246. Alex Claridge’s Menu That Was.

 

  Two evenings after being among the privileged dozen to experience Alex Claridge’s Menu That Never Was (see Blog 245) I was back at The Wilderness to enjoy, I hoped, Alex Claridge’s current Menu That Is (or Menu That Was depending on how soon after this piece was written the reader is casting their eyes over it). There were old favourites and new.

  I often express an opinion that I could quite happily enjoy an extended evening of nothing more than canapés in a restaurant somewhere and the three amuse gueules served at The Wilderness confirmed how much I would like my canapé-only fantasy to be realised. These were absolutely first rank - the little pastry filled with wagyu tartare and Comte cheese I had enjoyed just 2 evenings before, a scintillating crab XO doughnut and a delightfully flavoured celeriac enhanced by the turn and taste of hazelnut

  However my fantasy was soon revealed as foolish as more substantial courses appeared on the table before me.

  Firstly pleasingly mildly flavoured mackeral with another blanco and finger lime, light and fitting for early summer. Then more fish in the shape of delicately cooked cod, perfect in texture, precisely balanced with a broth studded by little pieces of iberico pork. Then a return visit to Claridge’s The Carrot 2022 which is one of those dishes which makes the diner stopping questioning the need for courses based on a single vegetable.

  And then the meat arrived. I paid a £25 supplement for the wagyu beef tartare extra dish. This is a lot of money but it is a great dish and very much worth investing in for the pleasure it brings. Such joy has to be tasted. Then back to the regular menu with Lavinton Lamb Caesar - a well-cooked loin with belly bacon

decorated in chess-board format. A work of art for various reasons.

    Then comes a dish of beautifully cooked Cornish duck breast served with unobtrusive chicory and blood orange sauce. I would say that it would be hard to better showcase the flavours in this dish.

    Next the by now familiar but always welcome Ch-ch-changes, the mini-banana-flavoured white chocolate banana that isn’t and then a very welcome dessert using up end-of-season northern rhubarb to delicately flavour mascarpone with texture derived from puffed buckwheat. Soothing and delicious. Finally the well-judged and delightful chocolate dessert - ‘ceremonial cacao, 25 year old balsamic, vanilla’ and finally, finally it’s  Hotlips again,

  It is not possible to understand Alex Claridge’s passion for his work until one sits in The Wilderness witnessing the intense processes involved in producing these remarkable dishes and to listen to chef’s own words about the road, with its many potholes, that has led him so far. It is all very impressive and admirable.

  I try not to presume to give an opinion about how influencers (which after all is basically what the Michelin Guide inspectors are) should be rating the restaurants they visit but it is preposterous that The Wilderness has not thus far been awarded a Michelin star when one compares it with other restaurants.

  It appears that there are plans for the restaurant to move around autumn-time to another site in the Jewellery Quarter which is exciting but a little sad given the history of the various restaurants that have served meals in the building (see Blog 157) and The Wilderness’ own extended time there but perhaps a new site will finally bring those who should know better than me to their senses.

245. Alex Claridge’s Menu That Never Was.

 

  Alex Claridge appeared in the 2020 season of BBC’s Great British Menu and, as recounted in Blogs 87 and 90, was eliminated from the Central region heats after the first two courses and the audience never had the opportunity to know what the chef-judge Paul Ainsworth was missing.

  The programme introduced the necessity for the competing chefs to prepare an amuse bouche and Claridge’s offering was a ba tête beef tartare with Parmesan custard and other elements which was already familiar to those who regularly wondered in the The Wilderness as Claridge’s Big Mac. The four subsequent courses were to be linked to works of literature preferably from the region which the chef was representing and so Claridge’s starter was something rather weird and wonderful called Nah You’re revolting which was a tribute to Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes and included a cricket and mealworm bhaji with quail marinated in a yogurt and spice mix to mimic butter chicken sauce served with coal oil and various other elements including wood ant emulsion. 

  For his fish course Claridge prepared Goth Apple inspired by the book Ghost Drum by West Midlands author Jacqueline Susan Price. The dish included a scallop ceviche with various apple elements, a white chocolate skull and a wasabi emulsion which Ainsworth identified as overpowering the other ingredients and which he pinpointed as the reason for marking Alex Claridge down to 8 points while the other chefs were all awarded 10 points for their fish courses. It was this that saw Claridge taking an early bath and the result was that we never got to see what else he had to offer.

