There’s no doubt that cocktails in Madeleine and dining in Isaac’s at The Grand Hotel in Birmingham are rather special whether or not the food is any good. I’ve thought that Isaac’s is a missed opportunity in its New York-diner guise rather than in a classic, rather stately English alter ego persona but that’s just me I suppose; I’ve just read too much of the writing of Nathanial Newnham-Davis whose time has long passed and I have visions of grand dining rooms full of smart people dining off Escoffier-inspired cuisine rather than early 2020s casualness, American scoff, noisy music, tattooed arms and upmarket burgers, hot dogs and, er, lobster Newburg. I am forced to acknowledge that the Newnham Davis experience is not really for this present age. And yet…..
But for decor and atmosphere Madeleine and Isaac’s are not to be missed even on a slow Wednesday evening when everyone’s dashed off to Europe to catch up on their continental experiences which they have missed for the past two-and-a-bit years, leaving the second city’s centre to its denizens who have only just arrived in the country and hardly want to be on their way out of it again. First an excellent Margarita in the soothing comfort of Madeleine. Such pleasure.
Then, down a floor to Isaac’s. It really is very good (see photograph at head of this Blog). I start off with a generous portion of excellent house-cured lox served with tomato and onion on excellent rye bread with a generous layer of cream cheese. This was a grand dish. Then one of my great loves, hot dog - one of the finest frankfurters I recall eating - with sauerkraut, red cabbage coleslaw, sorry, slaw, ketchup (I declined the mustard) and really excellent thin chips, nicely salted and acceptably crispy. Such fun!
Finally for dessert, a mildly bitter New York cheesecake with splendidly sour macerated cherries though a little more sweetness might have been helpful in addition to the vanilla ice cream. Still, not bad.
Return visits to The Mount by Glynn Purnell in Henley in Arden and Toff’s in Solihull. In fact it has been two return trips to The Mount, both not quite up to that heady first day when Glynn Purnell was on site and it was all very exciting. The second visit, as mentioned in Blog 234, involved a pleasurable Atlantic prawn first course, a satisfactory but rather dull chicken main course and missed crème caramel as recounted previously. On the third visit I was determined to relive the great pleasure of my first visit - I ordered once more the truly delicious cheese custard starter (my lunch companion was delighted with his scotch egg), I gluttonised on the very generously portioned and optimally rustic pork cutlet and finally got my teeth around the long awaited crème caramel. My dining companion chose the cod and chips which was remarkably unimpressive with mediocre batter covering the admittedly nicely cooked cod and middling chips and a tiny helping of unsensational mushy peas.
The Mount quite naturally raises great expectations as part of the Glynn Purnell brand but does not quite live up to them. These are early days and the restaurant is full and the short term looks promising for Purnell’s latest enterprise but given the prices, it will need to raise its game in the medium term if the punters are going to keep coming back. And present commodity prices and the yoke of inflation could pose a major threat to any restaurant’s future.
And so, a return visit also to Rob Palmer’s Toff’s in Solihull, this time accompanied by my dining companion who had ordered the disappointing cod and chips at The Mount. The menu was largely unchanged from my previous visit which is not surprising given how recently I had dined there. It was a damp spring Tuesday evening but most of the tables were occupied and later Chef Aktar Islam of Opheem fame and two of his team came in to sit at the Chef’s table and dine and to chat with Palmer.
It’s not surprising that I should report that most of the dishes were exemplary on this second visit - my dining companion agreed with me - and while I derived least pleasure from the monkfish (not because of its cooking but just because it was monkfish) we were both mesmerised by the perfection of the cooking of the duck. The weakest course was undoubtedly the duck ragu (which itself was delicious) in a brioche ‘doughnut’ which was far too heavy. I thought that the dish would be improved by serving it in choux pastry and my companion thought it would be better in something crispy - no matter, we really did not enjoy the brioche. The other courses are described in Blog 231. The splendid scallop had been substituted by a mackeral ceviche (presumably a sign of the financial times but this was a truly fabulous dish and what had been lost in the luxuriousness of the ingredient has been substituted by the brilliance of the dish’s preparation.
Just as for The Mount, these are very early days for Toff’s. Some honing and fine tuning is needed but given that Solihull needs a high quality fine dining restaurant and it has a captive well-off local residential population it should prosper..
Wednesday 20 April - The Michelin Guide announced the latest additions to its list of recommended restaurants - it is no surprise to find that no West Midlands restaurants feature in it - none at all have received a mention since the Guide began this monthly exercise last summer. The five restaurants receiving recognition equally unsurprisingly are located in London (2), Scotland (1), the Michelin inspectors’ much loved Republic of Ireland (1) and Liverpool (1, presumably to irritate Mancunians as they fume in their gastronomic wilderness).
Finally, a photograph taken from a Twitter posting of a recently opened and already locally respected restaurant in Harborne. I am being curmudgeonly here but is it really necessary to put a garnish of blood-veined sorrel, coriander and other herbage on what I take to be breakfast? Aren’t chefs just going a little bit mad with this plague of green stuff? I really don’t want a herb garden on my fried egg. And I certainly don’t want to see any more peashoots (see Blog 228). Honestly, I don’t.
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