103. Planned Reopenings.

  Not all of Birmingham’s leading restaurants plan to reopen at the prescribed hour on the prescribed day when COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed by the government of Boris Johnson.

  Various notifications have come through:-

Purnells. 4 July 2020. The restaurant is planning 2 special dinners to celebrate reopening as well as the 13th anniversary of its first opening but at a time like this is the thirteenth anniversary really one to go to? I’d like to make a reservation but I am superstitious. We old blokes must be careful you know.

Folium. 5 August 2020.

The Wilderness. 7 September 2020.

Simpsons. No date of opening yet announced.

Adam’s. August, date unspecified.

Opheem - 2 July 2020

The 11 June 2020 edition of the Birmingham Post published a detailed article by Sanjeeta Bains on the plans various restaurants were making for their reopening including the news that Craft Dining Rooms had spent £3000 on a thermal imaging camera to help to detect any customers or staff with a raised body temperature. I’m not sure whether that was money well-spent as people with COVID-19 might not have raised temperatures and yet be just as infectious as if they did, so the camera might easily provide a false sense of security. But no-one can deny that the restaurant is doing its best to help diners feel comfortable when returning there.

102. Restaurants To Reopen In July.

Furloughed staff of Craft Dining Rooms celebrate the return to work in the open-air dining area.

  Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, confirmed in The House Of Commons on 23 June 2020 that restaurants would be allowed to reopen on 4 July after 3 months of ‘Lock down’ necessitated by the now diminishing COVID-19 pandemic. He also confirmed that ‘social distancing’ should be reduced from 2 metres to 1 metre ‘plus’ (wearing a face mask and other measures) though it is clearly quite impossible for diners to wear a mask while eating unless they find a new orifice in which to insert the food.
  Many Birmingham restaurants have opened their reservations lists in the past few days in anticipation of the prime minister’s announcement and have been detailing the measures they intend to take to enable their diners to feel safe. Of course feeling safe is not the same thing as being safe. I however  will take the plunge at the end of July and will hopefully be heading for Opheem, Craft Dining Rooms and The Wilderness in the ensuing weeks. It seems fitting to return first to Opheem as that was the last restaurant at which I dined just a few days before Lock-down began. Like Pavlov’s anticipatory dog, my salivary glands are working overtime as I write this
  It seems that a new era in Birmingham and West Midlands dining is about to begin.

Excellent social distancing but where are the face masks?

Less than 1 metre apart but it’s alright - they’re all from the same household.

101. More Trees Than The Bois De Boulougne.

  Following on from Blog 100, I have now managed to obtain a fine copy of Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec’s and Maurice Joyant’s  ‘The Art of Cuisine’ in its English translation (by Marjory Weiner) which was published in its first edition in 1966 by Michael Joseph. It’s a fabulous book and full of curiosities. Not of all of it could be viewed as being applicable to Birmingham in the year 2020 however.
  Take this section for instance - “HOW TO MAKE CHICKEN TENDER Poulets a devenir tendres - In order to make chickens immediately edible, take them out of the hen-run, pursue them into open country, and when you have made them run, kill them with a gun loaded with very small shot. The meat of the chicken, gripped with fright, will become tender. This method used in the country of the Fangs (Gabon) seems infallible even for the oldest and toughest hens”. If you think de Toulouse-Lautrec has substance in his recommendations for chicken tenderising and you intend to follow his advice it would be wise to keep quiet about it. It seems hard to imagine one of Birmingham’s famous chefs pursuing a knackered old chicken down Cornwall Street or Waterloo Street or through the Jewellery Quarter to render its flesh more tender.
  Some illustrations from the book:-

Frontispiece showing a Painting of T-L (at his oven) at Misia and
 Thadée Natanson’s at
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne
by Eduard Vuillard, 1898

  It occurred to me that it might be nice to track down any T-L art in Birmingham and search out anything food-related and even if it weren’t at least come face-to-face with some of his joyous works in the flesh. Of course, it still being the time of Lockdown that was not something that was immediately doable (just like sitting down in Purnell’s to his witty dishes is still not doable). A trail of the internet was not very promising and I have only come up with three pieces of his work in Birmingham’s galleries. In Birmingham Art gallery and Museum there seems to be only one piece - Troupe Della Mlle Églantine which has nothing to do with food. I can’t quite see these young ladies showing a leg while diners sit eating their amuses bouches in the formality of Adam’s. I would have thought Adam’s was more pre-Raphaelite than gay Paree.

