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.
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.
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