soda from the bar.
Did I mention BarBerry was nearly empty both Saturday nights I stopped by? Radegast Hall & Biergarten, just a block away, had practically burst at its seams by that point.

I’ll start off by saying that when by first appearances, this place is sort of fascinating, nice lighting, comfortable seating, intimate atmosphere, and cute (yet confusing) décor. The music was pretty cool, but also confusing with no real set theme.
BUT — I think that the menu is a little more than pretentious. It took me a good 15 minutes just to decide what questions to ask the waitress. Nothing really sounded good, but I was with my husband and another couple, so I couldn’t just walk away.
We got the frisee salad as a starter, which was good but it seemed like they threw some walnuts, greens and blue cheese in a big bowl. nothing spectacular, I’ve had better salads in a real bar. All the blue cheese (all ½ ounce of it) was sunk to the bottom and I think there was 4 walnuts and three slices of apples. Worth $ 9? NO.
I had the winter vegetables dish, which consisted of various vegetables such as snap peas, asparagus, baby eggplant, broccoli, okra and radishes. Are these really winter vegetables? I think of squash, sweet potatoes, turnips, etc as winter vegetables. These probably came out of a freezer and were drizzled with EVOO with approximately 5 shavings of cheese on top, for $ 16. No accompaniment, at least some grits, or polenta, or something, NO? My husband and one of our friends had the steak sandwich, which they said was mediocre and definitely not worth $ 18 fricken dollars EACH. Our other friend didn’t like anything on the menu so she just had one of the appetizers which was some kind of duck on toast. Not impressed.
So for a total of $ 124.00, including 5 strange beers, NOT including tip, we had to pay CASH. Cash??? Even chinese take out places take credit cards these days. Seriously? BULLSH!+.
Will NOT be back. EVER.

The food is lacking goodness.

First off during early evening hours the restaurant is sweet and quiet. Have dinner and enjoy some good happy hour specials. The fare is American with a Mediterranean twist! I got the wild boar meatballs, not too spicy and delicious! Also, all food comes with seasoned potatoes in olive oil, YUM!
I am editing this because my last visit and attempted visits.
Barberry has been closed randomly the past few times I have tried to go. Finally when I caught them actually open for business, the service was completely overlooked, the menu was extremely overpriced (a lot more than I remember) and the food I had this time was sub-​par. Maybe I just hit it on a bad night, but reliability is important to expect returning business.

I’ve never written a Unilocal review before but the bad experience I just had needed to be shared: TERRIBLE food and service… masked by okay ambience. I won’t be coming back here ever again and regret giving them my money!
While waiting for a table I had a $ 9 glass of Sauvignon Blanc that tasted like watered-​down boxed wine (and I’m not picky). The waitress was rude and made me uncomfortable when I asked to send it back. But the main problem was the truly bad food, which had little taste or substance. How hard is it to mess up spaghetti and meatballs? It tasted like rubber. And the arugula salad was just a huge bag of lettuce poured into an oversized serving bowl. The beef carpaccio was fine but nothing extraordinary.
Save your money and go elsewhere. The people running this place don’t know what they’re doing — food, wine, service all really really bad. I’m easy to please and this is the first place that has driven me to Unilocal

Such a cute place on the corner of Berry and right near my apartment. Its a shame I could not rate them higher. My roomie and I came here for brunch last Sunday. We were pretty much at the end of brunch because we were the only ones seated outside.
Two stars goes to the sweet waitress that gave my dog a bowl of water and played with my dog.
The food however was not so great. $ 22 for a lobster on a roll. The lobster was not fresh. Very chewy and felt like it was frozen before they defrosted it in the microwave and served it in a salad style on a potato bun. My roomie had an $ 8 arugula salad with lemon vinegrette. $ 8?!! Really? WOW — We didn’t order anything but tap water to drink. I felt like the whole meal was a waste. She was still hungry, and I was dissatisfied with my lobster roll.
We won’t be back anytime soon.

