17. Ben Tesh To Open Folium In November 2017.

  At last the glad news that Ben Tesh is to open his first permanent restaurant which he calls Folium. Service gets underway in November and it all looks very exciting. The aim is to serve modern British dishes in "a relaxed and informal atmosphere"and the 28 cover restaurant will be situated in Caroline Street off St. Paul's Square in the Jewellery Quarter.

  If you look up the meaning of Folium the definition " thin leaf-like structure" appears. However if you look up the meaning of Folium in cooking then you come across a text "Discovering words in the kitchen" by Julian Walker which links the word to the section on Pastry. It reminds us tha Filo derives from the modern Greek word for a leaf but mentions that the 1390 Forme de Cury includes a recipe which involves the use of sheets of thin pastry called foyles which are described as being "of paper". The piece then goes on to link 'folio', a sheet of paper, with 'leaf' which is what is meant by the Latin word Folium. I'm not sure if Ben Tesh would have gone through such tortured thinking to arrive at his restaurant's name but it will be interesting to find out.

  Tesh's partner, Lucy Hanson, will front the house.

  If the food served in his "pop-up" days is anything to go by then Birmingham will soon have another immaculate and brilliant restaurant to add to its fame as a truly great Food City. I have already booked myself a table. See Blog 10.

13. 2018 Michelin - Turner's Loses Its Star.

  This year's entrants in the Michelin Guide were announced at a live event on Monday 2 October 2017 held at The Brewery in east London.

  Last year's event was held at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in Savoy Place in London and was streamed live and looked like a very uncomfortable affair (see Blog 4).

  The Michelin Guide Great Britain And Ireland 2018 will be published on Thursday 5 October.

  This year's event confirmed that it's really all about London and its elitist classes who dine there. A sushi bar off Regent Street which seats just 9 diners and where a meal costs £300 became the fifth U.K. Restaurant to be awarded 3 stars. Meanwhile Claude Bosi, previously of Ludlow, saw his restaurant Bibendum in South Kensington achieve 2 stars making it the 9th restaurant in London to be so rewarded. Six more London restaurants were awarded single stars meaning that there are now 70 Michelin starred restaurants in London. No London restaurant lost a star except that one restaurant in the city closed.

  Yes, it really is all about London. We one eye yokels (to paraphrase Giles Coren - see Blog 6) who live in the provinces, clearly can't recognise a great meal when we see one or smell one or taste one. What a load of rubbish. And yet we still think that Michelin is the be all and end all of judging food quality.

  Birmingham chef, Richard Turner, last year decided that he'd had enough and purposefully gave up ridiculously expensive tasting menus and flim flammery in the full expectation of losing his Michelin star for his restaurant Turner's At 69 and the result is that has indeed lost his Michelin star this year. I don't suppose it'll bother his regular customers that much.

  Otherwise the situation in Birmingham remains unchanged - Purnell's, Simpson's, Carter's of Moseley and Adam's all retain their single stars but no new restaurant has been awarded a star nor have any of those established on the list received an additional reward. Slightly further afield, Peel's at Hampton Manor and The Cross at Kenilworth both retain their single stars and in Cheltenham Le Champignon Sauvage retains its 2 stars.

  So no real advance in the Michelin stakes for Birmingham and the West Midlands but what can we expect from a publication so centred on London and the south-east?

  But spare a passing thought for Manchester which likes to fantasise that it is Britain's "Second City" (which it isn't of course) - the 2018 Guide has not brought it any stars and so the city has not had a Michelin-starred restaurant for 40 years! Doubtless the Conservatives attending their party conference in Manchester this year will be looking forward to 2018 when it will again be held in Birmingham, Britain's real second city and gastronomic second city as well.

So, well done again Birmingham, given the uphill struggle in the face of Michelin inspectors who think that civilisation begins and ends in London, there's much to be excited about still when it comes to food in the city.

16. A Birmingham Banquet 1896

  I was delighted to have obtained recently a menu of a banquet held for the Annual Provincial Meeting of the Incorporated Law Society of the United Kingdom which took place in the magnificent Grosvenor Rooms of Birmingham's now being restored Grand Hotel on Tuesday 13 October 1896. The banquet took place in the presence of the first ever Lord Mayor of Birmingham, the Right Hon. James Smith (pictured below) and so it took place at a time when Birmingham was really finding its feet as a great English city. The legal profession attending the banquet clearly represented the elite in the city if the magnificence of their menu is anything to go by and the menu tells us what the "foodies" of the end of the Victorian age were being offered to eat by the chefs of the time. It's fascinating to compare it with the "tasting menus" of today which, after all, are mini-banquets of the 21st century.

