45. The Pies Are The Future.

 

  Even the 'experts' are sounding a little weary when Fine Dining is mentioned, though they wouldn't admit it. So, a question I've asked in earlier Blogs this year, where is dining out going in England and in the context of this Blog, in Birmingham, in the foreseeable future?

  The multi-delicatessen owner, former pastry chef and food writer, Yotam Ottolenghi, speaking on Radio 4's immaculate Broadcasting House programme this morning, broached the subject. He identified the tasty possibilities of more fermented food dishes, open-fire cooking, the more interesting use of vegetables being especially enthusiastic for the ugly old celeriac and those great British traditions ... pies.

  He spoke with great pleasure of what is currently on offer at executive chef Calum Franklin's Holborn Dining Rooms in London. Another pastry chef himself Franklin has made the restaurant a pie mecca and the focal point of what is on offer there. There is a pie room as well as a dedicated Gin Bar with 500 different gins and 30 tonics for sale which makes the place sound like the sort of place Heaven probably looks like. I think I could enjoy an eternity of finely crafted pies and endless gin interspersed with little snoozes to allow for a little digestion to take place.

 In an interview recently published Franklin sounds almost a little surprised that he might have up to 5 different people working on a particular pie which may go some way to explaining the rather breathtaking prices:- curried mutton pie with mango salsa - £22, steak and kidney pudding for which my yearning is slightly subdued by the £22 price tag and hand raised pork pie also for £22 for which I hope I would get a rather large slice. The dishes look sublime but the London prices do not.

  Wouldn't it be marvellous if an exciting and imaginative young chef could steal a leaf out of the book of the Holborn Dining Rooms here in Birmingham and put aside chilly fish and meat just extracted from a water bath and not looking all that nice either and give us something new? Of course that talented person would need plenty of financial support and hopefully would not charge London restaurant prices but that turn in the road could be near with a bit of good luck for Brummie food lovers. And maybe we too will have an earthly gastronomic paradise in our city. A paradise full of pies and gin.