One of those places that we kept walking past and saying — «wow that looks cute have to give it a go».
Last night rolled around and the day called for a cold beer and some outdoor dining to take the edge off the day. We headed to that cute spot we’d kept walking by to finally give it a go.
The environment is «pleasant» and the location is great. The food was pretty average, potatoes too salty and the steak sandwich on the specials board was far from special and certainly not for the price.
The woman serving us was friendly and helpful but she couldn’t make up for a weird crowd and average food.
Sorry barberry. we won’t be back :(

A sweet quiet place to get a delicious and super visually pleasing brunch (my favorite is the continental breakfast). I love to come here for a quiet dinner with a friend on Friday night, or an easy midday breakfast.
Cocktails are tasty, beer is OK selection, the service is a bit slow.

Pros: Barberry is less than a fifty metre walk from my front door. The décor is cozy. It would be a nice place to grab a drink. Bartenders seemed alright.
Prob’s: Have had much better food at this price point. Striped bass was baked and a bit over-​done. Greens on the side were salted to the point of being unpleasant.

My friends took me to Barberry a few times during a summer night and it had a nice vibe to the outdoor seating. The cocktails were good and I had a wondering dinner. I remember it being a simple salad, but very satisfying in taste. A simple depth to the layers of taste. I remember my friends sharing with me some beef dish and it was also great. Anyway, there was nice crowd outside both nights I was there. I was surprised to see no one inside, but since it was summer, I figured everyone just wanted to be outside.
So I finally had a chance to take my wife there for brunch. We’ve been going to Egg, Enid’s, and Moto for the past circa 6 years and just wanted to try something different. I told her the 2 dinners I had there were fantastic, and that the brunch, by word of mouth, was also great.
We were surprised to step into an empty restaurant. Granted, they open brunch at noon and we were the first ones there. We were immediately skeptical since most brunch started much earlier.
Nevertheless, that didn’t detour us. I had an egg dish with pork belly and my wife had the french toast with berries. She was skeptical (being a long time fan of our other 3 brunch places), but was very surprised. She said the french toast with berries was the best so far anywhere. My egg dish were perfectly made. Anyway, now we have another favorite brunch spot to add to our list. We were surprised to see the space with so few people in there.
Perhaps it’s the jinx of a failed ‘Zipi Zape’? With so many of my family and friends in the restaurant industry, we concluded the only reason it can be doing bad, is the curse of the ‘failed restaurant that previously occupied the space’ theory.
Or perhaps it is the bad service that I’ve read here on Unilocal.I’ve had bad service at great restaurants, but still go back for the great food.
Anyway, personally, Barberry has great dishes and cocktails. I hope they do well and stay there for years to come.

They don’t serve butter or take credit cards.
Awfully fancy for a place that sits on an established TRUCK ROUTE.

Barbarously jacked prices & seasick service from a delicately decorated spot. You’re like a listless chav that wears Burberry to show aspirational taste, but is in fact a deadbeat gambler with a dirty mouth.
$ 9 for medicore wine in a short bar glass. A seafood menu that went from price-​pointed to «priceless» after their expensive visual makeover (the bill made us choke). French toast soaked in sour berry goo.
Good roast lamb and savory sweetmeats. And the blue cheese salad has bite. So I can’t completely pan the place, but BarBerry is on average a flavor bust.
And there’s just something weird happening with the service. It seems one family hangs around at the bar and surrounding tables, turning customers into incidental interlopers who interrupt the conversation. When they’re not illegally spilling over the entire sidewalk with tables to up their summer volume, BarBerry is lying about the credit card machine so their customers will use the BarBerry-​owned ATM in the back.

