161. New York At The Grand.

 

 

 Lucy The Labrador and I have rapidly developed a romance with the reopened Grand Hotel in Birmingham’s finest street, Colmore Row. The staff are exceptional in their obvious pleasure they take in  their work and the enjoyment they seem to get out of making their guests feel welcome and at home. The hotel is opulent in a 2020s Birmingham sort of way, very comfortable, inhabited by well chosen, enjoyable pieces of art and gloriously appointed looking out as it does over the Cathedral Square where Birmingham’s tiny and oh-so-tasteful cathedral, the gorgeous Georgian St. Phillip’s Church, sits with the Rotunda in the background, gulls and pigeons in constant motion in the air and on the ground, numerous men on bikes waiting for some food business or the other to call them to deliver a takeaway to some inner city denizen who can not be bothered to prepare their own food - evening food I can understand but do people really want to have breakfast delivered as well? - judging by the number of delivery cyclists hanging around the square at 6.45AM when I took the dog for her first morning constitutional, it would appear so. Can’t they do themselves a Weetabix or a piece of toast or something? Is modern day Birmingham so decadent now?

  Is decadence really a bad thing? you might fire back at me. The Grand’s bar, Madeleine’s, certainly has the air of smouldering and celebratory decadence, all relaxation and lamps and comfortable sofas and chairs and clever waitresses who are adept at persuading you to have a second negroni before you leave this more Parisian than Paris salon to go to dinner. The place has a buzz and even though the city centre is still partially denuded of humans Madeleine’s does not seem too short of drinkers and socialisers even midweek. And that evening was the first evening that the hotel’s new restaurant, Isaac’s, was to be opened and I had a reservation there.

  The decor in Isaac’s is stupendous and again the staff are exceptionally good. But who thought it was a good idea to make the restaurant in Birmingham’s premier hotel a New York-style, sort of expensive fast food joint? I was thrilled to be eating at The Grand, I was expecting elegance, fine food, a refined atmosphere, soul, the spirit of Birmingham in its finest hours. But somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea that the restaurant should be modern American but expensive. My fellow diners, almost shouting in their conversations at times, created a level of noise more suited to a cattle market, more Bullring than Five Star hotel; at times I feared that this was not stylish decadence but just a superannuated  Macdonald’s, but that was unkind. I had the feeling that the concept at least might have Isaac Horton, the Victorian entrepreneur who was responsible for building The Grand and after whom the restaurant is named, turning in his grave in Key Hill cemetery. Is there really any merit in New York-style cuisine, unless you fancy a hot dog from a street vendor?, I ask myself, and Mr Horton in the Afterlife might be wondering the same thing. I can quite understand that market research and economics led to the choice of restaurant in the hotel but my heart aches for what might have been.

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 To start I had Maryland crabcakes. There were two served with a mint and pea salad and also sriracha yoghurt which introduced a trendy ingredient into the dish, though only two little blobs of it which really did not contribute much at all. The crab cakes were quite edible and tasty with the crab flavour coming through which is as much as one may ask for I suppose and which quite often is not the case in some dining establishments.

  

  Here’s a tip, if you’re going to pay a not inconsequential sum of money for a half-lobster Newburg and feel as though you can sit back and enjoy every expensive mouthful, don’t do it in a busy, noisy restaurant. No matter how good this dish itself is, it’s not going to hit the mark. As it was, my lobster Newburg did seem a little inconsequential - it was lavish enough and tasty but in the end just a meal rather than the thrilling gastronomic experience to which I had been looking forward. It was served with some ‘shoestring fries’ (give me proper chips please though to be fair the waitress had warned me that they were more of a garnish than anything), a slightly irritating bowl containing ‘cayenne Hollandaise’, and ‘Madeira’ which I expect meant that that fortified wine was used in the preparation of the Newburg rather than sherry and I splashed out on a side order of ‘charred corn with black pepper butter’ which again was unremarkable but edible. Afterwards, I looked  at the list of desserts but did not really fancy any of them so I just rounded off with coffee which was not accompanied by any little closing nibble.

  By the way, the breakfast served to guests in Isaac’s is exceptionally good - superb ingredients cooked beautifully (the scrambled egg would win a prize if there were a Best scrambled egg competition). My Grand breakfast filled me for the day till I set off for the Michelin plated South Asian restaurant, Asha’s, in nearby Edmund Street.

