After dark strange things were happening in the Jewellery Quarter. I disappeared down an alley off Warstone Lane, there were bright lights at the end of it, I had arrived at The Wilderness. It was 10 past 10 late in an autumn evening - it had been a day of almost continual rain and it was usually the sort of time an old bloke might be thinking of getting the dog settled down, having his cocoa (though to be honest my consumption of cocoa is rare and minimal), and climbing up the stairs to put himself to bed. But there I was, being greeted joyfully by the master of the performance of the role of Mâitre D’hôtel - the unequalled Sonal Clare - and being seated at a table next to the pass with the seat opposite occupied by the Unhappy Meal print I had bought a year or so ago when the Pandemic was cutting its way through the country but which I had failed to collect. And very pleased I was to see it too. On the table, in bold black and white, was a large sheet of paper which was the drinks menu, the items unique to the After Dark event - I did not hesitate to sample some of the pleasures listed on it.
The stragglers from the usual evening service were finishing off their meals, paying their bills and making their way home and the other participants in this vaguely dark Mad Hatter’s party were arriving. A smoke machine began filling the room to give it an atmosphere of a foggy Whitechapel in late Victorian times (no Jack stalking the alley ways though fortunately) and in this amusing setting the food - no menu - began to arrive.
First foie gras ice cream in a little cornet. Delicious. Next a chicken wing but not just an ordinary chicken wing. A chicken wing stuffed with sausage with caviar perched on it. Then a real surprise - a pizza. A pizza and yet more caviar. I’m not a pizza person and so I am not well placed to judge just how good the pizza was. I loved it. Some, I believe, like thin crispy pizza but this was thick and doughy and satisfying.
It was not easy to know where this meal was going. Ice cream, chicken wing, pizza - was this a fast food pastiche in the making? Well no, judging by what next presented itself on my table. Elegant and classy, beautifully cooked monkfish showered in black truffle. A great dish, if the night were not memorable enough already then this had made it so.
But back to fast food - a sweet doughnut with bacon custard. This was for me the least triumphant course. I really did not know what to make of it and I did not get the flavour of bacon in the custard. But, as with everything that emerges from Claridge’s kitchen, interesting. The dessert, I guess that’s what it was, was Ozzy Osbourne’s bat (in chocolate obviously) and the aim is to bite the head off first though I don’t think I did. A fine Brummie chocolate dessert. To close a pair of red chocolate lips I had had before and which were a kiss goodnight after dark.
So what’s the point of this late night session? From the business’ point of view it allows the opportunity to turn tables over in the course of a Saturday evening rather than just relying on the proceeds of one sitting on the key evening of the week. If chef and staff are prepared to put in the extra work and be in the restaurant for even longer hours then good for them. The Lord helps those who help themselves. For the diner it’s an exciting change, dining out late as the Continentals may choose to do, a menu-less meal with every course a surprise, the cheeky, clever little twists that Claridge cuisine is full of and the theatricals accompanying it all. I’d do it again that’s for sure.
And if there is wit and there are fine jokes in the meal it is an impressive sight to watch Claridge and Head Chef Marius Gedminas and the rest of the kitchen staff, masked like surgeons, meticulously labouring away at preparing the meal, the concentration they put into their work on par with a surgeon carrying out a delicate operation. The chef as artist but also the chef as inspired, highly skilled artisan as devoted to the fineness of their work as you would hope from a Birmingham craftsman. Once the City of a Thousand Trades it is not pompous to now call Birmingham the City of a Thousand Gastronomic Pleasures.
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