  As the photograph below of the Grosvenor Rooms shows, they were dining in sumptuous surroundings and the food needed to match the place where it was being eaten. What else should a late-Victorian foodie expect?

  And what a menu! I presume that the menu offered two or three choices for most courses:- 

  Torte Claire

  Purée Tomate

  Clear Turtle soup

  Tomato purée

      ------

  Soles au Vin Blanc 

  Éperlans Fris, Sauce Tartare

  Sole in white wine sauce

  Fried smolt with Tartare sauce

              ------

  Ris de Veau Braisé aux Champignons

  Côtelettes de Mouton a la Réforme

  Calf sweetbreads with braised mushrooms

  Lamb cutlets in Reform Club sauce

                ------

  Hanche de Venaison, Sauce de Vin d'Oporto

  Dindon Bouilli, Sauce au Céleri

  Jambon de York Braisé

  Haunch of venison with Port wine sauce

  Boiled turkey with celery sauce

  Braised York ham

              ------

  Grouse

            ------

  Pouding Mousseline 

  Géléé aux Fruits

  Genoise Glace au Pistache

  Plombière á la Nesselrode

  Mousseline

  Fruit jelly

  Genoese pistachio ice cream

  Nesselrode ice pudding

           ------

  Crevettes au Diable

  

  Devilled shrimps

       ------

  Desserts

     ------

  Café

  Coffee

  The dishes listed on the menu are fascinating - on one hand there are dishes which could not possibly be served now - turtle soup for instance since turtles are protected internationally and killing them to make a soup would be illegal - and then the pre-nouvelle cuisine dishes heavily dependent on the recipes of Escoffier and his cuisine of sauces.

  Two dishes were of particular interest to me and I had to look them up to see what they were - the côtellettes de mouton à la Réforme and the Plombière à la Nesselrode.

  The Reform Club sauce was invented in the 1830s by Alexis Soyer, head cook at The Reform Club in Pall Mall, who created it when a troublesome club member arrived at the club late one evening and there was a need to create for the hungry member a dish out of whatever ingredients were available in the kitchen at the time. The sauce is produced from a sauce poivrade - a pepper sauce - with juliennes of gherkin, mushrooms, hard boiled egg white, pickled tongue and cooked truffle.

  Nesselrode pudding. Mmmmm....... This stupendous dessert was created by Carême in 1814 for the diplomat, Count Carl von Nesselrode. It became the popular ice pudding of the 19th century and was particularly admired by the English upper classes. It was usually made in a dome-shaped bombe mound to make it resemble a pudding boiled in a basin. The dish is made from simmered chestnuts with sugar, vanilla, egg yolks, chestnut purée, cream and Maraschino. It is then frozen while currants and raisins are boiled in syrup and added to the mix with chestnut cream and whipped cream. Personally, knowing that Nesselrode pudding was in the line-up, I think I would have skipped all the previous courses, as delicious and as extravagant as they may sound, and then consumed vast quantities of this gift from God.

  Purnell's, Adam's, Wilderness, Simpson's, Carter's - no matter what your view of food is - get serving the Nesselrode pudding and make the diners of Birmingham very happy! Come on, you know you must!

  The menu also includes the wine list (below) and a page dedicated to the price to be paid for such a sumptious dinner - the after dinner speeches. Finally, on the back page there's a list of music played during the banquet.

  The meal is a contrast to what we think is right for our day and age but I wouldn't mind travelling in a time machine to 13 October 1896 to The Grosvenor Rooms and trying it all out.

15. The Good Food Guide 2018.

  Prior to the publication of The Michelin Guide, "The Good Food Guide 2018" appeared on the shelves of various book shops.

  For the first time in my life, I have bought myself a copy though I'm not sure why since I find it to be an intensely annoying publication based on the opinions of seemingly poncey elitist "inspectors" ("the restaurants included in The Good Food Guide are the very best in the UK", says they self-importantly) along with the opinions of middle class food snobs - a sort of upmarket remoaner "Tripadvisor" collection - with the most astonishingly hilariously pretentious quotes sprinkled liberally throughout the publication - "...a modern classic pairing of scallops and maple-glazed chicken wings, leaking umami from every pore, gains even greater resonance from baby parsnips fragmented with woodruff. Fish dishes rise to the aromatic challenge too, when miso-glazed cod arrives in geranium and coconut broth, while the favoured dessert has been bergamot parfait with orange jelly and liquorice cream." It's hard to believe that anyone writes like that anymore.