  The internet suggests that there are 2 T-L works at the fabulous Barber Institute in Edgbaston. Alas again not food-related in subject. Firstly there is A Woman seated in a garden (c.1890)which might do very well for Simpsons.

And secondly there is Le Divan Japonais (1892) which might sit well in one of Birmingham’s cocktail bars and Gingers Bar feels rather suitable considering the appearance of the lady in the picture.

  Finally one must think that The Wilderness is definitely more Goya than Lautrec.

  I think that vibrant numbered and signed printed menus by suitable local artists, their style to match the restaurant, served with meals, perhaps on special evenings if the expense is rather great, could be a great draw to bringing the fearful back to our restaurants once they are allowed to reopen. It could open up a new collectors’ market.

  It’s worth recalling that in the mid-20teens, Birmingham did indeed have a restaurant which attempted, to a limited extent, to recall the Parisian restaurants of the Belle Époque. The large restaurant at the far end of Corporation Street where one turns the corner into Steelhouse Lane was named Annexe and looked rather smaller as one walked past it. The location was awful with very little passing trade except, I suppose, from persons having business with the nearby Victoria Law Courts. The restaurant was also graced by employing one or two staff who thought that they were Parisian waiters and treated their customers with the appropriate degree of disdain and condescension. The food was expensive with nothing innovative about it which at least would have made the high prices demanded for shockingly small helpings of food more defensible. The interior was rather dark and gloomy and had nothing to do with the bright scenes depicted in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec. Special event evenings were held including the showing of classic French movies - that much at least was innovative and imaginative - and these, for a while at least, made the restaurant wildly popular  avec Les Tripadviseurs of Birmingham who rated it the number 1 restaurant in Birmingham until they probably became fed up of leaving the restaurant hungry despite having paid a large bill and having the experience of being treated with contempt by the waiters. Perhaps they thought that they were being given the genuine French expérience. 

  Annexe closed in July 2017 with the management announcing that their landlords, the owners of Central Hall, wanted to sell the entire building containing the restaurant. Before closing the restaurant did host a Bastille Day celebration.

  Apart from my first visit, when I noticed the restaurant as I was passing (probably the only passing trade it ever got), I sat at a table on the pavement outside downing a small quantity of some extravagantly priced but admittedly tasty onion soup with an equally small amount of bread (a table at nether-Corporation Street alas does not mimic Montmartre sufficiently) I visited Annex only one more time for a mid-week dinner - it seemed to be struggling to attract customers but that had had no effect on the chef’s inability to provide an adequate plate of food or the front of house staff to behave vaguely politely. It seemed likely that it was a restaurant with a limited life expectancy. Pity it could have been a great hit but it’s poor location and tight-fisted and ungracious approach to its customers ensured its doom.

100. Food And Art.

  The presentation of food in fine dining restaurants usually involves the creation of an extraordinary visually interesting and attractive item on the plate and the design of the plate itself is part of the visual spectacle (some chefs involve themselves with the design and production of their restaurant’s ceramics). It isn’t unusual to see diners glancing at each other when a dish is presented with near-wondrous expressions on their faces and whispered words of amazement and pleasure (if the chef has been successful in achieving his/her visual goal). I’m still surprised how positively diners react to that old visual standby of wafting clouds of liquid carbon dioxide. Presentation of food is certainly a visual art in the hands of the right person.

  But I do not want to talk about that side of the art of food, rather the non-edible aspect of it which seems to have been coming to the fore in the past few weeks during this infernal lockdown (I’m not complaining about it, I for one do not want my latest visit to a restaurant to turn to be my last meal if the virus is lurking there).

  Chefs and restaurant owners seem to be turning to art to keep their presence in the public eye and tell us what they are up to to prepare for a new way of dining out. Take for instance the splendid cartoon depicted above which has been used by Craft Dining Rooms to remind us that the restaurant is still here and doing its best to make its diners safe for when the moment comes for reopening. A simple yet easily recognised rendition of the restaurant’s entrance and its outdoor pods (about which I felt very cynical when they first appeared last year but now they seem like an incredibly clever idea) executed in a chic style which reminds me of cartoons of the 1970s. 

