El Barrio

El Barrio does have a fantastic setting, but they fail on just about every other point.
Service is friendly enough, but was quickly overwhelmed once the restaurant started to fill up. People joined our table and were not served, orders were forgotten, delivered to the wrong table, and so forth. But they were good about cancelling stuff and not billing us (see «friendly» above).
The food itself was completely boring. My «crispy mackerel in a pita with house aioli» was not crispy, had not a hint of garlic taste, and the pita was just folded over roughly. It’s supposed to be a sandwich, just wrap it around and stick a toothpick in it, if nothing else. Also for $ 10, I expect more than two small pieces of fish, a few onions and tomatoes, and a small handful of frisee.
I won’t go into what everyone else had, except to say that nobody felt they got their money’s worth, and nobody had any compliments about the food. Some people left hungry because they didn’t want to order more.
If there was one thing of value, it was the pot of tea. For $ 3.50, I got a big pot, enough to pour myself about five or six cups of green tea. So if you want to make the most of El Barrio, show up when it’s empty, grab a table by the street, and order a pot of tea for two. Otherwise, you’ll be very disappointed.

I had high hopes for this place, which opened in an old fruit stand on the corner of Nassau and Augusta, but I was sorely disappointed. The concept is great… open air café, with shade, at a prime kensington market corner… just relax, let the breeze roll in, sip on a drink and enjoy some small plates of food. The setting is indeed excellent. Look at the photos to get an idea. Unfortunately, the food was bad and the service was terrible. We ordered four different vege dishes all of which were tiny and uninspired. I know tapas is small plates, but at $ 6-​$ 9 a plate we really felt like we were being ripped off. The $ 9 plate, watercress with lemon dressing and some cheese crumbled on top, felt like the biggest rip off… This was accentuated by the fact that it was last dish to arrive and the server apologized by saying «Sorry, we had to run next door to buy the ingredients».
The service was so bad it was actually amusing. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt since they just opened a few weeks ago and I’ll update my review if the service gets better. Here are some highlights:
1) Multiple people being ignored until they got up and left.
2) Multiple people arriving at our table with menus after we had already ordered.
3) Several people who seemed to be working there but answered with «sorry, I don’t work here, I’m just a friend of the owner» when asked a question.
4) When one of our dishes arrived we asked our server what it was. She didn’t know and proceeded to pick it up and take it around to the entire wait staff. «Do you know what this is? No? Hey, Susan, do YOU know what this is?» and then finally carried it off back to the kitchen to find out.
I could go on… I’m pretty patient, but the people at the table next to us were getting really pissed.