I am lucky enough to visit most of the better Birmingham restaurants from time to time but, now in my eleventh year of visiting Cornwall Street, Purnell’s remains my favourite. Every time I visit I think that the food there keeps getting better and better.
A sunny February afternoon in Birmingham, everywhere more and more glamorous high rise buildings are shooting upwards, the tram line gradually extends itself along Broad Street, Brindley Place has a new restaurant every time you look and Paradise Place promises to deliver much in the near future. But take a turn through the Colmore Business District and there it is - still there - the almost anonymous, secretive-looking Purnell’s on a corner in Cornwall Street almost opposite Opus which is much easier to spot. You could miss it if you didn’t know where it was.
Straight to the food. The single Purnell’s chip, now hardly recognisable with its fluffy coat of grated cheese and neatly covered by a single sorrel leaf, languishing on a neat piece of slate alongside Glynn Purnell’s gorgeous pieces of black meringue - ‘edible charcoal’ - and black potatoes, heavenly light lemon-flavoured mash potato, in a raven black coat. Triumphant Purnell gems. I suppose the new cheesy chip is a grand little Purnell joke playing on the gruesome trend in recent years of the young in particular to want their chips drenched in melted cheese and thus add even more to the enormous number of calories that can be consumed in one meal. Purnell’s cheesy chip is an elegant version of keeping up with youth and its ill-judged fads.
On to the starter proper - escabeche of a red beetroot (a juicy lightly-pickled wafer-thin slice) with the addition of other types of beetroot, a sprig of watercress with little blobs of watercress sauce and a wasabi crumble lifting everything from a beetroot dish to a forever memorable beetroot dish.
The second starter. Delicious to the level of 10 out of 10. The most perfect chicken liver parfait balanced beautifully by little pieces of red wine-marinated pear with a clever little katalfi nest sitting on top to add a wholly enjoyable nibbly element and all with a pretty little hat of a single red-veined sorrel leaf. Feed me this course every day please.
The fish course. Now it seems the fish course has a new term added to the menu - the initially apparently perplexingly unnecessary French-English language fusion of Fish du jour which is of course another splendid little Purnell joke thrown in as an amuse de langue rather than an amuse bouche to sustain the smile on our faces while we’re waiting for the course to come along which it does with perfect timing. The fish du jour is tasty pollack with a greener than green parsley sauce, very edible chopped up clams and a kohlrabi remoulade. Something new, I think, and very pretty too especially if you like green things.
I moan a lot about the ceaseless serving of pork belly or ox/pig cheeks as the main meat course in good quality restaurants. I understand why the meats feature so often on menus but generally wish that chefs could come up with something different more often. So if you’re going to find a beef cheek on your plate yet again then it’s got to be really good. So it was that I looked down at a plate of slow cooked daube of beef served with barbecued leek (very good), mushroom ragout, creamed celeriac and the overwhelming primitive pleasure of a deep fried breadcrumbed onion ring. The beef was bathed in a glistening unctiousness as one looked down on one’s plate and that unctiousness was carried through to the eating. The beef was, beyond doubt, unimpeachable. I nibbled my onion ring in little sections to prolong the pleasure though I would have been even happier if the onion had been somewhat sweeter and perhaps cooked for a few seconds longer. Still, given that this was a course based on nothing more than ox cheek, it had all come together pretty triumphantly.
I’m an unusual individual in that I generally avoid chocolate desserts. But the chocolate tart served up with its excellent, crispy pastry and accompanied by the two gorgeously complementary flavours of dramatic mango and dreamy passion fruit, was a happy dish with which to close the meal.
The service remains as excellent as ever in its own amiably and comfortably relaxed but highly efficient way though there are new faces dealing with the customers. Sonal Clare has now left his managerial role at Purnell’s and exchanged his lounge suit for jeans and trainers as general manager at The Wilderness and his place has been taken over seamlessly by Jarek Samborski, originally from Poland, who began training as a chef in Lublin but found himself instead working front of house and then coming to Britain and working firstly in Sussex. He came to Birmingham in 2015 and was appointed Assistant Restaurant Manager under Sonal Clare in October of that year. This sustained period of familiarisation with Purnell’s is clearly showing through. He has the necessary charm and understanding of his customers and can clearly schmooze his diners highly effectively though in a different way from the polished Clare-schmooze. His wine recommendations are to be highly trusted. He said that he has now appointed a new sommelier - Adrian - who told me he had been at Purnell’s for just 3 weeks having arrived from France and naturally he is still finding his way around. Perhaps he will introduce a greater emphasis on French wine, he joked that he would but many a true word is spoken in just.
Purnell’s is still Purnell’s. That’s how I like it.
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| Jarek Samborski |
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