289. Christmas in The Marches - Again.

 

 

  It was back to Fishmore Hall near Ludlow for Christmas again this year. It is a happy, quiet, elegant, friendly place to stay and with its ‘bistro’ area (in the cosy old sitting room) and the lovely Michelin-listed Forelles restaurant in the delightful conservatory with its view of Clee Hill in the distance there is much opportunity to eat some very good food, not least at Christmas when the programme offers generous amounts of fine food almost ceaselessly.

  Christmas lunch was everything I want it to be - there were four main course options but I was determined to stick to the tradition of turkey and found that served in Forelles to be a great pleasure accompanied as it was by all the trimmings except bread sauce. Sprouts I love but I’m a man who doesn’t like too much bite to them and these were a little underdone for my taste but the meal was a great pleasure, the gravy rich and unctious and sticky, the roast potatoes successful and of course the pigs in blankets and apricot and chestnut stuffing turned a fine Sunday lunch into a Christmas feast.

  As starter I had had a nice piece of gin-cured confit salmon served with a beetroot, caper and dill mayonnaise and for dessert I felt unable to deal with Christmas pudding but instead enjoyed a well-chosen selection of British and French cheeses. Christmas cheer indeed.

  I had a couple of meals in the bistro section of the hotel. This is very relaxed and diners can be accompanied there by their canine companions if they so wish. The dogs look perfectly placed lounging in front of the hearth of the fire that burns there and there are a number of pleasurable dishes served up there when one does not wish to undergo the process of dining in the more formal environment of Forelles itself.

  As a light meal I opted for the soup of the day on one occasion only to find that it was mushroom soup which normally is not to my taste. However the soup on this occasion was delicious as the mushroom had been combined with tarragon which made all the difference. The soup was served pleasingly with croutons and a little loaf.

  Another little pleasure to gobble down in the bistro are the ferociously delicious, hot and sticky gochujang chicken wings. I chose them as starters on each evening I ate in the ‘bistro’. They are a pleasure to live in the memory.

  Apart from my Christmas Day lunch I dined in Forelles a couple of times. On the first occasion I chose a smoked burrata starter which was prettily presented and included elements made up of peppers, courgette, tomato and aubergine which were all appropriate and livened the dish up nicely. The main course was again presented beautifully and was centred on some lovely partridge which was a little dry but very pleasingly accompanied by pear, kale and pearl barley. 

  Undoubtedly the highlight meal of my Christmas at Fishmore was the Boxing Day dinner in Forelles. This was an immaculate meal. It kicked off with an amuse gueule in the form of an outstanding blue cheese tart, very tasty and the pastry perfectly thin and crispy. Then an utterly impressive starter in the form of another pastry triumph - a gorgeous mini-beetroot tarte tatin with Yorkshire Fettle (a soft creamy cheese made from sheep’s milk), pumpkin seed and blackberry - unctiousness lay all around like the snow in the Good King Wenceslas carol. But this was only the forerunner, John the Baptist preparing the diner for what was next to come.

  The gift of Christmas was the fabulous main course of exquisitely cooked venison with salsify and a wondrous little offal tartlet of astonishing, full on flavour. This had proved to be a very happy Christmas coming to an end with the dessert - Forelles’ signature Baked Alaska reworked with sloe gin and served with slices of plum.

  Apart from eating, Lucy The Labrador and I had been out to see the Ludlow Hunt heading out of town and passing Fishmore on its route towards Downton Hall. She was a little taken aback as the well-ordered pack came racing by her. I had taken a couple of hours ambling around Ludlow itself on Christmas Eve and together we had some gentle walks on the pathways around Fishmore Hall when the weather allowed. Christmas in the Marches - again.

288. Cheal’s Of Henley Soon To Be Of Knowle.

   Old blokes often find change difficult. That is often because decades of experience teach us that change is not usually for the best. Of course sometimes it is and I hope that is the case with Cheal’s of Henley, considered by me to probably be the best restaurant in the West Midlands, which is to leave the home where it began its life and is now to move to Knowle. When I read the news I felt I must pay one last visit to Cheal’s in its present home which has always been a very simpatico sort of place to dine in.

  Getting there was not easy, a combination of another strike by our extremely well-paid but apparently impoverished  train drivers and the sheer incompetence of those who run West Midlands Trains ensured that there were no trains running and that a return taxi journey to Henley was necessary. I was also limited on time, having another appointment arranged for 4 o’clock back in Birmingham and so I was unable to indulge myself again in the excellent Tasting menu offered in the restaurant but chose to lunch from the three course lunch menu (with various trimmings included) exceptionally well priced at £40. After olives, enjoyable bread and butter and an amuse gueule, I had a starter of ponzu cured sea trout finely combined with cucumber, pink grapefruit, samphire, yuzu vinegar and tasty little crisps as light as a feather.

  The main course was also excellent - finely cooked hake with tasty brown crab risotto, shiso and a deeply delicious lobster reduction. This was an immaculate dish. With time speeding by I had my dessert of a lovely William pear choux with a splendidly crispy shell filled with vanilla crème diplomat and a sharply perfect blackcurrant sorbet.