2.5 stars…
The place looks nice and the food was alright but neither of those things will keep them from a 2.5 rating. First of all they had a blackboard outside mentioning all sorts of seafood specials so me and a friend decided to grab a seat outside and give it a try. We were told the specials weren’t available until after 5pm (we were there at 2). So I ordered off their brunch menu (sat/​sun 12−4pm). The waitress completely forgot about us (there weren’t many people here at the time so there weren’t any excuses) outside and just as I was about to get up (to either go find her or just leave) she came back and took our order. The prices were a little steep on some things and just plain unreasonable on others. If you want toast it’s $ 2, if you want buttered toast, well that’s $ 1.50 more! If you want a bagel and cream cheese then dish out $ 5.50. When we were finished the waitress eventually came back and asked if we wanted more water and when we said we didn’t need any more she took our glasses and the water we had left away (wtf?). After dropping off the check she must have forgotten about us again as she never came back (luckily we had enough cash so we didn’t need change). Like I said the food was alright but just not worth going here for any of the other shenanigans.

I drafted the first part of this review yesterday onsite at Barberry:
It’s Saturday afternoon. I’ve been sitting at a Barberry table on the sidewalk held hostage for an hour. Ordered our food over 45 minutes ago. Trying to imagine how amazing the food will have to be to make this wait worth it…
Follow up:
The food finally came and the French toast was divine and my scrambled eggs were fairly yummy. But unfortunately the experience was completely soured by the hour and half of waiting for the food. It did not help that we were freezing as the sun had long since moved to other corners of the sidewalk. From start to finish the whole ordeal lasted 2 hours

I wanted to join Unilocal for sole purpose of writing a review about this place.
This place deserves 0 Star.
I went there for drinks last month with three of my friends, and the waiter lied to us that their credit card machine is broken, so can they only take cash. We asked the owner of the restaurant about it, and she replied it was never broken. Later when the waiter came around, we informed him that we were told the credit card machine wasn’t broken. Without even a blink, he answered that it’s been fixed, and they now accept cards. Everyone was amazed at how he can just lie to us twice with a straight face, while knowing that we know he was lying to us.
We didn’t want to stay any longer, so we asked for our check. When the waiter came around, we specifically asked to split the check in four and put it in our cards, and he came back charging all the drinks to each cards.
Meaning, when he should have charged $ 11 each to our card, he charged the total amount of $ 44 to everyone’s card. $ 176 in total when we only ordered 4 drinks. When we asked him why he would do such a thing, and he answered I thought those were my tip.
Later we left telling the owner what just happened, and it took literally 20 minutes waiting for our check with the correct amount.

Awarding Bar Berry two stars is almost overly generous considering I won’t ever be going back and encouraging others avoid the same.
I ordered the burger which was on the cheaper side of their menu for 10 dollars. I would have loved some rack of lamb but for 22 dollars that sadly is too expensive for an out-​of-​the-​way street in Williamsburg which in my opinion a bit lavish for the neighborhood. Not to get off-​topic, but the point I’m making is this looks like it’s going to be upscale bar food and it is but most of the menu is more than you thought you’d be spending.
My burger was alright, nice presentation for a burger, and simple but tasty potatoes. Oddly, there were too big stalks of lettuce on the side which was kind of odd and the cheese on top was kind of like feta and cream cheese and should have been more robust and flavorful because it was kind of awash in the rest of the burger.
At this point the meal would simply have been okay. What really sent me over the edge into pure contempt was the service. I know service is really subjective but it can easily break a meal. Our waiter had massive confusion understanding the concept of «no cheese» from one person who simply stated «I’d like it with no cheese.» That he came back TWICE to ask about it. I didn’t see the confusion and while English wasn’t the problem the waiter clearly was struggling with basic comprehension for some inexplicable reason. Sorry to say, but that’s not my problem, proof your people before sending them out, if I wanted difficulty in basic questions I’d ask a cab driver.
The guy was also nonexistent for the dinner. A small pitcher of water for 7 people was cashed in about 10 minutes. After he didn’t return and the food took a while. I just went up to bartender to get a refill. When the waiter eventually came back and took the empty one I asked if we might have two since we had a large group. Response: «Why don’t we start with one?» Yes, because its 6 PM you’re decidedly busy and water is on ration.
I have no more interest in dissing this place. Way better options for your dollar.