Berber & Q in Hackney

Cauliflower, Hummus, Harissa Chicken and Margarita's all excellent

CULINARY TEASE Walking into Berber & Q, you’re welcomed by dim lighting, a tantalizing waft of spices, and the promise of a culinary thrill ride. But like many great promises, this one soon revealed itself to be more of a tease. The staff, nudged us toward an array of small plates, arranging an Instagram-worthy spread that looked more aesthetic than meaningful. The concept here is to share and graze, but I’ll caution you, you might find yourself at the kebab shop afterward. Let’s start with the highlight: the grilled chicken. Juicy, smoky, with just enough spice to make you sit up a little straighter. It was genuinely delicious, the sort of dish that momentarily tricks you into believing you’re in for an amazing meal. But from there, the crescendo petered out, leaving us with mezze plates so stingy they were seemingly served with tweezers. Inspired by the famously abundant and generous Levantine table, these overpriced morsels seemed well suited to fill the menu than bellies. Each bite left me glancing down at my empty fork, as if it betrayed me. And then, the drinks. My Diet Coke arrived as a towering iceberg with a thin drizzle of soda filling the gaps. Less a beverage than a crude ice sculpture, it left me feeling like a hostage, parting with pounds for the privilege of a proper pour. As for the actual ordering process, it began to feel like a game of memory and patience—a sort of dinner-themed lucky dip. Some of our choices made it to the table, while others seemed to disappear into the restaurant’s Bermuda Triangle. It was culinary roulette: a mystery which dish would actually turn up. All joking aside, Berber & Q serves decent food, but it’s a bit like dating someone with commitment issues. You’re intrigued, a little bit infatuated, but you’re ultimately left looking for something more… satisfying.

We were a group of 8 and shoved in a corner table which was really difficult to get in and out of. The service was terrible, the waiter didn't smile once and seemed upset when we had a question, just seemed rude. Then there was an issue with the lamb dish being mainly bone, no apology they just put a new one on the table, obviously trying their luck on a £30 dish. I'd avoid if you're a group.

I still wake up at night thinking about that lamb neck

Excellent restaurant! Perfect service, I highly recommend 😉

Proper food great service, if it was me awarding I’d give them the Michelin star too.

Amazing food. Brilliant service. The lamb is out of this world

One of the best meals i have had in a while-great service too Recommended

Great service from Finn. Very friendly and welcoming. An asset to the biz! Thank you, Finn.

The ultimate east London food experience

The food was cooked well - nothing ground breaking. Atmosphere was nice, but the menu... I have never been to a place where hummus doesn't come with bread (have to order separately). Same with main or Large on the menu - you get a piece of meat without any sides. I get that it is BBQ style place, but for the prices, couscous could be included with the "Large". Skewers probably was the saddest thing - a single "king" prawn that wasn't even de-shelled (so effectively 2 bites for £7). As I said - it was tasty, but not for the price.

Really cool spot, worth leaving central London! The food is varied and delicious. We were a party of 4 and we ordered 3 salads, 4 skewers, one large dish, 3 sides and a flat bread each, so many flavours to mop up, the food was plate scrapingly good! Only tiny critique was that the music was a little too loud, it added to the trendy vibe, but not so easy to hear the conversation around the table. But seriously good. The chef, Josh Katz, has another restaurant in Exmouth Market, which is a shawarma bar but it was worth heading out of the centre to try the original! Set in a railway arch so great architecture!

Tasty food and great cocktails mind-blowing experience totally a 10/10 experience

My favourite restaurant in London. The food is amazing and flavoursome. Can't stop coming back! Today the service was excellent

We enjoyed every mouthful of every dish we ordered.

Lovely service and ambient. Food reasonably priced. Great for a date but also larger gatherings - we had my friend’s birthday party and they dealt with us (9 of us) greatly, with our many different orders and requests.

Wildly fantastic food! So exceptional we dove into the plates and I forgot to photo it. Duck was excellent as was the fried chicken (pieces). Remarkable veg dishes. Try them all. We had six plates for three and we were satisfied. Superior meal. Interesting cocktail - a sour. Dining with a soy/gluten/egg/dairy free eater was not a problem as our server graciously helped by marking up a menu for us.

Food & wine is fantastic, great atmosphere as well with a large open space. Just a tiny too loud for an old lady 😅

My favourite restaurant in London at the moment! I never order chicken at a restaurant usually but the brick chicken here is sublime. Cocktails also great and reasonable. Little bit on the loud side.

Decent food and dim light atmosphere but the service was super slow and without any assertiveness.

I can’t describe how good it is! My favourites are lamb ribs with their potatoes as side, delicious!