  And so farewell to this Henley restaurant which was once home to a restaurant where Andy Waters was Head Chef and subsequently to the Thai restaurant, Thai Cottage. As Cheal’s moves out from there hopefully to success in its new home, one wonders what will next happen to this charming cottage on Henley’s main street. 

287. Lasan.

 

  According to the records of my dining companion at the time, the last occasion I ate at Lasan in James Street in the Jewellery Quarter was 21 May 2012. Clearly this was going to be a long delayed second visit. Back then, Lasan had been featured in a Gordon Ramsay television series and won some sort of award in it and more notably, Aktar Islam was Head Chef there then. 

  I remember having an enjoyable evening there apart from there being a very noisy table of men out on the town and doubtless ‘out for a curry’ but my friend, always grudging in praise and able to carry adverse criticism to atmospheric heights of disagreeability, noted that he had had his “worst meal of the year” there (though the year was less than half way through). He was disparaging about the soft shell crab dish for which Islam had won the fish course in one series of The Great British Menu; his main of monkfish, he claimed, was ‘not cooked’ properly and felt that the accompanying sauce overwhelmed the flavour of the fish and he did not like his dessert of halva. To round things off in his uniquely curmudgeonly way he noted that the service there was “poor”. His problem with food is that he much prefers analysing it rather than eating it. Indeed he very much has “a lean and hungry look” and in the words of Caesar, “such men are dangerous” (especially it seems to chefs and restaurateurs). His own cooking, by the way, is not as good as he believes it to be.

  So ten years later I returned, this time with an altogether kinder and more appreciative dining companion. From both the street and indoors the restaurant is impressive - smart, spacious and shining with an added veneer of discreet rusticity contributed by the numerous little wall decorations and artifacts scattered around. The menu presented to us was a little grubby and needed refreshing. 

  We were served a delightful little prawn puri as an appetiser and we also ordered some poppadoms and chutneys which were enjoyable. As starters, my dining companion was delighted with his Sarson king prawns and my choice of Bihari beef kebab gave me great pleasure. 

  For my main course I chose Methi chicken. The chicken was somewhat overcooked and my taste buds felt assailed by the flavour of tomato and were not aware of the desired taste of fenugreek. My dining companion chose Makhan chicken which was altogether more successful I thought (though again the chicken was over) - if anything the flavour of tomato was less evident than in my dish which made me think for a moment that we had been served the wrong dishes but my companion pointed out that the flavour of cashew was very discernible in his Makhan which was as it should have been. We ate our dishes with shared rice and Peshwari naan.

  

  We were replete and did not feel that we would delve into Lasan’s choice of desserts, assuming there was one. This had been a satisfactory meal in pleasant surroundings but it had not been faultless. 

  Rating:- 🌛🌛.

286. Sunday Evening At The Oyster Club, Monday Evening At Laghi’s.

 

  It is not easy to find an upmarket restaurant to eat in Birmingham on either Sunday or Monday evenings.

  Staying in the city after a couple of days of travelling, made difficult by an overpaid train driver abandoning his passengers at Dorridge Station en route to Stratford on a freezing day, with no station staff to help them and no train for two hours, because he, like the other £60,000 a year train drivers, are banning overtime, and then after going on the following day to Sheffield where a heavy snowfall threatened public transport even more, I was delighted to find that back in Birmingham on the Sunday evening at least, Andrew Stokes’ The Oyster Club was open to serve the public unlike the railway workers, postal workers, nurses and so on who have lost a sense of duty to the people they are paid to serve.

  The staff were welcoming and seemed pleased to be carrying out the service they had chosen to provide to the diners who all looked very happy to be sitting in The Oyster Club that bitter Sunday evening. I had already resolved to have the lemon sole until my attention was drawn by the helpful waiter to the Sunday meal offer of Chateaubriand served with all the Sunday lunch extras. 

  And it was magnificent. There were two gorgeous slices of beef, supremely well-cooked, served with just about everything one could possibly want to make Sunday a happy one. The roast potatoes were happily crispy, the cauliflower in cheese sauce was very well done, the Yorkshire pudding was competently presented, there were carrots, parsnips, florets of broccoli, a fine gravy and a horseradish sauce with just the right amount of heat to it. As good a Sunday meal, but with the twist of very fine beef indeed, as one could wish.

  For dessert, I received much pleasure from a lovely creamy rice pudding with figs and Armagnac- a wondrous combination - I shall never have rice pudding again without the pleasure of Armagnac bathing it. Afterwards, 2 lovely little mignardises were served with the coffee - a little truffle and a strawberry jelly. 

   This had been a comforting meal but in the finest of ways. Well done to The Oyster Club.

Rating:- 🌞

  Still staying in town, it was dinner at Laghi’s the following evening to pay a second visit to this pleasing little restaurant not well sited at the monstrous Five Ways (calling the area ‘Edgbaston Village’ really doesn’t make it any more appealing).

