53. The Oyster Club - Pearl Or Expensive Grit?

  Adam Stokes’ much anticipated new restaurant, The Oyster Club, opened on 1 April at the top of Temple Street. The choice of opening date may or may not have been wise as doubtless some customers perusing the menu may wonder if the prices for some of the dishes on it are a joke.

  The diner is greeted on arrival by a smart, fresh-looking bar area with high chairs placed along it and a few tables and chairs along the opposite wall. A display of oysters on ice can be viewed and there are pictures in the smallish downstairs restaurant by Jessie Gannon of the founders of a weekly dining club of philosophers and scientists, including Adam Smith, Joseph Black and James Hutton, which, co-incidentally or not (probably not), was called The Oyster Club. Unfortunately when I and my dining companion visited the restaurant we were sat not wholly comfortably at one of the small upstairs tables and not one of the eight diners there appeared to be offered the more comfortable-looking downstairs chairs and tables. As a result it’s unlikely that any of the diners at that time were aware of the art unless they visited the ‘rest rooms’.
  Some of the prices on the menu were, in truth, disturbing. My lunch companion and I sucked hard on our teeth and rationalised that we had no excuse for not knowing what we were letting ourselves and our bank balances in for. Nevertheless, no matter what the hopes for future Londoners moving en masse to Birmingham with the distant prospects of HS2 linking our city with the grim metropolis and the perceived fabulous wealth that they possess, Birmingham is not yet London though Adam Stokes appears to believe that the prices asked in high end restaurants should be.
  We dithered and finally agreed to share a starter. That decision was not based entirely on tight-fistedness as the amount of food an old man’s stomach can accommodate must also be taken into account. Our starter looked in size much as we expected it to be and we felt adequately appetised by it in its halved state and would have wanted no more though no doubt we would have eaten it if we had. The dish was rather pleasing but not bursting in astonishing deliciousness being ‘White crab on
toast’ - fine white crab meat dressed with slivers of Granny Smith apple, chives and enhanced by
a pleasingly crispy chicken skin served on excellent toasted sourdough bread. You’ll note that this meal was not accompanied by any little gifts from the chef in the form of amuses bouches (or whatever term is now in fashion) and if you want bread pre-starter then you must pay for it. Oh, by the way, the starter cost £18.50p - you can draw your own conclusions about that.

White crab on toast with Granny Smith apple, chives and crispy chicken ski

Here I pause to note that the Head Chef at The Oyster Club is Rosanna Moseley who began her career at the age of 15 at the Aston Marina Bistro in Stone in Staffordshire and then after a period of cooking at the Moat House at Acton Trussell she worked at the mothership Adam’s in Waterloo Street in Birmingham. She began working at Adam’s at the age of 19 in February 2014 and during her time there gave a creditable performance on the BBC television programme Masterchef - The Professionals before taking up her post at The Oyster Club in January 2019.

  So we move on to our main courses. Further head scratching had taken place and eventually  I chose Roasted cod fillet with a roasted crab sauce, fennel and charred hispi cabbage. This was indeed fine fish cooking and probably reasonably priced at £22.50p though the sauce was not quite as exuberant as it looked as though it  might be. I think it’s fair to say that some accompanying vegetables were appropriate and we chose appropriately minted Jersey Royals and accurately stiff stalks of broccoli, ‘roasted tender stem broccoli with chilli’. What was less pleasing was the price of these side dishes - £4.50p each - and the really quite unacceptably small quantity, particularly of the potatoes, that were served. This needs urgent review by the restaurant’s management if many customers are not to leave the restaurant feeling wholly irritated by the experience.

Roasted cod with roasted crab sauce, fennel and charred hispi cabbage

  I finished off with an unremarkable ‘Rhubarb and Champagne trifle’, priced £9, and my companion paid £8 for the sticky toffee pudding which he found to be very good. Our coffee came unaccompanied by petits fours. 

  This restaurant therefore has started its life in Birmingham by delivering fine fish cuisine at high prices but without presenting the diner with a feeling of any real excitement - I know that I would not experience any thrill of expectation if someone suggested I join them for another meal there. I give it 18 to 24 months.

Rosanna Moseley

52. Great British Menu Gets A Disdain For Orthodoxy.

  Having moaned considerably about what was then the upcoming Central Region heat of the Great British Menu in Blog 51, I confess I sat down to watch the 3 episode, - starter and fish, main and dessert and deciding play off of the two highest placed chefs - with mild enthralment as three young Midlands-born chefs struggled magnificently to win a place in the national grand final.

