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