Amazing food that’s punching with flavour! We got the hummus, baba ganoush, beef tartar, fish kebab, the duck and batata harra! Will definitely come back to try more dishes!

Really delicious - the lamb, brick chicken and hummus are some of the best I’ve had!

Great food and service. The music is pretty good.

Nice intimate location for a date or catchup with friends. Can get quite busy and warm in there, but the decor is considered and the servers attentive. Cocktails were simple and classic. The Lamb was the stand-out dish, and the cauliflower also great.

Fantastic BBQ spot! The menu offers a modern take on classic flavors, though some dishes might be spicier than expected. There are a couple of outdoor tables (ideal for summer), making it a dog-friendly option as well 🐶 Grilled halloumi was amazing 🤩

Excellent! We had just a few plates to share but they were all of high quality ingredients, and very tasty! Would recommend. We didn't have any meat plate but the options were tempting.

The best service and food in town!!!!

BBQ special. Awesome establishment.

Amazing food! All vegetarian dishes were so flavourful and the lamb ribs were the perfect final touch!

10/10 amazing food. Amazing staff. Amazing atmosphere

Great dinner at Berber & Q! Loved the food, cool vibe and service was great. Love the bread, the chicken, beef tartare, the cauliflower and the ribs.

Lovely food, amazing flavours, excellent spices. And also be the generous portions!

10/10 great atmosphere and food bursting with flavour! 🙌🏼

Cool restaurant, with a chilled vibe and some lovely flavours. We had Grilled flatbread, Hummus, Roasted bone marrow, Halloumi and Lamb ribs. Cocktails were very nice too. Really enjoyed the Tobacco Old Fashioned.

Brilliant, perhaps in top 3 in london...

Great food, service and atmosphere

Beautiful space, incredible food and amazing wine (plus loveliest staff). Do yourself a favor and pay them a visit!

I got the chicken dish with green chermoula and a slightly spiced margarita. The service was great, I highly recommend checking this place out.

Amazing mediterranean food, great ambiance and lovely service.

Great BBQ-ed meats and pickles! Good spot for a casual meal. The starters did not impress me as much as the mains. We got the steak tartare, which I couldn't eat after a bite. I'm not usually a picky eater, but this one just tasted odd. I prefer the traditional way of preparing steak tartare, but they put their own twist on it that I didn't enjoy. The aubergines and the artichokes were both much better, but I wouldn't come out here for those. The highlight of our dinner as the main - the lamb neck. It melted off the bone, was soft, and had that smokey, savory BBQ flavor. It also came with pickles to break up the hearty warm flavors.

Absolute favorite dinner place, everything on the menu is 10/10, including deserts and cocktails Be sure to try brick pressed chicken and lamb ribs - mind blowing!

Great experience especially dining in a group - lots of sharing plates! Highly recommend the lamb neck if you are in a group of 4+ people. Very nice natural wine selection too.

Food was really good and the vibe is so cool. Loved the different dishes. But the wine menu can be improved! Hummus could be improved, not a fan of hummus and something on top (link is missing) The lamb dish was huge and def not for 2 ppl - we could have be warned about that. It was good but too much food…

Really good food at reasonable prices, great ambiance, highly recommend.

Absolutely loved our lunch today. Every single dish was amazing, so full of flavour. The cocktails were fantastic. I just wished we’d booked an earlier slot so that we could enjoy more! Thank you Ed Gamble (Off Menu) for the recommendation!

My first time and I liked it a lot, nice restaurant, good food, thanks a lot to Melania, very kind

The staff was very friendly but the food was not quite up my ally. It was not bad but from a place that is labeled as a barbecue place I would have expected something very different! I was quite disappointed I'm afraid and would not come again.

Amazing food! The chicken and the lamb neck were very tender!

Customer Service is sadly very poor. While getting confirmation on the phone to cancel a reservation free of charge, we we charged 30£ per person days after. After calling in, the floor manager showed no professional behavior ultimately resulting in just hanging up the phone. There is no option to contact the restaurant other than phone during business ours. Sad to experience such bad treatment in an otherwise so great restaurant.

Had my birthday dinner here with some friends. They were very accommodating with me adding more and more people to the table even one day before my reservation was due. Staff is very friendly, atmosphere is nice and food is delicious. They allowed me to bring a cake and sing happy birthday. Highly recommend.

Tasty traditional ethnic food, fair prices

Beautiful middle eastern and North African inspired food - great sharing plates for a couple. We loved the ribs, they were excellent. Go big as the starters are all delicious - we skipped dessert!!