  The restaurant, or what little I saw of it, is colourful, even vibrant, and reminiscent of an upmarket English Indian restaurant from the late 1970s and 1980s. It was also busy, crowded and very noisy and though well-staffed in front of house, the strain was telling as the evening went by. I was seated in an outer portion of the restaurant, a sort of overspill, that seems to have been rather less atmospheric in terms of decor than the inner sanctum judging by photographs but not personal experience.

 A wide range of drinks including cocktails was on offer and I had a cheerful Singapore Sling which I rather enjoyed. I did not enjoy at all the starter I chose which was a large bowl of what appeared to be Bombay mix with small biscuits on top of a small amount of mashed potato with various coloured liquids covering it - this, so the menu told me, was papdi chaat, “deep fried flour pastries with mashed potatoes, topped with sweetened yogurt, mint and tamarind chutney. Served chilled”. I had clearly made the wrong choice from an over complicated menu, the sort of menu with which one is presented at numerous chain restaurants. 

  But I stayed with it and was very pleased to have chosen a wondrous Handi gosht, exquisitely tender, slowly cooked, joyously tasty lamb in a thick comforting sauce which the menu described as “Bhuna lamb in typical Punjabi style with onions, tomatoes, green pepper, minced lamb and garam masala”. I had this with a pleasing lacha parantha, “layered bread made from whole wheat flour”. My only real complaint about the main course was that the serving was rather too large (though no doubt most of this country’s now severely over fed population would disagree with that observation) to be enjoyable unless one was to feel the guilt of wasting good food. But, that said, an excellent dish.

  For dessert I chose coconut kulfi which was served in the shape of a lolly. This was quite edible but not the most delicious kulfi I have ever been served, I regretted not choosing the mango flavoured kulfi instead. Though the staff were lovely, service had deteriorated quite badly by then and the noise created by the Friday night diners would not have been out of place in a football stadium where the home team had just scored a goal. I was glad to leave once I had finally been able to secure the attention of a member of the front of house team.

  It may be that I had been unfortunate to have been seated in a peripheral, less atmospheric area, to have chosen the wrong starter and possibly the wrong dessert and Asha’s may still be attempting to get back to normal with the post-pandemic reopening but my visit there confirmed that a Michelin recommendation is not a guarantee of fine food particularly at present. I shall not be rushing back to what now seems to be an overblown local restaurant which is part of a chain. 

160. Wild Mushroom In Gloucestershire

 

  Quite where the West Midlands ends and where the West Country begins is debatable. The big question to ask is “Is Gloucestershire in The Midlands or the South West?” I claim the northern-most two thirds of the county for The Midlands, certainly it was an important part of the Kingdom of Mercia, and allow what is the fairly recently invented administrative area of South Gloucestershire to be placed in the West Country. This gives a lover of West Midlands food the bulk of the highly thought of restaurants in Gloucestershire to add to his list of places to visit - nowhere more so than the fine and extremely affluent town of Cheltenham, location for a long time of what was the West Midlands only two Michelin starred restaurant, Le Champignon Sauvage.

  So, on a fine June day with Lucy The Labrador necessarily resting in the coolness of the house, I set off for Birmingham city centre and to take the 40 minute train journey from New Street to Cheltenham and lunch at David Everett Matthias’ now one starred restaurant. I had lunched there twice before, both times when it had still held two stars. On the first visit the meal had been fine but not enough, I thought, to hold two stars and the second visit, not long before it lost its second star, was verging on the catastrophic with some fine, beautifully cooked little pieces of plaice near enough submerged in an unpleasantly bitter beurre noisette and under a monstrous pile of broad beans, rendered inedible by their sheer number. If any Michelin inspector had a similar experience then it is hardly surprising that the second star had been lost.

  Still that was then and this is now ....

 

 My most recent visit to Le Champignon Sauvage was an altogether happier experience. A lunch of great pleasure. The food served was immaculate and it was clear why the Michelin inspectors still favour this place. Finely judged, accurate, precise cooking where the ingredients indisputably completed each other; this was the work of a doyen, no gimmicks but still fresh and modern, I could wax lyrical about the meal for some time.

  There was, as well, a doyenne in front of house, one who knows how to interact perfectly with her diners - Helen Everett Matthias, chef’s wife and she had excellent and charming support. The dining room looked fresh, bright and spacious and the several paintings on the walls added to the air of good taste matched with comfort and one felt one had permission to sit back and relax and enjoy what was to come. 

  And it was indeed hard not to enjoy what was to come. My dining companion had the set lunchtime menu which was extraordinarily good value with some excellent dishes which, though he is often a curmudgeonly sort, left him singing the restaurant’s praises and unable to find any faults.

