156. Recalling Jessica’s

 

When Jessica’s existed, right at the birth of the Birmingham food revolution, I myself was not food-aware and so never ate there. This was where Glynn Purnell made his name and where Birmingham entered the major league. The restaurant had a short but glorious life; fortunately Glynn Purnell’s has been much longer and more glorious. The restaurant’s short story is an important part of the history of dining out in Birmingham.

 

 Jessica’s was set up as a business in 2003 by Diane and Keith Stevenson and employed Purnell as Head Chef. The restaurant was located in Montague Road in  Edgbaston and such was the success of Purnell’s cooking that Jessica’s was awarded a Michelin star just twelve months after opening in 2004 - that is - the 2005 edition of the Michelin Guide Great Britain and Ireland. The restaurant rapidly became a dropping in place for London-based critics including Matthew Fort and Jay Rayner who incidentally both chose the same main course (loin of veal with a fricassée of squid, white beans, parsley and garlic).

   Fort who was at the restaurant around January 2004 (Guardian review published 10 January 2004) chose a starter of smoked ham hock and beetroot terrine with confit beetroot, dill and lime cream. He found that in his veal and squid main course there was “not very much” symbiosis between the squid and the veal and felt that the squid’s contribution to the dish was “more of a texture than a flavour”, and that the squid “added little to the mild gentle, soothing flavour  of the dish as a whole”. But, he added, “Don’t get me wrong - it gave me much pleasure ....”.

 Rayner had visited Jessica’s a few weeks earlier - his review was published on 16 November 2003 under the title ‘Second to None’ with the explanation, “Birmingham lags behind London in many areas [of course it does - London gets all the money and restaurant critics don’t like leaving there very often if they can help it] but Jessica’s is putting the city on a culinary level pegging, Jay Rayner finds the yum in Brum” (patronising or what? But then again it’s The Guardian so what more could we expect? Though in its favour at least its critics had found their way up to the distant Midlands).

  Rayner gave an interesting overview of the Birmingham food scene then, “The city however is not blessed with great restaurants, not for a conurbation of its size. There are outposts of both Petit Blanc and Bank and a few stalwart bistros, but mostly it is mass-market chains, passable Chinese and some brilliant Indians. It is not as bad as the nearby Black Country but little is. Put it this way: Birmingham’s leading food writer is a vegetarian. What can I tell you?” He has a point.

  “But there is good news here too. The city has a new restaurant, and it is very good. Not just for Birmingham, good for anywhere. Jessica’s occupies the back half of a large red brick Victorian house, where the trees grow. There is a walled courtyard and a dining room, dominated by a conservatory which fills the space with light and greenery from the garden. But the best thing about this comely dining room lies beyond the kitchen door, and his name is Glynn Purnell”.

  Rayner identified that Purnell had trained in Birmingham at the Metropole Hotel and worked for Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Ludlow. He pronounced that Purnell’s cooking was “modern but not overwrought subtle without being flyaway, satisfying without being overly rich”. For his starter Rayner chose a dish of “red mullet, the proteins cooked until they have just set and partnered with with a light sauce of Jerusalem artichokes beaten to a foam ...”. “Bravely the mullet was allowed a distinct fishiness which the artichoke undercut. Crunch came from a few green beans, and on the side was a square of sweet jelly containing a dice of bean and artichoke”.

  Rayner’s opinion on the veal and squid main course was at odds with that of Matthew Fort, “I had veal loin, served in pink, creamy slices atop a fricassée young squid, white beans, parsley and garlic. Who knew that the juvenile sweetness of squid and veal would work so well together? Well, Purnell, obviously”.

  With his dessert of crème brûlée served with pear and, crushed walnuts and pear sorbet, the price of the three courses was then £29.50.

  Glynn Purnell recalls in his book A Purnell’s Journey There And Back (2020) how glowing newspaper reports of the restaurant and his work there were constantly appearing in various newspapers. Within eight or nine months of opening, Jessica’s was awarded the AA Restaurant of the Year award. This was followed by the award of the Good Food Guide’s Best Newcomer award and then the achievement of obtaining a Michelin star in the 2005 Guide. 

From the Birmingham Mail 

 

 Purnell recalls that apart from his sous chef, Simon Szymanski, there was no-one else working in the kitchen. Front of house was Pascal Cluny and one waiter. The rapid and scintillating success of Jessica’s lead the Stevensons to give Purnell part share of the business but Purnell’s views on where he wanted to take the place to increasingly conflicted with the couple’s opinions and in 2007 he decided to take the leap into opening his own restaurant. In May 2007 it was announced that Purnell, then aged 32, was leaving Jessica’s but also that the restaurant would close which it did in the summer of that year. Purnell said of his new business, “The food will be an evolution of what I have been doing at Jessica’s. But I would certainly like to think that I could push on and in five to seven years achieve two Michelin stars.”.

  After the closure of Jessica’s, Pascal Cluny took over the restaurant and opened Pascal’s with the first head chef being Jennifer Goff. Although the restaurant was the only restaurant at the time to be awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand it did not really ring the right bells with the public or the critics and having replaced Goff with ‘self-taught’ Andrew Wilde as Head Chef, the restaurant soon closed, not helped by the ‘credit crunch’ of that time, and was taken over by Glynn Purnell himself who opened The Asquith there in autumn 2010 only to close it six months later after difficulties with his landlord. The Asquith was moved to the Colmore District in the city centre before being renamed Purnell’s Bistro and Ginger’s Bar which remained open up until the start of the pandemic in 2020 but has not reopened with the lifting of restrictions. As for the building which had housed Jessica’s and Pascal’s, that was converted into flats and that was that.

Jennifer Goff, first head chef at Pascal’s

  So that is the story of Jessica’s, Birmingham’s first new restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star, and which set the city on the road to gastronomic glory and turned many a Brummie into a ‘foodie’.