Underneath the arches lurks this gem. Not cheap but worth every nickel. Food cooked with love care & flair. The mush. Is a bit loud for my taste but my 26 year old son says it’s fine ..so it’s fine. Tasty home made flatbreads with delicious tomato dip and the fried artichokes are a sensation. As is the new dish of large oyster mushrooms costed with a miso and tahini light sauce which is a Wurlitzer sensation in the mouth. And then there are the lamb ribs-possibly the best I’ve reten in all my 60 odd years. Impossible to describe-you have to go and try yourself. Excellent and friendly staff, outstanding chefs. Stop reading…and just go! Now!

Honestly it's the most overrated, fake and unpleasant place overall. I haven't had such bad experience in a while and that's something. The food was ok, but there are no prices on the menu, no breakdowns of what you've ordered and the service is absolute garbage. You just end up paying blindly. I would highly recommend avoiding this place if you are considering going there with a group of people or alone.

The food was very good! I wasn’t that hungry going in but the food was so yummy that I couldn’t stop eating! We ordered the hummus, roasted chicken and potatoes, and they were all so good! The brick roasted chicken that that smoked charred flavour which I loved, and the potatoes had flavour whilst still being crunchy. Class food for what we had!

We visited on a Saturday evening in March for a 7pm family birthday gathering with eight guests. We were seated in a rather cramped location by the window which meant we had to squeeze into a tight space with virtually no room at all for circulation. Although no reference was made at the time of booking to any time restrictions, we were abruptly told at around 8.30pm that we needed to be out by 9pm, a measly two hours after our booked start time. Most members of the group were still eating their main courses at this time and were certainly in no mood to be rushed off the premises. I spoke to the duty manager who was initially quite rigid - he blamed the booking website for this blatant failure of hospitality on the restaurant's part. I book London restaurants for large groups on a regular basis and most in my experience offer a minimum of 2.5 hours and in practice usually more for similar sized groups. After a rather painful discussion, the young manager helpfully offered to do some 're-jigging' with other tables and eventually we were allowed to remain in situ for the remainder of the evening and, to his credit, he offered us free desserts as well. However, the situation should not have arisen in the first place and the whole exchange left a rather bitter feeling in my mouth during what should have been a fun family evening. The food we ate was very well received by the group - we all had the £45 set menu and it was really rather good and different. The lamb knuckle dish in particular was tasty and very generously proportioned and our vegetarian diners were also very happy with the cuisine. Even the basic house red and white wines (both Portuguese) went down well and were not too expensive (by London standards) at £35 a bottle. Overall, the food and drink was a positive but the controversy about our meal duration cast an unnecessary shadow over the evening. The only other comment I would add is that some of the servers could engage better with customers and an occasional smile would not go amiss, especially as I picked up a still hefty bill of £613 at the end of the evening with a 12.5% service charge included (no mention of it being discretionary!).

Amazing place! Very tasty food, interesting cocktails and great vibe! Open kitchen adds to the charm. Tahini ice cream was a treat, would highly recommend the place and will be back.

Highly recommend. Food was incredible and could not be faulted. Very vibey atmosphere under the arches in Haggerston. The sausage and butter bean as well as the duck leg were standout dishes. Great for a group or date night.

Ate really well. Particularly recommend the aubergine ghanoush and the cauliflower. But the star of the dinner was the bone marrow: otherworldly. I thought I was going to cry after the first bite, genuinely outstanding. We shared a bunch of smaller plates and the confit duck as a main, though in hindsight we probably should have gotten another 2/3 plates instead of the duck (which was tasty but nothing too special). Non alcoholic drinks very interesting as well

Always superb food and service. Highly recommend visiting here at least once if you can.

Superb! Food was amazing (Whole roasted cauliflower, pickles with harissa and sought, merguez sausage with butter beans, artichoke, ther was more it was all great) service friendly and attentive. place was bouncing on a Saturday night. Very much looking forward to going back and trying the Shwarma bar.

Enjoyable meal, portion size quite minimal, so be prepared to order lots which adds up. Nevertheless the food was great, inspired dishes and decent cocktails

It was fancy, well priced and brilliant atmosphere. The smoked cauliflower ignited a part of my soul I didn’t know was there.

Amazing. Great food. Great staff. We’ll come back! ☺️

Amazing food, great atmosphere. We celebrated a birthday here and were super happy with the food as well as the service. Thank you

The food is amazing and the staff are such a delight. I would highly recommend. The setting is just stunning.

Not so good. The food was disappointing and over-priced. I regretted trying this place. The staff were perfectly nice, though.

Disappointed by the food, which was so-so and not great value. The staff were nice, though.

What a nice place! Thank you for the delicious food

Loved the layout of the restaurant. Menu is compact and portions are quite small but the food is good. Hummus was immense, would return just for that.

