It’s hard not to like Folium. It is one of my favourite restaurants in Birmingham. Chef Ben Tesh strives to produce interesting, finely prepared and presented food for his diners. It’s always a pleasure to visit there. Ben Tesh’s partner, Lucy Hanlon, provides a perfectly pitched welcome and maintains a relaxed but spot on service throughout the meal.
I first ate his often brilliant food when he had a pop up restaurant situated at the Urban Coffee Company in Church Street for a few months in the latter part of 2016 until 8 April 2017. He had previously had a pop up at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath and he had worked at Colin McGurran’s Winteringham Fields in northeast Lincolnshire and afterwards had been Head Chef at the historically important Anthony’s Restaurant in Leeds and had worked at the even more historically important Noma under René Redzepi in Denmark. In 2013 he worked under Alex Bond at the then Michelin starred Turner’s in Harborne. He is a fine consistent chef and he and Lucy Hanlon have a smart, tasteful, modern restaurant wherein he can present his well judged dishes.
There is not a long wine list - who really wants one? - but my dining companion and I were delighted with what was on offer and I thoroughly enjoyed the Signature wine from an Essex vineyard which was summer light and refreshing and happily accompanied several of the dishes.
We had preordered the shorter Tasting menu and started with a delicious little morsel (tautology there I think) of a soupçon of duck liver parfait peering out from the end of a richly flavoured burnt onion tubular tuile. A perfect combination of flavours, of which more. Then what was described on the menu as, “Biodynamic grains with cultured butter” which means to you and me, bread and butter made on the premises from the basic ingredients. Excellent bread. A nice crispy crust with a tasty, light-as-a-feather cloud-like interior.
Back to “A perfect combination of flavours”. My heart sinks so often nowadays when I visit a restaurant and find mackerel on the menu. It is hard to find anywhere that is not offering this particular fish as a starter at present. So I was not overwhelmed with pleasure when I saw that mackeral was being offered as part of this meal. The menu described the course as “kelp cured mackerel with raw vinegar and sealeek scapes”. I should not have been at all dismayed. This was an excellent dish, possibly the best of the whole meal; the mackeral, cured for a matter of just ten minutes, was mildly flavoured and beautifully complemented by the layer of jelly with its perfect sweet acidity that made taking a mouthful of the fish with the jelly possibly the best combination of ingredients I have tasted this year. A dish to retain in the memory for a long time to come.
And so to the main courses. Firstly more fish - turbot cooked in beef fat and presented with an Arbroath Smokies emulsion. There’s no doubting doubting that this was a extremely tasty dish, there was no escaping the flavour of Arbroath Smokie but we both felt that the fish itself was lacking in flavour and I myself was not entirely happy with the texture of the turbot. This dish certainly looked attractive with the beautiful pure white of the turbot lying on the buttercup coloured emulsion all in a perfectly white dish. This was another example of the chef as artist (see previous Blog).
And now a slight diversion. Chefs have long enjoyed presenting their food on interesting ceramics (or other items such as pieces of wood and so on) but I notice more and more as I dine out that restaurants are making quite a big thing of the cutlery we eat with. I find these little voyages into the world of cutlery to be rather enjoyable – what one can do with a knife or a spoon in terms of design now is quite remarkable. Where the chef is the visual artist the maker of cutlery is as much a sculptor as the producer of the ceramics of dining. The cutlery at Folium was nicely presented in a little wooden rack and it was a tiny little fascination to extract one’s utensils for each course from it. Food, art – the theme continues.
The meat main course was “Woolley Park chicken with a cep aioli and nasturtium”. The chicken was presented as a poached ballotine with a splendid crispy coat. The dish looks very pretty indeed with its New Zealand spinach, charming mustard flower and nasturtiums and the flavour was very pleasing with the well-judged flavour of mustard permeating it. However we were both again a little uncertain about the texture of the chicken and the stalk of my spinach was rather more al dente than I should have liked.
The predessert was wonderful - original and absolutely perfect as a mouth refreshing intermediate dish - “iced horseradish with sorrel and cucumber”. The horseradish ice cream was excellent though I could have put up with a little more horseradish flavour and the other pervading element - the cucumber - refreshed in a way that only cucumber can. The real dessert was modestly sized but a great pleasure - toasted hay ice cream (I wonder if that is a flavour Ben Tesh took a liking to when he worked at Winteringham Fields which, I remember from a visit there some years ago, was a restaurant where hay as a flavour was used with some devotion) on a rye crisp overlying enticing caramel. A highly desirable dessert.
To finish an excellent coffee accompanied by two remarkably good petits fours - the first a delightful little sponge on which rested a little mound of cream flavoured with an island peaty whiskey (though to be honest I could easily have put up with a stronger whiskey flavour) crowned by a charming butterfly-shaped tuile. And finally a sensuous tiny chocolate ‘tart’ (though to me, more of a truffle) run through with lavendar. Such pleasure.
This restaurant is one of Birmingham’s less well-known gems but it is one of the best jewels in Birmingham’s culinary jewel boxes. Long may Ben Tesh and Lucy continue to give pleasure to the diners of Birmingham.
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