231. Toffs By Rob Palmer.

 

    In Blog 199 I reported a three day visit to Lichfield including an evening dining at a pop-up by the former Hampton Manor Head Chef, Rob Palmer (Peel’s was awarded a Michelin star during his time there). After my meal at Palmer’s pop-up I wrote, “this was probably the finest meal I have had this year in any restaurant” and I was looking forward enthusiastically to Palmer’s planned new restaurant which he told me he was soon to open in Solihull.

  And so it was just 6 days after he had opened Toff’s there I was perched, not entirely by choice, on a stool at the chef’s counter, witnessing Palmer’s chefs busily going about their business. To be truthful I would rather have sat at an ordinary table, relaxed and in the background, but there I was and the chefs were a pleasure to speak to. The sommelier was initially a little tense but everything settled down and we got on with the eating and drinking and a gin - Sipsmith or nothing at this stage, understandably, Rome was not built in 6 days  - helped me to settle down on my stool and get into observing the dish preparation as the gentle flow of work took place before me. 

  There was a choice of a five or seven course tasting menu. Dare I risk missing any one of Palmer’s dishes? No, I dared not. So, seven courses it was to be then. Good choice.

  Two exquisite little appetisers to start. One, a profoundly tasty tidbit of Old Winchester cheese custard  accompanied by strips of onion pickle on a cracker (exceptionally delightful) and the other an also gorgeous amuse gueule made up of smoked cod’s roe, beetroot and fennel. Then a fine bread was served, light and tasty with delicious cultured butter. I was now resigned to having a pretty fabulous meal as I had hoped for.

  To the starters - firstly, a lovely dish using new season asparagus, Berkswell cheese and chicken (look at the photograph, a lovely-looking dish that tasted even better than it looked). Then mackerel  (the usual taste of the fish is too strong for me but this was tasty without being powerfully flavoured) with slices of golden beetroot and dill.

  Then very nicely cooked, delightfully sweet scallop beautifully matched with kohlrabi and a painfully moresome reisling sauce.  Such pleasures.

  We move on, the rhythm of the chefs’ work unfolding in front of me. A fine second fish course of nicely cooked monkfish on a bed of white cabbage and finished off with various sea herbs and a smoked sauce.

  And so to the duck main course which comes in two parts - first a beignet filled with very tasty ragu of duck offal and leg meat. This did not quite work for me, the texture was not quite right, mildly claggy, and I think it might have been more successful if it had been smaller and served with the duck itself. But the duck breast itself was lovely, not aggressively duck-flavoured which I don’t enjoy but the flavour more gently pleasing and the breast very tender though the skin was not notably crispy (realistically, how often does that happen?). The duck was accompanied, uncomplicatedly, by a perfectly textured carrot and apple and the whole gave great pleasure.

  The clock moved on. Devices and materials appeared to enable the chefs to prepare the desserts. We chatted as this all went on and I learned that one of the chefs had worked with Rob Palmer when he was at Peel’s and would have worked on some of the dishes I ate there just recently before he left for his new job.

  The first dessert was made up of nicely poached rhubarb with buttermilk and enjoyable anise-flavoured sticks and the meal was rounded off with the flavours of chocolate, sherry and vanilla.

  With my coffee I enjoyed a fudge especially made as a play on the name of Palmer with its links to  Palmer’s Toffees, a confectionery of the past and which, in an extension of the wordplay, had given rise to the restaurant’s name itself, Toff’s, deriving from the toffee part of Palmer’s toffees. Thus now we had Palmer’s Toffs and hopefully we will have it for a long time ahead.

  I returned to Birmingham, replete and happy, and slept well at The Grand Hotel. Having intended for a long time to have breakfast at nearby Dishoom I set off for there and was settled at a table ordering my first meal of the day. There was quite a selection on offer and I eventually settled on, after a discussion with the helpful waitress, akuri, “an Irani cafe staple. Three eggs, spiced, scrambled and piled up richly alongside plump, home-made buns and served with grilled tomato”. I did not enjoy the dish. It was not attractive to look at, the flavour was poor, not enough spice, not enough salt, a flavourless, tough tomato and ‘buns’ which looked like something you could pick up in an Asda rather than in any way being homemade. The only ingredient on the plate which had any life in it was the ketchup (whether or not that was out of a bottle I know not) and without the ketchup, the dish would have been totally inedible. Definitely one to miss in the future.  

Finally:-