  I opted for the more expensive à la carte menu which was rather more than three courses. To start two delicious appetisers - a splendidly powerfully cheesy one and a “Please Sir I want more!” fishy one. Then there was a charming little bowl of savoury but not even vaguely wobbly pannacotta, the lack of wobble was not an issue, and a choice of four excellent-looking breads - we both chose a generously-sized onion-flavoured brioche. I was by then we’ll set on a course that told me that if I had not particularly enjoyed myself in the past, I was certainly going to do so that day.

  And so to the dishes mentioned on the menu. A sumptuous starter of finely cooked, ‘lightly poached’ hake which emphasised Everett Matthias’ reputation for precise and perfectly judged cooking. It was a beautiful plate, bridal in its lovely whiteness, enhanced by the white asparagus and textured with the hazelnut bon bons. A scattering of sea herbs made their contribution to flavour and texture and their greenness added little contrasts of colour to add to the visual pleasure of the dish. What a memorable picture it makes and what a joyous memory the taste and texture leave with the diner lucky enough to have been served it.

  For the main course I embarked on the dish of Highfield Farm poussin, Chef’s expertise shining through in its cooking, with poussin cream and and finely flavoured slowly roasted onion and seasonal asparagus, every dish should have one at this time of year. Another picture on the plate and a delight in the mouth.

 

 The dessert alas was a disappointment to me. I chose ‘roasted white chocolate and apricot mousse’, apricot and basil sorbet and almond. What appeared was not what I was expecting - the mousse was served in cannelloni - fair enough though I did not pick up the flavour of apricot and this was served with a bitter chocolate sorbet sitting on a bed of crushed nuts and raspberries scattered around. The raspberries were a fine foil to the mousse but the bitter chocolate, which would have been a dream to the connoisseur of extravagantly dark chocolate, was far too bitter for the mousse and overwhelmed it. If there had been a problem with the apricot and basil sorbet then it would have been best to omit the sorbet altogether than to assault the mousse with the very bitter chocolate.

  My happiness with the meal bounced back with the astonishingly excellent six different petit fours served with the coffee.

  Apart from the dessert turning out to be different from what I was expecting and, I thought, the chocolate sorbet proving to be far too aggressive in flavour for the other ingredients of the dessert to bear, this was an excellent meal by, as I wrote above, one of the West Midlands’ doyens of restaurant cuisine.

159. Back In The Marches.

   I am happy to say that I visit Ludlow reasonably often and am always very content to stay at Fishmore Hall where Forelles restaurant is located in its pretty little conservatory with Clee Hill in the distance looking down on it. I have reported on meals eaten at Forelles a number of times and so will not go on again at length save to say, even though former Head Chef Joe Gould  left there in May to cross the border and venture into Sturgeon (the politician not the large fish) territory. Nevertheless I had a couple of dishes this time from the à la carte menu which I had not previously tried and a great pleasure they were; Fishmore’s residual kitchen team are clearly in excellent form and spirit even if they have lost the team captain.

  As a first course I had the prettiest little starter that I have seen this year - a sophisticated dish of goats cheese with a cider jelly, caramelised red onion, parsley gel on a bed of oat and walnut bread (I think) with a pleasing potato circle and as a garnish the surely the prettiest little viola flower ever - yellow with purple veins - whose beauty should not be lost by eating it but which should be pressed in a book as a souvenir of a very fine starter.

  

During the same meal I also had an extremely delicious and powerfully flavoured main course centred on Iberico pork. This was a great pleasure - a generous helping of unctuous pork on a bed of nicely acidic gochujang, little chunks of grilled fennel and caraway seeds and soothing consommé with a crisp which mimicked  in appearance, but sadly not in flavour, a strip of pork crackling, all topped off by a courgette flower. There was also pak choi which was apt with this dish though for me it is one of those vegetables which it would have better if it had never been introduced in British restaurants, limp looking and limp flavoured - I do not blame Chef for this but instead I blame the person who first thought that mankind should eat the vegetable. However I suppose it’s greenness rounded off the visual impact of the dish, wrapping itself around the bountiful slices of pork as it did.

