Barrio Comida (CLOSED)

Food ✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 

Wesley Square 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3DE 

No telephone number
No bookings 

www.barriocomida.com 

[Barrio Comida closed its doors for the last time in December 2017.  They're now looking for a permanent venue, and hoped to reopen in 2018 - their website now says they'll be opening in Durham "in the Spring of 2019"]

As Mrs Diner and I wandered along the Quayside, reflections of the Sage Gateshead and the Millennium Bridge all twinkly in the ink-pool Tyne, I must admit I was genuinely excited. Over the last few years, the fates and my diary had somehow conspired to prevent me from visiting any of Shaun Hurrell’s Barrio Comida pop-ups, so the news that he was moving into Adam Riley’s fish shack on the Quayside was very welcome indeed. 

This is the converted shipping container with the second best view in the world (the best being the outlook from Riley’s fish shack in Tynemouth). Anticipation can be the enemy of enjoyment, but in this case it was well placed.

Newcastle Quayside Sunday Market

Food: at least ✪✪✪ 
Ambience: ✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service: N/A 

Every Sunday

Quayside 
Newcastle upon Tyne 
NE1 3DE 

0191 211 5533 

If you are one of the 57,000 brave souls who will be running, jogging or perhaps just staggering from Newcastle to South Shields on the Great North Run tomorrow, then I salute you. I’d love to be there with you, bounding across the Tyne Bridge dressed as a hot dog, revelling in all that sweat and Lycra, but I’ve promised to take Mrs Diner back to Greece. 

Well, not Greece itself, but a little van that sells Greek gyros. It’s just below the bridge, in Newcastle’s Quayside market that appears every Sunday morning. This row of stalls and vehicles is one of the culinary delights of the City, turning a simple stroll beside the river into a brunch of champions. 

Great North Runners: I promise we’ll be thinking of you as we munch away below your jogging feet. We might even manage a wave or two. But don’t look down or you might just smell the food, give up running and come and join us.

Riley's Fish Shack

Food ✪✪✪✪ 
Ambience ✪✪✪✪✪✪ 
Service ✪✪✪✪ 

King Edward’s Bay 
Tynemouth 
Tyne & Wear
NE30 4BY 

0191 257 1371 


If I arrive early at a restaurant, I’m usually rather glad of my iPhone. I know I should really be people-watching or menu-checking, but I confess I suffer from the common malaise of smartphone addiction. 

Here, however, as I waited for Mrs Diner and her friend to join me, with only a glass of excellent Almasty APA for company, the phone stayed firmly in my pocket. I didn’t need a companion, for I had the view.

Grainger Market

Food (featured outlets) ✪✪✪
Ambience  ✪✪✪ 
(Street Food)


Grainger Street 
Newcastle 
NE1 5JQ 

Mon-Sat 9am – 5.30pm 
(Mon/Wed until 5pm) 
www.graingermarket.org.uk 

Years ago street food meant dodgy hotdog stalls serving drunken revellers, their hygiene even worse than their food. Or maybe greasy breakfast vans in lay-bys and giant trailers at festivals, spewing out the stench of stale onions. 

How things have changed.