  That said, the book does have a sense of where we are now with British dining. Elizabeth Carter, the Consultant Editor, hampered by her flowery writing style, in her introduction reviews the current issues for we who like to eat out in Britain and sets current developments in a historical context.

  She deals with the now rather hackneyed subject of "the increasing sophistication of the restaurant-going public" and its effect on sustaining "a higher level of achievement at the cooking end".

  She writes about the way that "grand old dining-rooms are being seriously challenged" and that there is a "very strong sense of the generational passing of the baton". "They're not afraid to use the fine-dining moniker - in the modern way, of course: relaxed, engaged and entirely focused on the food. It makes the current restaurant scene a hectic one, but one that is more varied, more accessible, and certainly more exciting."

  Carter then gets bogged down, inevitably, in the London dining scene and how rents are leading to restauranteurs opening establishments in neighbourhoods rather than in the city centre. We won't worry ourselves here about the suffering of London diners. However Carter writes "And it's not confined to London - it's happening throughout the country made possible by the happy coincidence of an increasingly sophisticated and demanding audience of young professionals" (Corbyn-supporting, Brexit-rejecting champagne socialists who live in places like Moseley and Harborne). Dining out is certainly an important facet of modern social history.

  Carter writes about some exciting young chefs in this context - those who are reaching out for the baton - and includes Paul Foster who was named The Guide's "Up-and-Coming Chef of the Year" in 2012 and draws attention to his first solo business venture here in our area at Stratford-upon-Avon in the form of Salt in Church Street which he opened earlier this year. I have dined there myself three or four times and agree that this enthusiastic young chef is coming up with some remarkable dishes but likewise there were one or two which seemed to miss the mark. Foster seems to be The Big Thing in the West Midlands at present just as Matt Cheal was last year. I'm nor even sure if I prefer Salt to its next door neighbour, No. 9 Church Street, long established and home to some excellent dishes although sometimes Chef's creations have not always appealed to me in the eating as much as I thought they would on paper.

  I'm not entirely sure that the young Turks are actually taking over from our West Midlands giants at present though if I were to name one the reader might not be surprised to read that that name would be Alex Claridge whose The Wilderness goes unmentioned in the 2018 Guide (unlike The Michelin Guide).

  Elizabeth Carter writes about the impact of the new chefs on the move from tasting menus ("food spread over three or four hours with price-tags heading north of exorbitant"), though I'm not entirely sure if this gradual death of the Tasting Menu is not due more to the dining public and established chefs just getting fed up with the whole thing as seems to have been the case with Richard Turner at Turner's at 69 in Harborne and with him, his customers.

  She deals with the trend of sharing plates, not in itself to me a particularly important issue and urges diners to reject loud music in restaurants. I agree with her on that one but wish she would also campaign against loud diners in restaurants as well - if anything they're more of a problem than the mood music.

  So, if I hate the book, I do at least appreciate the introductory review. 

  I also like The Good Food Guide's highly detailed scoring system even if I don't necessarily agree with all the scores it hands out. Purnell's scores an ungenerous 5 out of 10 which is defined as "exact cooking techniques and a degree of ambition, showing balance and depth of flavour in dishes" - I think Glynn Purnell does a little better than that. The score of 6 for instance is "exemplary cooking skills, innovative ideas, impeccable ingredients and an element of excitement". Who can question that Purnell's dishes are full of innovative ideas and I do not believe that anyone who has ever dined there could not have experienced "an element of excitement" (much more than Simpson's (cooking score 7).

  So, who makes it into the 2018 Birmingham list? Well there's Adam's (score 7), Carter's Of Moseley (6), Edmund's (3), Harborne Kitchen (4, new entry), Lasan (3), Opus (2), Purnell's (5), Purnell's Bistro (2), Simpson's (7), Turner's at 69 (4) and Two Cats Kitchen (2, now closed).

  The Guide includes its top 50 restaurants in The United Kingdom list in the book and Birmingham has only two restaurants placed in that list - Simpson's at number 40 and Adam's at number 43. Well, we all like lists, don't we?