  However, once inside away from the heavy traffic and noise, it did not take long to relax and lie back and think of Italy. I am a great charcuterie lover and so I allowed myself to, perhaps disrespectfully, opt for a starter which did not give Chef the chance to show off his expertise. But I do so enjoy cold meats and I am  sometimes given to surrendering myself to temptation so that on this occasion I chose the charcuterie to kick off the meal and very enjoyable it was too.

  Then, an unusual choice for me - I opted for pizza (I’m not usually a pizza person) - Toscana style - lured by the presence of roast potatoes and pancetta. The pastry was very good but I found the pizza lacking in flavour apart from a strong hit of salt which was too much for me and I greatly regretted choosing one of the two pizzas on the menu of which tomato was not an ingredient - that would have made a lot of difference.

I rounded off again with affogato. I like the restaurant and on another visit I shall endeavour to choose dishes which enable the Chef to show off his skills more.

285. Black And Green. Back to Barnt Green.

 

  Michelin has recently added Andrew Sheridan’s Black And Green to its list of recommended restaurants which did not surprise me after my experience there earlier in the year, soon after the north Worcestershire restaurant had opened. I had made a reservation to visit there a few days before the announcement of Michelin’s recommendation so the new added status of the restaurant, which I had previously enjoyed very much, added spice to the anticipation of my second visit.

  It was clear that the restaurant really is now functioning at a very high level. Andrew Sheridan told me that he himself works at Black and Green on week nights and is in his city centre restaurant, 8, on Fridays and Saturdays. He also mentioned that he is planning to open another restaurant, with, I think rooms, in Herefordshire during 2023 - an exciting prospect.

  Meanwhile the six course menu served on the evening of my visit to B & G  was very impressive and the dishes were generally thoroughly enjoyable. Appetisers were made up of olives, a fine plump oyster and a generous helping of tasty bread with cultured butter. The first course was marvellous - scallop with a bountiful amount of caviar and  a buttermilk emulsion. then, equally enjoyable, sea trout with plump little mussels. Immaculately cooked, delicious wagyu with ceps and robustly flavoured truffle shards was the centre piece of the meal and there was a happy dessert which apple, yoghurt and white chocolate. 

  This restaurant is so very good. Is it possible that it may soon be a new star in the firmament when Michelin makes its 2023 awards? It just might be.

Rating:- 🌞🌞.

284. Laghi’s Edgbaston.

 

  The city’s tram line has been extended to what is tweely named Edgbaston Village though the area is enormously urbanised and has no resemblance whatsoever to a village and may otherwise be more accurately named Five Ways which is the huge traffic island leading to Ladywood, the large Georgian and Victorian homes of the upmarket part of Edgbaston and the Hagley Road which takes one past The Plough and Harrow, which was once the best dining establishment in the city especially when Andreas Antona was Head Chef there, and out to Quinton.

  Situated just off the Five Ways island is the well thought of Italian-style restaurant, Laghi’s, opened in 2017 by Luca Laghi, a doctor specialising in the care of elderly people at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital  and of Italian heritage himself. On 16 July 2022, Leo Kattou left his job as Head Chef at Simpsons after working there for 13 years and working his way through the ranks and at the end of October 2022 he became Head Chef at Laghi’s. The restaurant manager is Charlotte Carter.

  I arrived late for my lunch after staying a little longer than I should have done on a visit to the remarkable Coffin Works museum which is situated a stone’s throw away from Aktar Islam’s Opheem but I nevertheless received a pleasing welcome from Charlotte. Lunch service was winding down but the remaining diners looked comfortable and satisfied and I quickly settled down in the smart modern, stylishly decorated surroundings.

  From the sensibly sized menu I chose two ‘small plates’ after discussing my options with Charlotte - barbecued red prawns with salsa verde and truffle arancini with aged parmesan. I also opted for a half helping of the mezze maniche carbonara from the list of pasta dishes.

 

  All the dishes were excellent - from the splendidly large, tasty crustacea happily accompanied by the delicious salsa verde to the nicely crispy coated, richly truffled pair of arancini with the thrill of the aged parmesanto the gorgeous carbonara, the pasta accurately cooked as you would expect, the sensationally crunchy pancetta and the silky, glamorous, unctuous carbonara itself - a very memorable dish.

  This was an immaculately satisfying meal which I rounded off perfectly, I felt, with a modestly sized affogato. 

  Rating:- 🌞 

  I was not able to complete my pasta dish at Laghi’s because I had breakfasted again at Wayland’s Yard where, on that occasion, I had been regaled with a fine stack of nicely textured pancakes with good, crispy salty bacon made into a petit dejeuner symphony by maple syrup which I drizzled over it all.

  To complete a trio of breakfasts I also turned up there the following day with my dog, who by then loved heading for there, and again spoiled myself with a sausage and bacon bap which was delicious. The raison d’être of Waylands Yard was originally to serve fine coffeee, which it does very satisfactorily, but the breakfast and brunch food also available is thoroughly enjoyable and generously portioned.

Rating-  🌛🌛🌛🌛