 

 I have been intending to dine at the Michelin-plated Mortimers in Corve Street for some time and I finally achieved my goal on this visit to the town that may be viewed as the birthplace of the modern West Midlands gastronomic revolution. Housed in the building that was home to Ken Adams’ Bib Gourmand-winning Oaks restaurant and then Claude Bosi’s Hibiscus and then Will Holland’s Le Becasse, Wayne Smith’s  Mortimers has a charming courtyard which is a good place to sit on a fine summer evening imbibing a fine Negroni and grazing on complementary olives and tiny sweet, tangy peppers before moving indoors to the gracious wood-panelled rooms where dinner is served. Perhaps the dining room is a little dark and oppressive for a long, bright summer’s evening but it certainly comes into its own as autumn draws in and the days are shorter and dignified cosiness is required (I recall that being the case from when I last visited in the dying days of Le Becasse.

  Service, after a pleasing welcome by Tamsin, Wayne Smith’s wife who comes over as an excellent host, was highly laudable throughout the meal and I felt very comfortable as the very enjoyable appetisers appeared, including an amusing mini-fish finger with little dots of tartare sauce on it and a witty little ice cream cornet filled with liver pâté plus a cheeky cheesy little tart. I was rapidly developing a mildly euphoric state of mind and this was only heightened by a fabulous scallop dish - perfectly pan-fried, delicious scallop with lardo, textures of apple and an entirely apt series of crunches provided by the presence of a scattering of fragments of toasted hazelnut. Fine dining indeed.

  

Was it to be upwards and onwards? Next came another starter, this time of Gressingham duck rillette with a happy little morsel of duck breast, a joyously sweet piece of toasted brioche and various little items which injected orange flavours into the dish. Great stuff! What could go wrong?

  It’s hard presently to have a tasting menu without a course of heritage or just in-season tomatoes slotted into it. This is often a refreshing and reviving dish opening the gates to the main course. The menu did indeed include a tomato dish at this stage - “Isle of Wight tomatoes, buratta, basil” The buratta worked well but the tomatoes were sadly disappointing, colourful but not as rich in flavour as I have had at some other restaurants in recent times and they also had a vague mushiness to them which was not altogether pleasant. I felt that this was a course which could easily be removed from the menu with a benefit to the overall meal.

  

And so to the main event - ‘Lamb, Alsace bacon, baby gem’. This dish started off at a disadvantage because next to loathsome pak choi and utterly unacceptable mange tout, charred baby gem lettuce has to rank, to me at least, as an unpleasant green thing filling but not enhancing a plate. But I rose above my prejudice and concentrated on the lamb which was deliciously and perfectly lamb-flavoured (lamb is not always as tasty as it should be). The accompanying caramelised onion was as sweet as any I have had and provided much joy.

  Being immature in my tastes, for me peas are the greenness I crave (pea shoots, green beans cooked to perfect tenderness, cauliflower, green cabbage, Savoy cabbage and Brussels sprouts (yes, I did say sprouts, with their scintillating sulphurousness) may be added to the list) and the peas in this dish were excellent but while it may be totally apt to throw in some little pieces of bacon with the peas or the baby gem (which was as edible as I expected it to be) it is not at all a happy choice to add the bacon to a dish of fine lamb whereby the potent flavour of even the smallest piece completely overwhelms the darling taste of the lamb. A dish that is winning at half time but ends up as a 2-2 draw.

 

 I do not pretend to know why we must now be served two desserts but it is a reality wherever one dines. Perhaps it is to ensure that the pastry chef has something to do though so many desserts seem to have little to do with pastry. The first was a timely, enjoyable strawberry dish, the strawberry elements filled out with a delightful pistachio sponge and a vanilla cream. I forgot to photograph it but it was a pleasure to eat. The second dessert seems to have to be chocolate-based and I understand why but I would not normally go out of my way to chose one. However this dish at Mortimers, a chocolate marquise, was happily light and easy to eat and was properly accompanied by variants on a cherry theme though the cherry ripple ice cream was not exploding with cherry flavour.

  I finished with a fine cup of coffee and was presented with three excellent petits fours including a very cheerful fudge. 

  The tasting menu was excellent value at £65 plus service. I have pinpointed some elements of the meal which did not suit me but it was an extremely pleasurable evening of good food when taken in the round and I will happily revisit Mortimers on my next visit to Ludlow. The inevitable problem with a tasting menu is that it is almost impossible that all elements of it will suit all the diners and it is much more difficult to bring off eight perfect well-conceived  courses than it is to achieve three or four optimal ones. 

  Ludlow may not yet be about to revive its golden gastronomic age but there are some fine places to eat there and Michelin stars are not everything in a gastronomic life. And as we learned recently at Simpsons the possession of a Michelin Star does not guarantee satisfaction.