  And Kray Tredwell, clearly champing at the bit to get his new restaurant, 670 Grams, swinging its doors open to its first customers, has adopted an anarchic, eye-catching motif which clearly says everything about what he wants to achieve with his food and which reminds me of a cross between a Jackson Pollock-inspired plate of food by Michael O’Hare and the cartoons of Ralph Steadman.

  Brad Carter of Carters Of Moseley too has been exploring art in his communications with customers. A few weeks ago a colourfully cosy cartoon of his restaurant by night bathed in a reassuring warm light was used in email sent to his customers and he has also been using some very accomplished photography to promote his weekly programme of selling high quality ingredients linked to instructions on how to prepare it to create a Carters-style meal.

  The artist Henry (so his mother named him, she being English) Toulouse-Lautrec, famous more perhaps for his portraiture of alcohol drinking than food consumption itself, is a character who indisputably has no links with The West Midlands but was pleasingly suitably hedonistic and epicurean for modern fine diners and gourmands to identify themselves with (though not to the extent that they should aim to expire from a combination of alcoholic liver disease and syphilis as did Henry). But in a discussion of Art and Food he is worthy of a mention even if his favourite English restaurants were to be found in London rather than the nation’s workshop.

  TL, from a highly privileged background, similar to a lot of today’s Labour politicians or denizens of Moseley, was sent vast amounts of food from his rural family and enjoyed preparing it to make lavish repasts. He recorded his recipes and planned to publish them in a book but was thwarted by rotting away at the age of 36. Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, discovered the recipes after his death and subsequently published them. A lavish and beautifully illustrated edition in English was published in 1966.

  His recipes were not necessarily for the faint-hearted - such not-now-to-be-tried recipes as heron grilled over a vine (unlikely even to surface in the rock and roll blackness that is The Wilderness) and a Fresh squirrel dish come to mind. And the chef at Pulperia (if it ever opens properly) might have his or her mind boggled by steak à la Toulouse which to be cooked to perfection requires a vine-wood fire and three tranches of steak, all smothered in Dijon mustard, and then piled on top of each other and grilled together on the vine-wood fire until the edges of all three are blackened at which point the outer two steaks are discarded. The middle steak should then be perfection personified.

  TL rarely ate in Paris restaurants as he enjoyed the food he prepared himself rather more but when he crossed La Manche and stayed in London he enjoyed dining out at restaurants including the Café Royale where he met Oscar Wilde whose tastes were equally Epicurean and The Criterion but the place at which he most liked to dine was Sweeting’s, a noted fish restaurant. His greatest delight there was Skate wings with Black butter and he wrote joyous letters home praising the dish.

  It’s interesting that TL was able to derive such pleasure from dining out in England - it rather flies in the face of the long-standing tale that English food has always been poor to dire.

  The English edition of Toulouse-Lautrec’s book, The Art of Cuisine, is exquisite and a must for any food lover’s bookshelves. Like many dishes presented at our West Midlands fine restaurants the book is a visual delight first and then the rest follows.

 I think that our restaurant owners and chef patrons could pursue the visual arts more - TL-style or otherwise - gay (in the old sense of the word) and bold and colourful in presenting themselves to the hesitant diners of Birmingham as they try to draw them out of their secure homes back into their dining rooms. They’ve made a start but there must be some furloughed TL-wannabe artists out there who could help to boost a rocket-propelled take-off for our dining out trade.

At the Café La Mie, painted c.1891

Monsieur Boileau at the Café, 1893

  Food on a plate as art is principally uniquely gustatory and olfactory but our first reaction to it is usually visual - as art it is the culinary equivalent of painting. But one special area of food presentation which should be mentioned is patisserie which in itself is a form of sculpture. So I am pleased to see that the marvellous Mary Ashman (Maz) the baker and Dalvinder Cheema (Dali) the decorator here in remote West Heath, have found ways of continuing their business during Lockdown (what an annoying piece of terminology) by home delivery not only of their exemplary cakes but also afternoon teas.

  Cuisine as art - you need sculpture in your gallery as much as paintings).

99. World Gin Day.

The BBC, mostly quite dire, has its moments. Today’s Saturday Kitchen Live reminded me that it is World Gin Day, a beacon shining out across a turbulent sea of statue-demolishing and lurking viruses. What fun for Matt Tebbutt and Olly Smith and their guests to sink several glasses of gin and get paid for doing so. And of course it is the official birthday of one of the world most famous gin sippers - The Queen no less.
  Olly Smith waxed lyrical for various reasons about 4 different gins but was rather cool on the subject of one of my favourites, Tom gin. Well, each to their own. First he recommended the wannabe Gordon’s lookalike, Greyson’s, from Aldi on the basis of its drinkability for the excruciatingly modest price of £5.99 per bottle. Good for cocktails especially. It’s probably as authentic as Lymeswold cheese but then again I did really like Lymeswold.

