Barecelo's Muscat

A month or two ago, a new restaurant opened up in Ghubra called Barcelo's, which is a grilled chicken restaurant that is quite similar in menu offerings to Nando's. The restaurant is located on the ground floor (rear) of one of the two new office/accommodation blocks that is just past the Oman Oil near the eXtra store just off the Sultan Qaboos Highway. It's the Oxy office block if that helps.

I visited recently with the wife and kid and we thought the restaurant was pretty good. However, I like the food from Nando's a little more. I found the wings at Barecelo's to be much larger, but I didn't like the taste as much - the wife did though. I ordered the wrap, and it came in what is best described as 2 small schwarmera's - not really what I was expecting, but it was pretty tasty. We also ordered a salad and a kids meal; the salad was made using lots of iceberg lettuce and it could have been a lot better if different lettuce had been used. The kids meal didn't come with any fruits or vegetables (not counting french fries) and wasn't generally as nutritious as I was hoping (when comparing to the kids meal from Nando's). The menu did have one major difference to Nando's - it has some beef offerings on it too.

The venue itself was pretty nice, the music playing while we were there was classic rock (Beatles right up to Bon Jovi) and we enjoyed the atmosphere. It was a little hard to find as there isn't any signage that we saw that faces the highway and the parking area. Their number is 9953 3698 and here is a map to their location.

Personally I prefer the food at Nando's, but another massive plus for me for Barecelo's is that they plan to start home delivery - something that Nando's for some reason absolutely refuse to do. Speaking of Nando's - their MCC location finally reopened this week and we went there for lunch yesterday - they appear to have re-covered the bench seats, added a small waiter station near the entrance and added some sprinklers (something that is being done across the entire mall). Quite why this took 2 and a half months to complete I have no idea! And the service was not particularly good either.... nearly 20 minutes to order an orange juice (before any other food came) when the restaurant was practically empty (1 other table) wasn't what we'd hoped for - hopefully this won't be a regular thing!

Have you been to Barecelo's yet - if so, what do you think?

le fin.