125. The Roaring Twenties - Birmingham’s Michelin Three Star Restaurant.

   It’s the early 1920s. The Great War is now a memory albeit a recent one and there is hope that nothing like it will take place on this planet again. The second wave of the great influenza pandemic has burnt itself out. Men home from the war, at least those who have come home, are trying to settle back into ordinary life. Political change is in the air. Those who can afford it would like to have a good time.

  So, here in Birmingham in those early years of the Roaring Twenties where would you go for a slap-up meal? You might turn to A Guide To Birmingham 1924 published by John Bartholomew & Co. which provides a useful list of presumably satisfactory places to dine in:- 

  

Barrow was located in Corporation Street. It was an important establishment in the city having been founded by John Cadbury at 93 Bull Street in 1824 as a tea, coffee and cocoa-selling business and situated next door the shop of his father, Richard Cadbury, who had opened a drapers shop at 92 Bull Street. The business known as Barrows Stores was taken over by Richard Cadbury Barrow. Under the redevelopment scheme put into action by Birmingham’s greatest mayor and political figure, Joseph Chamberlain, a new Street in the town’s centre - Corporation Street - was constructed in the 1870s and cut through Bull Street removing part of Barrows Stores and meaning that the business then became located on the corner of Bull Street and Corporation Street. 

  The old premises were demolished in 1904 and Barrows was then located in a new building with a restaurant on the first floor in part to enable the shop’s customers to sample the tea and coffee on sale. The cafe and restaurant was opened in 1905 and described thus, “The Cafe has large windows overlooking Corporation Street, from which a view of the busy throng below can be obtained. It is elegantly and tastefully furnished, is panelled with fumed oak and lit by electricity”. As the early years of the century passed more cafes and restaurants were added to the Stores to cater for the varying tastes of different customers so that by 1930 there were six - ‘General’, ‘Seasonal’, ‘Adam’, ‘Picture’, ‘Smoking’ and ‘Tudor’. It is not clear which of these is suggested by the list of restaurants published in the 1924 list above.

  In the early 1960s the original buildings in Bull Street were demolished and Barrows Stores moved to a smaller building in Bull Street. Barrows Stores Ltd was sold to a large supermarket chain in 1966. The stores featured in the movie Tolkein about the early life of the author JRR Tolkein, where in his youth,  the writer is depicted as ‘hanging out’ with his close friends who called themselves The Tea Club. The facade is recreated satisfactorily in the movie but unfortunately the film makers chose to film the movie in Liverpool! 

The above list was published in 1924. Pleasingly a couple of months ago I obtained a very decent copy of the 1925 8th Edition of the Michelin Guide Great Britain with its blue cover. Restaurants were described with stars though the meaning of the stars was rather different from today. “In this edition we have indicated a number of restaurants which we can recommend to tourists who prefer such establishments for meals. Unless otherwise stated they are not open on Sundays. As a guide to cuisine, appointments and general accommodation we have divided them into three categories shown thus:- *** Luxurious, well-appointed restaurants, ** Very good restaurants but not with the same luxury of appointments and variety of menu, * Simple but well kept restaurants”

  So how many Birmingham restaurants did the Michelin Guide deign to list in 1925? Well, only one actually. But it did have a three star rating so you could say that it was Birmingham’s first ever Michelin starred restaurant. It was the Exchange located at no 9 Stephenson Place. And it had three stars. There’s many a present-day Birmingham chef would give his right and left arms, both legs and other vital parts of his anatomy to have three stars at this present time. 

 

 The Exchange building was opened on 2 January 1865 and was such a big event that The Illustrated London News featured the grand opening on the cover of its 14 January 1865 edition (see below). The building was located on the corner of Stephenson Place and Corporation Street and among the various facilities there were refreshment rooms which, one assumes, became the sumptious restaurant which Michelin felt to be the only dining place worth mentioning in Birmingham in 1925. Criminally, in the ghastly large scale vandalism which resulted in the wholesale destruction of beautiful buildings in the city which took place in the 1960s to make way for vile brutalistic concrete carbuncles, the Exchange Building was demolished in 1965. We have no knowledge of Michelin’s view of the cuisine served at the Exchange in the 3 decades before it disappeared as no Michelin Guide for Great Britain was published from 1931 to 1974.

  So much has been lost. If you invent a time machine, hop back to 1925 for me and go for dinner at the Exchange and please photograph the dining room for me along with a copy of the menu. Even better, take me with you.