Then on to the better quality and obviously rather more expensive London Dry Gin, Dartmouth, about which regular presenters and guests alike waxed lyrical.

  And then on, representing the flavoured gins, to the West Midlands gin, Chase farm’s Pink Grapefruit and Pomelo gin from Herefordshire, which I love served with tonic and a slice of pink grapefruit and a dish of green olives. I first tasted it while staying at the wonderful Fishmore Hall (home of Forrell’s) just outside Ludlow where I was staying for the 2019 Ludlow Food Festival and so in love with it was I that I had to buy a bottle from Chases’ stand at the festival. And so in love with it am I that have been forced to go and make myself a glass just now and remind myself of what a fabulous drink it is.

  Smith’s final recommendation was from London - well nobody’s perfect - the exquisite-sounding Mary-Le-Bone Orange and Geranium Gin. From Smith’s description this looks like a road to go down.

  But what of gin from the West Midlands? Well we’ve already mentioned Chase from Herefordshire. So forgive me for getting out some of my collection. Here in Birmingham, or at least nearby, we have Langley’s Old Tom, vital to make a Tom Collins, but to be appreciated for its sweetness just with tonic, which drove the population of 18th century England down its Hogarthian gin-soaked state of inertia.

From the Black Country I have bottles of colour-changing Dr Eamer’s Firelit Elixir Black Country Gin (citrus, juniper, coriander, angelica, orris and cassia); from Greywood Distillery in Lichfield there is Fifth Spire Gin (“handcrafted in small batches using citrus fruits”); Peaky Blinders Spiced Dry Gin (Sadler’s Brewery in Lye near Stourbridge) with the label joyously reading “Produce of the British Isles by order of Sadler’s Peaky Blinder” (what fun).

  We must not forget the fabulous Cotswold Gin from near Shipston-on-Stour in Worcestershire which is an excruciatingly delicious gin and which I first had the pleasure of sampling soon after its arrival on the scene at the wonderful No 33 The Scullery very soon after it opened in Stratford upon Avon. The distillery seems a little obsessed with its whiskeys and I think the gin was a step on the distillery’s road to whiskey production (we recall the whiskey-like 1616 Barrel-aged Gin, a part-bottle of which I still possess and know now that it assuredly does NOT go with tonic (I really should  read the details printed on the label). The 1616 gin was marketed as honouring Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death and claims to reflect the style of gin of his time being distilled from malt spirit in pot stills with “juniper and select botanicals” and “aged in American oak wine barrels”. A gem to hold on to till the right moment. Currently also in my collection is a partly used bottle of Cotswold’s Ginger Gin flavoured with orange peel, candied ginger, honey, juniper, and  ‘woody spices’.

  Back to Herefordshire and a gin which usually has a stall at the Ludlow Food Festival Gun Dog Gin originating from Ledbury which I always like to visit. The rhubarb gin is a great pleasure to me.

  And from Bishops Castle in Shropshire I have a very nicely presented bottle Chilton Seville Orange Gin which I bought at Ludlow in a nice little sack bag. 

  So, as I leave the West Midlands for a second or two (metaphorically not physically, you understand), I confess that I have a special place in my heart for a glass of Hendrick’s and a nice little slice of cucumber and I still worship at the feet of Monkey 47, which I was informed by the excellent barman at Opheem, is best served with a slice of pink grapefruit and his belief on this matter was proven to be exactly correct. Of course if you go to Purnell’s Gingers Bar (pray to all that’s holy that it survives these difficult times) you can indulge yourself in a Glynn and Tonic which with Glynn Purnell’s wisdom is of course made from Monkey 47.

  Finally let us return to my little corner of Birmingham, on the edge of Worcestershire, and look at this unpromising bottle of Sainsbury’s Dry Gin and ask ourselves what exactly is inside. Answer:- my ten year old homemade Damson Gin. Made with damsons grown from trees in the garden and really rather fine. The good news is that, after a couple of terrible years, the damsons are growing beautifully this year ready for a new batch of damson gin to be made as the year moves along. So this really is a rather enjoyable World Gin Day.