Sometimes you have to give in to self-satisfaction and today I am basking in it. How pleased I am with myself that I have not yet shrugged off this mortal coil and as an old bloke now there’s a lot to look back on and so much to appreciate now while the old mortal coil keeps sparking.
I’m also appallingly self-satisfied at my having developed an interest in food when I did and in living in and coming from the city and region where remarkable things are happening when it comes to food without having to suffer the horrors of living in London.
And I’m terribly self-satisfied that here I am in Birmingham where a new generation of remarkable young chefs are taking the city’s food forward seemingly to new heights. And it’s good that some of them are Birmingham and West Midlands-born and look as though they are about to define what we eat around these parts in the coming years.
Talking of which, I arrive at an exceedingly happy event which increases my self-satisfaction even more because I was there - Kray Treadwell’s return to Birmingham and his weekly pop-up restaurant at the new Selina hotel in Livery Street in the Jewellery Quarter. Kray, who came to attention when he won the Midlands heats of Great British Menu in 2019 by producing the most original if somewhat controversial dishes of the competition - his fish course, Disdain For Orthodoxy, a tribute to Punk music which delighted Matthew Fort but appalled some of the other judges and his remarkable Shharonnn! (a tribute to Birmingham musician Ozzie Osbourne) which swept the judges off their feet with the sheer pleasure of it) (see Blog 52) - originates from Solihull and first worked in a restaurant kitchen whilst at college in Glynn Purnell’s The Asquith. After working at Purnell’s he moved to York to work at The Blind Swine where he became aware of Michael O’Hare and then moved to O’Hare’s The Man Behind The Curtain in Leeds, clearly picking up some of his style from O’Hare, where he became Head Chef, a post he occupied for over 3 years during which period his participation in Great British Menu took place.
And now he has returned to Birmingham and has done a joint pop-up with Andrew Sheridan at Craft Dining Rooms at the end of 2019 and now is doing several weekly pop-up sessions at Serena Hotel for which I set out recently to get my first taste of the Tredwell touch. The plan was 8 courses and 8 diners and everything was led off by a welcome glass of Prosecco accompanied by a little snack of a nature which involved some stretching of the mind to believe that it existed - crispy pork skin (which had the texture of a prawn cracker rather than a pork scratching) with a lemon curd and black olive dip. Well, it worked for me.
Seated then at our proper table along came an oyster marinated in gin perfectly accompanied by melon similarly marinated in the same alcohol all with a little bit of gold leaf draped on it to emphasise the luxury of it all.
Much enjoyable silliness followed with a piece of Parmesan coated in crispy breadcrumbs and accompanied with little cubes of soothing pineapple. Kray Tredwell follows Glynn Purnell in giving his own twist on that throwback to the 70s - cheese and pineapple on a stick.
And then a true classic. Fabulously dressed spider crab - the crabbiest tasting crab dish I’ve had in years - with a little scone. Flavour of the highest level.
Then our very own chance to sample a dish as close to one of the GBM dishes as possible - Shharonnn! complete with Ozzy Osbourne plate. Truly fabulously cooked fillet steak - delicious and tender beyond words - with American scones turned black, I assume with the use of squid ink. The steak alone would have sufficed - the scones were very salty and there was rather more of them than I needed. But I also identified on the plate little patches of the ‘blood-like beef sauce’ we’d seen on GBM and there were dark potato chips, in the compilation. Great stuff
And so to the exquisite little dessert - a dainty little ginger sponge, as light as a feather, with ginger and coconut. Lovely.
Afterwards everyone had some time to chat with Chef. I asked him about his new restaurant. He will not be working at La Mariposa, as I had previously read, but will be planning to open his own restaurant named after the birth weight of his baby, in the Custard Factory in Digbeth around May this year. He will probably be offering a tasting menu but cheaper than elsewhere to try to give chance for young people to come and experience fine dining.
He is very much looking forward to being his own boss and cooking what he wants to cook. He comes over as serious and passionate about his food and isn’t worried about giving a critique of other hoary establishments. He recalled how he visited The Fat Duck in Bray as a teenager despite being pretty hard up and not being all that impressed, feeling that the place got its reputation more from the theatrics surrounding the serving of the food than from the quality of the dishes themselves.
No matter, my Pop-Up first experience of Tredwell’s food tells me that while he might produce some dramatic-looking and witty dishes he certainly does not need a lot of props to convince me that he is a great chef. It looks as though the food scene in Birmingham is moving on to even greater heights and he will be one of the young men leading it.
Post Scriptum - In the course of our conversation the subject of retirement came up (mine, not his obviously) and I asked about whether Richard Turner (Turner’s, Maribel) was going to take up another venture but it seems that he has indeed retired. And who can blame him? I heartily recommend it as a way of life.
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