Tom Shepherd, who grew up in Birmingham and was Head Chef at Adam’s from 2017 to 2019 (see Blog 165), recently opened his first restaurant, Upstairs, in Lichfield. The name derives from the restaurant’s location which precisely is on the first floor above his father’s jewellery shop. As well as working previously at Adam’s, Shepherd had in the past worked in the kitchens of Restaurant Sat Bains, in far-off Nottingham, with Michael Wignall as Senior sous chef at the two-starred Latymer restaurant in Pennyhill Park Hotel in Bagshot in Surrey and as sous chef at the Samling Hotel in Windermere. He is therefore a man who is not without credentials.
His new restaurant is relatively small with 28 covers but it is planned that a roof terrace will be opened in 2022.
In between his departure from Adam’s and the opening of Upstairs, Shepherd had been running Dine At Home which involved the delivery of a three course meal kit to customers’s homes with the contents of the kit changing on a weekly basis.
And so, naturally, off to Lichfield I went.
After days of black skies and almost incessant rain this was a fine, sunny, chill, blue skyed sort of autumn day. Lichfield could not look finer. The three spired cathedral beside the river could not have looked more magnificent. Dr Johnson rested on his plinth and at a respectful distance Boswell looked out over the market place. In their time neither of them could have heard of Michelin stars but there were enough old inns in the town to have kept them comfortably satiated.
I found Shepherd’s father’s jewellery shop and the entrance - a flight of stairs of course - up to the restaurant. A clean, modern, fresh, bright, tasteful, pleasing dining room, a piece of work by the same designers who had provided the decor for Craft Dining Rooms, with an open kitchen. And that was not the only connection - Craft’s manager had moved jobs to work in Lichfield and an excellent job she was doing.
I was tempted by the excellently priced lunchtime menu, not least because it included an alluring-sounding roast plaice but I felt I must not miss the opportunity to try as much as I could without overwhelming my elderly digestive system and so I chose to eat the dishes on the five course menu.
After two pleasing amuse bouches which included an admirable red cabbage gazpacho aptly accompanied by a mild horseradish ice cream, it was down to business with a first course of a splendid and beautifully cooked scallop, as accurately prepared as we might expect from the former Head Chef of Adam’s, served on a bed of celeriac with dashi and little cubes of apple. The flavour of the scallop itself had me purring with pleasure.
Then to my least favourite dish, not because it was not well executed but entirely because I dislike poached egg, Arlington White hen’s egg served with beetroot. The main course was made up of excellent quality aged sirloin - full of a wonderful flavour and cooked to perfection - accompanied by Sand carrots and thin slices of sweetly pickled carrot with a Sauce Robert (a brown mustard sauce). I grew a little tired as I ate the course of eating nothing but beef and carrot, as delicious as they may have been and would have like another element to the dish apart from the sauces to break up the monotony of carrot-beef-carrot-beef-ad inf. But it was a fine dish beyond doubt.
Next the menu signalled Transition offering “Thai green curry” which I found to be a highly memorable dish for all the right reasons. Anything with lovely creamy rice pudding and mango is bound to score highly with me. It one of those things, like Purnell’s 10-10-10 egg surprise, that you always want to see on the menu. The dessert proper was a fine piece of patisserie, an excellent Paris Brest, which either needed a little more pear to counter the caramel or perhaps just less caramel.
Given Tom Shepherd’s background perhaps it is not surprising that I thought that Upstairs was like An acorn of Adam’s’ falling a little way from the tree - Upstairs may have fewer covers and a smaller area but the decor is as smart, the service is pretty well perfect (happily a little more relaxed than Adam’s but pretty spot on with everyone dressed immaculately) and the fine dishes are accurate and well thought out. The place was full for lunch and everything seemed to be running as smoothly as any long established restaurant can manage. A great start. Could Lichfield be the new Ludlow?
Meanwhile there have been developments in the kitchen at Adam’s. Kieron Stevens (see Blog 165), who took over from Tom Shepherd as Head Chef there in 2019, left the post on September 2021 to work as Executive Chef at the JM Socials restaurant group in Cheltenham. On 28 September 2021 it was announced that James Goodyear had been appointed to the post of Head Chef at Adam’s. Goodyear had previously been Head Chef at the Michelin-starred Hide restaurant in London and was a Young National Chef of the Year finalist in 2014. Goodyear described his style of cooking as “European modern fine dining” and has expressed the opinion that the new post gave him the opportunity to return to his roots.
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