14. Detailed Look At Michelin Guide 2018.

 

  I've finally managed to find time to nip down to a book shop and hand over my money for the 2018 edition of The Michelin Guide Great Britain Ireland which is a title that seems to have a lot of grammatical problems and doesn't help in making sure the buyer is forking out for the correct edition without flicking through the pages to page 14 where the year that it is relevant to is finally revealed.

  Still it's fun to have it and see what regional preferences are shown by the Michelin inspectors and to guess precisely how rarely they bring themselves to manage a trip out of London and the Home Counties. An excursion out of the capital indeed seems like a rare phenomenon if judged by the summary of new awards and new Bib Gourmands.

  London has one new 3 star restaurant, 1 new 2 star restaurant and 7 new 1 star restaurants (two of them in Kensington and Chelsea where the rich get to eat Michelin starred food and the poor get trapped in burning flats). Meanwhile the Michelin inspectors deem that only 8 other restaurants in the whole of the rest of England are worthy of being awarded a new Michelin star and 3 of those are in the Home Counties/South-east and another 3 are in the south/south-west of England.

  Meanwhile there are 10 new Bib Gourmands in London but just 8 in the whole of the rest of England. What nonsense!

  The situation in Birmingham and The West Midlands is largely unchanged. As mentioned in Blog 13 four Birmingham restaurants retain their single stars - Purnell's, Carter's Of Moseley, Adam's and Simpson's - while Turner's At 69 loses its star though Richard Turner had seemed rather keen for that to happen so no harm done there then. The other Birmingham restaurants to receive a mention are Asha's and Lasan (both south Asian cuisine), Opus, Turner's At 69 and the only newly mentioned restaurant, Alex Claridge's splendid The Wilderness. The entry for the latter describes it as "A small casual restaurant located in the avant-garde Birmingham Open Media Gallery. The enthusiastic team serve artfully presented menus which marry just a few local and home-grown ingredients in playful combinations". This summary does not do justice to the fabulous nature of the food coming out of The Wilderness's kitchen - I was there last Friday evening with some friends and all were astonished at the excellence and originality of what was served to us.

  The Michelin Guide happily defines its criteria for the various awards it makes to what it sees as deserving restaurants.

   ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Three Michelin Stars. "Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey! Our highest award is given for the superlative cooking of chefs at the peak of their profession. The ingredients are exemplary, the cooking is elevated to an art form and their dishes are often destined to become classics".

   ⭐️⭐️ Two Michelin Stars. "Excellent cooking, worth a detour! The personality and talent of the chef and their team is evident in the expertly crafted dishes which are refined, inspired and sometimes original".

   ⭐️ One Michelin Star. "High quality cooking, worth a stop! Using top quality ingredients dishes with distinct flavours are carefully prepared to a consistently high standard".

   Bib Gourmand. "Good quality, good value cooking. 'Bibs are awarded for simple yet skilful cooking for under £28 or €40.

   🍽 The Michelin Plate. "Good cooking. Fresh ingredients, carefully prepared: simply a good meal".

  Birmingham diners will draw their own conclusions about how much our restaurants fit into these criteria. I would certainly argue that the dishes available at Purnell's reflect the personality of the chef and his team, are expertly crafted, refined, inspired and frequently original - having visited the restaurant quite often I also feel that Purnell's dishes are consistently refined, inspired, original and reflect the chef's personality. On these criteria there seems little reason to understand why Purnell's has not by now achieved a 2 star status other than the fact that the restaurant is not located in London.

  It's difficult, too, to argue that Alex Claridge's The Wilderness does not deliver "high quality food using top quality ingredients resulting in dishes carefully prepared to a consistently high standard with distinct flavours (in my opinion they are highly distinct flavours)". The meals I have had there have been highly consistent in quality and excellence. We will see what happens when The Wilderness moves to its new home in February 2018.

  I recently had lunch at Adam's and to be frank, its usually impeccable performance went slightly awry. My companion and I invested in an expensive extra lobster course which was served with satay and a pickle and the rather tasteless lobster was murdered by its accompaniments. It was certainly an ill-judged dish. It was followed by a a beautifully cooked and tasty chicken dish which was ruined by two accompanying elements which were too salty and, literally, left a very unpleasant taste in one's mouth. Perhaps chef was having an off-day.