  Although pre-publicity identified Kray Treadwell as having been born in Solihull the programme itself stated several times that he was from Birmingham - perhaps Solihull's too posh and lacking in street-cred to give rise to a tattooed but very personable kitchen worker. Sabrina Gidda's Wolverhampton origins were stressed by emphasising that her father was the first Asian in Britain to run a pub though, and here's BBC consistency for you, later it was stated that he had been one of the first Asians to run a British pub. Ryan Simpson-Trotman's Nuneaton origins were stressed a number of times. Sadly, despite their West Midlands origins, none of the chefs currently works anywhere in the Central region with two employed in London and the Home Counties and Treadwell working in trendy Leeds although the programme did mention that he had worked for a time with Glynn Purnell.

  Things did not get off to a good start with guest judge, Chef Paul Ainsworth of Paul Ainsworth at No 6 in Padstow - a one Michelin starred restaurant - showing a singular lack of enthusiasm for any of the starters giving them only 6 or 7 out of 10 and only Sabrina Gidda wowing the judge with her fish course. Then with the main course Kray Treadwell took over the reins and eventually scored a 10 for his dessert. 

  As a result of the dessert course, Simpson-Trotman was eliminated and Gidda and Treadwell who looked rather like a young culinary David Beckham complete with numerous tattooes, battled each other in the final with Treadwell winning as a result of his remarkable main and dessert courses. The visual appearance of Treadwell's dishes was very much that which we might quickly identify as originating in the kitchens of trendy chef Michael O'Hare's restaurant Man Behind The Curtain in Leeds. More than once judges remarked the first two courses produced by Treadwell were more style than substance.

  His first course was inspired by grime music, which was explained to judge Matthew Fort in the final episode by guest judge veteran Brummie musician Ali Campbell of UB40 as being "British rap" music, though that still leaves me floundering due to the very narrow boundaries of my knowledge of the recent music scene. The dish, called Fire in the Booth was made up of deep fried veal sweetbreads, raw tuna belly, hot sauce, caviar and truffle. Luxurious ingredients but not enjoyed by the final day judges at all with Ali Campbell describing the dish as 'Confusion not fusion' and Oliver Peyton asking "It's rock and roll but is it good rock and roll"

  Treadwell's fish course - Disdain For Orthodoxy - turned out to be a disaster. Treadwell said that the dish was inspired by Punk and was made up of turbot, Cornish ray, mussels and oysters. The dish was served on a special plate with a Punk's head incorporated in it and the ray's bone placed to look like the punk's Mohican hair style. Sabrina Gidda after sampling the crunchy ray's bone was heard to say that if she didn't eat it ever again she would not be upset. The Friday final judges, apart from Matthew Fort, found Treadwell's fish course to be rebarbative and there was much screwing-up of faces when they sampled it. Andi Oliver found elements of it - notably the oyster mousse in a stud-like capsule - to be "quite unpleasant" but Matthew Fort, crunching away on the skate bone, described it as being "by far and away the most interesting dish we've eaten today" and said, "I really like this dish, I really love this dish ..."

  Treadwell's main course turned the tide in his favour. Naming it Shharonnn! in honour of Brummie Heavy Metal musician Ozzie Osbourne (whose wife is called Sharon) Treadwell included in his dish barbecued Wagu beef blackened with charcoal powder, squid ink- blackened purple potatoes, a "blood-like beef sauce", black American-style scones with grated Stilton, purple potatoes, a red cabbage tuile and a hot sauce. The judges were swept away with delight for the dish and Oliver Peyton described it as "absolutely amazing, that is what turned the competition around for you, the meat was amazing, I loved the biscuit, a genuinely great dish".

  And so to Treadwell's dessert - A New Romance - named, rather alarmingly, after Brian Ferry's aftershave though when the judges were sent a sample to sniff Ali Campbell insisted that he had dined with Ferry and he didn't smell like that! The dessert, which had already been awarded 10 points by Paul Ainsworth, was a great success with the judges, being made up as it was, from sous vide-cooked peaches as well as a peach soup which also contained champagne, rose syrup and sea fennel and additionally there was also a sugar tuile containing edible glitter, blow-torched and diced peaches, peach sorbet, white chocolate mousse and edible flowers.

  So, The Midlands has an exciting young chef representing us in this year's grand finals. Though it would be even better if Midlands restaurants were also represented in the competition. Perhaps Treadwell will return to the area of his birth in the coming years and I would be very excited to test out his dishes except, of course, he might like to leave his 'Disdain for Orthodoxy' (the dish not the attitude) back in trendy Leeds.

  The judges' facial reactions to 'Disdain for Orthodoxy':-