165. Adams.

  Professional food critics and Tripadvisers all agree that Adams is the best restaurant in Birmingham and probably the whole of the West Midlands. Two out of three visits there in the past led me to conclude that that statement was probably not the case. Excellent in many ways but too many faults for my liking but who I am to be at odds with Tripadvisers and those that get paid for reviewing food? So, it was time to return and to discover how much I would enjoy lunch there after a break from visiting Waterloo Street.

  Adams as we know, started life as a pop-up in Bennett’s Hill before moving to Waterloo street. I visited the pop-up once and felt that while it was pretty good, it was not quite as exciting as I had been led to expect. Then a very fine lunch after its arrival in Waterloo Street and then something of a calamity on a  follow-up visit which involved a double jeopardy of an excessively salty dish (precisely what it was has been blotted out of my memory) and a dish which involved paying a large extra sum to have some tasteless lobster added to the dish involved with no gain at all to the pleasure the dish gave.

Kieron Stevens, Head Chef at Adam’s

 

Tom Shepherd, Head chef 2017-19

 

  I was consequently lacking any real will to return to Adam Stokes’ much admired (by almost the whole world) restaurant where the head chef is presently Kieron Stevens (he trained under David Everett Matthias at the once two-starred Le Champignon Sauvage, see Blog 160, and took over the role from Tom Shepherd in February 2019) but the time had come.

  The restaurant operates like a well-oiled military machine. The staff look smart, the decor is chic, the restaurant is spacious (apart, perhaps, for the bar area which was full when my lunch companion and I arrived meaning that we were led straight through to our table for our preprandial cocktails (I had a fine, sensibly priced and very quaffable negroni) and everyone goes about their work efficiently, politely and effectively. The pace of service is spot on, not stiff and not relaxed. Professional would be the apt adjective in any business that performs the way Adams does. But I thought it was all a little more clinical than I should have liked. I would have liked a little schmoozing to have crept in at some point during the meal. 

  The food was very accurate and impressive. The dishes were presented perfectly and gorgeously. We chose the £80 à la carte menu (really I don’t need 4 starters, 1 main course, 2 desserts and all the extras at lunch time which the tasting menu would have rendered up to me) and the dishes on offer were more attractive on paper than the cheaper lunch menu. But I think this range of menu choices is perfect and the price of the à la carte menu sensibly pitched to ensure that the meal served was not made up of the cheapest ingredients but food of higher quality. What’s the point of going to somewhere rather smart and being fed dishes made from the cheapest cuts of meat and species of fish just to offer a lunch at a cut price? If you’re somewhere grand then let’s have some grand ingredients treated lovingly by an accomplished chef.

 

I chose the starter of delicious lightly salted cod coated with ‘Thai green curry’ with an included side dish of lobster in a crunchy tempura batter with a pleasing satay sauce. A remarkably good dish which could hardly be bettered anywhere else in the city except it included one of my bêtes noirs - fairly tasteless scorched pak choi (the entire national stock of which should be bundled up and exported immediately to the Far East) included in the dish no doubt because of its link with the cuisine this dish recalls and because there was some texture provided by it.

  This starter had been preceded by some happily enjoyable little appetitisers including a cheeky cheesy little chou pastry, a little squid ink wrap enclosing sublime beef tartare with pickles and two of the most fabulously tasting mussels I have ever had the pleasure to put in my mouth floating on a verdant velouté.

  

  My lunch companion and I both opted for the very fine aged sirloin which I greatly enjoyed. It was a precisely cooked plate, the meat could not have been more spot on. The accompanying vegetables were enjoyable but if they had not been there the two slices of beef by themselves would have made for a lordly main course. Accuracy, precision, modern versions of painstakingly cooked classic dishes - I felt was finally getting the measure of Adams..

 

 A predessert based on pineapple was not so palate cleansing as one might have hoped for (nothing does the job like a briskly lemon-flavoured tidbit) and then on to my dessert proper - I had chosen wild strawberries with a violet sorbet - a gem - and a scattering of perfectly matching, crunchy pistachio - a fine summer dessert. I had missed the option of rum baba (hiding under the headline ‘Apricot’) on the menu but my dining companion pounced on it and judged it, with its accompanying almond elements, to be one of those great pleasures in life.

  It was all over bar the coffee and its accompanying petit fours - this time a macaroon with a chocolate filling and another chou pastry but this time sweet and hence providing a clever little symmetry to the whole meal.

  The visit to Adams had dispelled my previous doubts. It serves very fine food indeed. It has the air of being somewhere very special. It is very highly placed in the firmament of Midlands restaurants.

                                                         ______________________

When I was a child*, I partied like a child, I drank Harvey Wallbangers like a child, I was easily pleased like a child. When I became a man I gave up childish ways and entered the dark lands of much more serious cocktails. When I was an old man I frequently visited Purnell’s Bistro (in the company of other old men - don’t worry I never drank alone) and eventually the excellent head barman put Penicillin on the menu. Dark, warm, autumnal, comforting as only an old bloke can appreciate.

(* here a “child” is a young whippersnapper well above the legal age for consuming alcohol.)

  But Purnell’s Bistro is no more and I ask myself where can I get myself my next shot of Penicillin when I need it? Now I rather like the hedonistic luxury of Madeleine at The Grand. Actually I have cravings to be there from time to time, not, I assure you for the alcohol (though that is an added bonus) but for the sheer pleasure of being there. It really is very nice, a few negronis and antique negronis have passed my lips in that very pleasant environment and now I have gone one step further and entered the land of the Boulevardier and one further step has taken me to making this dark drink myself, Satanic in its deliciousness, positioned I’m sure somewhere strategic in one of the Circles of Hell, and rather pleased I am with my Frankenstein creation. I have not quaffed a Penicillin yet since the reopening but I’m quite happy sitting around with my Boulevardier and letting the tormented world sail on by.