  I haven't been to Simpson's for a while following an extraordinarily poor lunch experience there which was marked by indifferent food and near-chaotic service. I read on the dislikeable Tripadvisor that service remains an issue for some reasonably well-informed commentators and I have not brought myself to go back to eat there after last year's disappointing meal. I remember at the time thinking that Simpson's did not really deserve to hold on to its single star but the Michelin inspectors obviously feel differently.

  The Michelin Guide has reorganised its restaurant listings by placing the listed establishments in order according to "the quality of their food" with the star-awarded and Bib Gourmand restaurants "being placed at the top" (of the list) and "the rest of the restaurants in our selection are then identified by a new symbol: The Michelin Plate. The self-regarding introduction goes on to state that, "Being chosen by the Michelin Inspectors for inclusion in the guide is a guarantee of quality in itself and the plate symbol highlights restaurants where you will have a good meal". This is fatuous since no outside organisation can "guarantee" the quality of a restaurant nor that one will "have a good meal" at any single place at any time one may choose to go. What form does the Michelin Guide's guarantee take? - perhaps the price of one's Guide will be refunded if one does not have "a good meal" when the "Michelin Plate" symbol has promised that that will be the case. Oh no, I see no such guarantee printed in the book. If I were the editors I think I would withdraw the self-preening use of the word "guarantee" in future editions.

  From previous editions I see that the excellent Edmund's has disappeared from the Birmingham list therefore being denied the chance of announcing itself to be the awardee of a "Michelin Plate". I can not think why Edmund's has not been so rewarded - I have lunched there several times in the past 12 months and always been impressed and pleased by the cooking and dishes served there.

  Two Cats in the Jewellery Quarter has also disappeared from the Birmingham list but that is hardly surprising since it sadly closed at the end of September. I'm sure the innovative restaurant will be much missed including the elegant "Two Cats" sign:-

  Birmingham's "Michelin Plate" restaurant's are Asha's, Lasan, Opus, Turner's at 69, Andy Water's and The Wilderness. A rather shorter list than one might expect. This is contrasted with a similar list for Manchester which, as though to compensate for awarding none of that city's restaurants a Michelin star, is swollen with a Bib Gourmand and no fewer than 11 "Plate" establishments. Poor Manchester, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

  Elsewhere in the West Midlands, Cheal's of Henley and Bluebell are awarded a Michelin Plate in Henley in Arden; No 9 Church Street, Salt, Lambs and Rooftop (at the RSC) are "plated" in Stratford upon Avon; Forelles, Mortimers, Old Downton Lodge, French Pantry and Charlton Arms have been awarded a Plate in Ludlow but the Green Cafe at Dinham seems to have lost its Bib Gourmand (although on several visits this year the food seemed as good as ever); Bilash in Wolverhampton is Plated; Lion and Pheasant and The Haughmond are Plated in Shrewsbury; Peel's retains its Michelin star in Hampton in Arden; The Cross At Kenilworth holds on to its star in Kenilworth; The Butcher's Arms in Eldersfield retains its star; The Howard Arms in Ilmington is Plated; The Castle House in Hereford is Plated; Buckland Manor and Russell's in Broadway are Plated; Brasserie At Mallory, Restaurant 23 and Oscar's are Plated at Leamington; The Moody Cow at Ross-on-Wye is Plated, The Lion at Leintwardine is Plated; and then there is Cheltenham where Le Champignon Sauvage retains its 2 stars and a remarkably large number of Plates are to be found at The Beaufort (at the wonderful Ellenborough Park Hotel, though I personally prefer its delightful, cosy brasserie), Lumière, Daffodil, Bhoomi, Curry Corner, East India Cafe, Koloshi, Prithvi (do you get the feeling that a Michelin inspector with a predilection for curries actually lives in Cheltenham?), White Spoon, No 131, Pursiane and Royal Oak (12, yes 12, Michelin plates in this small town, hmmm...hard to believe).

  So what is there to look forward to in the coming year in Birmingham? Purnell's is changing its midweek menu concept offering a more flexible a la carte menu with the classic Purnell dishes featured on it whilst retaining the magnificent tasting menus for weekend dining and of course there is a new Autumn menu.

  As mentioned above we have the new The Wilderness to get excited about in February 2018. I think we will need to try out Graeme Jackson's Grit which will be opened soon in the building which housed Two Cats and will there be news of Ben Tesh's very own, as opposed to "pop up", restaurant in the not too far off future? (I hope so).