24. A Purnell's Lunchtime Gallery.

  This Blog is intended to be used more as a history, recorded as it happens, of the way we eat food here in Birmingham rather than to provide a critique of that food though I reserve the right to do so if I feel like it. Sadly, whilst it is possible to include pictures of the food in this Blog no technology yet exists to record the smells, textures and flavours which are generally altogether far more important than the way dishes look. Still, if you like visual art then the modern chef's ability to provide some is an important part of his or her work at this present time and gives one a souvenir in part at least of what that chef can produce.

So we have some dishes from a 5 course lunch eaten with great pleasure at Purnell's yesterday (23 June 2018), the menu is also illustrated. Not only was this a reasonably priced lunch from a restaurant which is 'good in its class', it even surpassed the definition of being served in a restaurant which is 'worth making a detour for' and I would have quite happily have made 'a special journey' to eat it. Well, in truth, that's exactly what I did.

  Small slices of mackerel with various flavours of tomato with basil rounding it off:-

  A tartlet of the crispiest butteriest pastry filled with delightful small pieces of sweetbread, and many summery delights including perfectly cooked asparagus and pleasantly uncooked peas and slices of broad beans:-

  The pièce de résistance, Purnell's classic and mighty Brixham cod masala (initially of course the dish started as monkfish masala when it won Purnell a place in the Great British Menu banquet of 2009 though I prefer the cod) served with the most excruciatingly delicious perfectly spiced lentils and a shard of coconut and pickled sliced carrots. Unsurpassable and much copied.

  Perhaps two tarts in one meal was not quite the right thing to do but again a dish of extraordinarily perfect pastry filled with chopped raspberries and other little pleasures:-

  In addition to the highly pleasurable food illustrated above, Purnell's has introduced a new aperitif to its range of gins which is, frankly, also highly pleasurable - Warner Edward Victoria's Rhubarb Gin - with a lovely element of sweetness to it and made perfect served as it is at Purnell's with a slice of lemon and ginger ale.