Great ambience and lovely service. Food was great and portions were fine - ideal for sharing as a group.

Amazing place! Amazing staff! Amazing good! Will be returning

Absolutely delicious. Beautiful food. So well thought out and just a relaxed and chilled environment. Perfect night. Would come again

A cool-looking restaurant in a converted railway arch. We had the set menu (£45 per head). Staff kindly modified the vegetarian menu for me to make it vegan. The vegan options are good but not outstanding, and overpriced in my view. At £45, I felt I had overpaid for some stuffed veg and dips.

I first came here a long time ago, when it first opened can’t remember what year. I always remembered how good the food was and decided to visit again with a couple of friends for a Christmas get together, all I can say is that it was even better than before! We ate so much; cauliflower, baba ghanoush, flat bread (x2), chicken with chermoula and then ended with the star of the show - the lamb neck. So so yummy will be coming back as soon as I can. I think the restaurant is underrated or maybe not well known enough, something different in London don’t miss out!

Food is delicious and the cocktails are interesting. Our service was quite slow as it seemed like there was only one waitress (who was great) on hand for the lunch trade which was clearly not enough. Our food came out before our drinks and we would have had many more drinks had it been easier to get them.

Food and vibe absolutely incredible. Cuddle and Slap cocktail was far too strong but only a minor wrinkle in an otherwise fantastic evening!

Insane food ! Greatly recommend!

Fantastic meal, Great ambience and atmosphere.

Worst meal I ever had, I literally threw up after eating it, don’t waste your money

Great food and good service, but unfortunately, another restaurant with service charges automatically added. At the prices you pay here, I would assume that there is enough of a margin to pay their staff a decent wage without guilt tripping their customers into doing it for them.

Really cool vibe under an arch. The place has a low lit atmosphere with really vibey music. We came on Thursday night and upon entering, the waitress offered to take our coats, served us tap water and gave menus. Orders came really quickly and the taste of the food was great. Really recommend the Attila ghanoush burnt aubergine and artichoke hearts, although everything we had was great.

Popped in here on the way to see a band next door. Food was amazing, had the houmous and lamb neck. Flavours were incredible

Lovely food and the music was great.

Dry food and tiny portions. Would not come back here, certainly not worth it for the price.

Absolutely fantastic! Jaw dropping plates of flavour, with lots of surprises along the way. Who knew creamed aubergine could taste so good. I had the Berber Souk cocktail (if you like margaritas then get this!). Also the lamb is a must try with your favourite friend! This place is 10/10 for any social friend or family gathering, but make sure you book to avoid disappointment.

This place is excellent! I've walked past it ignoring it for many years, thinking it's an American steak house vibe - based on the sign in the window. This couldn't be more wrong. When you enter you step into a different world with great atmosphere. I've had a great mescal cocktail and the food was mind blowing. Service was also very good. Very underrated place! Get the aubergine!

This place is unreal. The food is SO good.

Yum. Everything was delicious. Great margaritas too! Personal favs were the hummus, babaganoush, and chicken. I get the sense you can’t go wrong here!

One of the best spots for dinner. Great service and relatively quick for food to come out. Best suited to large groups so you can order more of the sharing dishes! The Lamb neck, the artichoke hearts and the hummus&labneh were standouts

Quality food in a cool restaurant beneath a railway arch. The steak and chicken was great, but I wasn’t a big fan of their drink options (eg no draught beers). Overall, a good dinner option though.

The ghanoush was the highlight. Everything else was sort of bland. Pretty sure seafood tagine gave one of us food poisoning. Portions are sort of stingy. Expected more really. Service was indifferent too.

Food here was amazing. Lamb was falling off the bone. Will be definitely coming back here as the food is up to the hype! Great food and greats service.

First time trying Berber & Q and really enjoyed it! We ordered the hummus/pita, aubergine, brick chicken, and steak, all were very tasty. Our server was super friendly and attentive. The atmosphere was nice but the restaurant was playing spiritual music which didn’t seem congruent with a bbq themed restaurant.

Beautiful interior and atmosphere. Good cocktails. Ordered the seafood tajine and couscous both were quite underseasoned for my taste.

Possibly the best middle eastern restaurant in London. Cannot say enough for this place. Very cool atmosphere and quality of the food is outstanding. Strongly recommend.

Incredible atmosphere, amazing food and a top class dining experience. The lamb is a must have!!! The artichoke was also fab. Incredible

Fabulous cocktails - hibiscus margeurita.....! - and really good food, interesting selection of dishes and perfectly served by the team, as always!

Atmospheric, cosy, delicious place. Get the baba ganoush.