 

158. The Banana And Every Other Bit Of Magic At The Wilderness.

 

 

 And at last it’s time for me to once more enter onto The Wilderness. And not a moment too soon. 

  It’s 12.30 and the place is filling up and the old faces are there to welcome us back. As previously reported it’s blacker than ever but it’s very comfortable and I feel happy to have returned in this post-COVID era and to settle in to my very comfortable chair, magicking up the digital menu and smirking at the hilarious and vaguely outrageous wine and cocktail menu, the cover of which takes the form of a near-Bacchanalian type of porn in which Sonal Clare is frenziedly showering himself (clothed obviously) in red wine. Sonal chooses for us an excellent Geŵurztraminer which seems to go with every course and we start with a pleasurable gin cocktail before the 8 course taster menu gets underway.

  When you have eight courses it’s not easy to know what to call a particular dish but let us call it a starter, or a first starter, or whatever you wish - I wouldn’t have thought that it was an amuse gueule for instance - but let us us not exhaust ourselves - and that starter is the first of a fabulous series of dishes trailing their way on to the table. That first starter is the remarkably flavoured “Gazpacho eel” - a tiny bowl of bubbly gazpacho with a spicy bite, eel roe, cucumber as you would expect and deliciously sweetened and pink with the presence of chopped strawberries. It must be summer.

  Then ‘Pea and elderflower’ - a product of a brilliant brain - perfectly cooked peas with a bite but not indigestibly hard, a minted pea granita and a dehydrated elderflower-flavoured delight. And so pretty, being a vibrant green and soothing white combination.

 

 Another starter though by now I’m feeling well and truly started. ‘Lobster and new season tomato’, a wondrous combination of lobster bisque and tangy, scintillating, deep crimson coloured tomatoes with an orange-coloured oil swirling with almost psychedelic effect. My dining companion and I are mesmerised by the originality and excellence of what is appearing before us and, more importantly, of what we are happily ingesting.

  A fish course. Clear, translucent, sensitively textured cod; we think it may well have served it’s time in a water bath but this is so much better than many dishes I have been served over the years in various establishments which have succumbed to be cooked sous vide. Look at the little lake it is surrounded by in the photograph - egg yolk yellow and straw yellow, like sunshine and just as spirit-lifting - and the sea herbs resting on the cod give added depth

 

  By now we are definitely in the realm of a main course - exquisite quail stuffed with a mushroom mousse, a fabulous quail sauce, a cheeky and highly appropriate raspberry ketchup, asparagus (how could one miss putting it somewhere in the meal at this time of the year?) and a remarkable little strip of brioche, sweet but also like the king of fried bread which shames anything ever tasted before served with any full English breakfast one has ever eaten.

  A second main course - exemplary beef with a gorgeous sauce and mushrooms and crispy chanterelle. What a joyous time this is. It’s goodbye to ox cheek and welcome to a tender, piece of real meat just like we used to have in the good old days when present day old blokes used to be young and light on their feet. Oh, and let me say, how clever it is to serve everything on white plates and in white dishes. How long ago is it since a restaurant did that? 

  Ch-Ch-Change .... . The banana, though a smaller version, first encountered at Nocturnal Animals, is back. My dining companion has never had a brush with it before. He is spellbound when he takes his first bite. I am purring contentedly when I bite into mine. What’s in it? It’s described as “a hybrid dish leading from savoury to sweet. Banana and Madras curry caramel custard, with a versus caramel, coconut and yogurt mousse encased in white chocolate. Hand painted to look like a banana”. Witty, clever, inventive, delicious, jaw dropping, a signature dish in the making.

 

 

 And so to the real dessert - ‘Milk and honey’, little balls of honey ice cream with a happy little ball of subtly flavoured lavender ice cream with honey gums, honey gel, honeycomb and an exquisite honey tuile in the shape of a honeycomb. Light and the perfect way to wind things up. But not quite, there’s an encore, the sort that only The Wilderness could come up with - ‘Hot Lips’ - soft-centred white chocolates in seductive red to kiss you while you drink your excellent cup of Brazilian coffee.

  This was not just an excellent meal. It was a fabulous experience. Everyone working at The Wilderness should be very proud of what they are doing there. This is a truly great restaurant. The Good Food Guide made a determined effort never to list it. Well let’s see - who’s still around? Ah yes, The Wilderness, reaching new heights. Where’s The Good Food Guide? Defunct, in the wastebin of discontinued publications.