  So it was with great delight that I read an e mail telling me about a one-off dinner he was arranging for just twelve diners one evening in The Wilderness at which he would present his entire four courses + dinner which would have appeared on the television had he made it through to the second round. I scrabbled to ensure that I had secured two of the twelve places for myself and my guest and then, on the prescribed evening, met up with my companion at Isaac’s bar at The Grand Hotel where the dog and I were staying, rapidly glugged down a somewhat alarming Spicy Margarita and then boarded a taxi for Warstone Lane where this exciting event was to take place.

   A single large table was stretched out lengthways in the restaurant for the lucky dining dozen and the event had pleasingly attracted an affable selection of food enthusiasts and it was not long before everyone was exchanging with each other their impressions of local restaurants as well as dining establishments a little further afield. The cocktails flowed and the included wine flight took off to everyone’s pleasure.

  After Chef’s quietly spoken welcome and introduction to his thoughts about the Great British menu the Big Mac amuse gueule was served - a delicious little pastry with beef tartare and cheese custard. A hit! A palpable hit! 

  Then the starter (see illustration at head of this Blog) - Claridge’s revised version of Nah!You’re revolting - using a leg of barbecued Anjou pigeon in place of quail which is currently unobtainable and a bhaji pleasingly missing mealworms and crickets. This was really very good with the sauce giving much pleasure. 

  On to the fish course - an excellent ceviche of scallop with green apple, wasabi and white chocolate. The white chocolate skull was replaced by a rather more prosaic white chocolate ice cream but the dish worked very well with pleasing textures and flavour.

  At this point Chef turned up in a jacket with a large food-carrying bag on his back which somehow tied in with local author JRR Tolkien’s  Lord Of The Rings (an old man’s deafness inhibited my ability to fully grasp the explanation) and at last the main course was revealed and it was indeed a revelation. A surprising revelation. The dish arrived in a cardboard takeaway box (which one assumes might have been a little more lavish if it had actually appeared on the television) and, when the box was opened, a flatbread laden with (spectacularly tasty) ‘tandoori’ iberico pork and raita was revealed for the world to see at last. Delicious but probably not the right look for Great British Menu.

  The competition demands that the competing chefs prepare an intermediate course (what the then host, a wholly unfunny Scottish comedienne labelled hilariously [well, she thought it was funny anyway] “the pre-pooding pooding”. Claridge’s transitional course was again very enjoyable combining the flavours of white chocolate, lime and the tangy bite of padron pepper green chilli.

  The kitchen staff gathered round to watch chef plate up the dessert of gorgeous redness which united very effectively the flavours of raspberry, rose and the distinct taste of lychee. The meal was rounded off by a nibble of one of Alex Claridge’s very familiar hot lips.

  This was a quirky meal as we might expect. Too quirky I suspect for the Great British Menu. But it was a great occasion to sit there and have the various courses brought out and revealed to the world. Twelve very happy customers trooped out into the darkness of Warstone Lane at the end of the evening and whether or not a BBC celebrity chef or a Michelin inspector likes a chef’s food, in the end it’s the paying customer who really matters,

244. Tea At The Grand.

  

 Though I’ve lounged many times in the happy atmosphere of The Grand Hotel’s Madeleine Bar I had not yet treated myself to afternoon tea there which looked like a special occasion in itself and so, with the excuse of celebrating a friend’s birthday, I found myself once again in one of the most exciting and romantically decorated rooms in the city.

Afternoon tea - a small salmon savoury, 3 finger sandwiches, 2 scones ( lemon and fruit) with jam and cream and 3 delightful examples of the patissier’s art - chocolate, banoffee, coconut and pineapple with rum - all washed down by a choice of several teas plus a glass of very quaffable champagne - all for a very agreeable £35. And eaten while basking in the atmosphere and luxurious cosiness of Madeleine.

  A fine way to pass an hour or two of a Birmingham afternoon. The place buzzing with little groups of people, largely women, indulging themselves in each other’s company while living the Grand life no matter what the Russians, inflation, oil prices and the rest are up to outside. A couple of hours of civilisation to be savoured.

  Meanwhile the inspectors representing the Michelin Guide have really pushed out the boat in this month’s list of restaurants newly featured in the Guide when it comes to spreading out across England to find exciting new places to eat across our nation. Five new dining establishments have been added in the new May listing - two in London and three in Kent and none anywhere else. Perhaps they are trying to save on travel expenses. The West Midlands once more remains the only region never to have had a single restaurant featured in these monthly lists. The region is a Michelin black hole and the Guide’s relevance grows increasingly in doubt. But who cares about them? I’m back in Madeleine and reliving my very grand afternoon tea.

243. Sunday Lunch At Pulperia.

 

  I reported how much joy I had experienced at Aktar Islam’s Pulperia when I had indulged myself in the excellent Sunday lunch served there back in September last year (how rapidly time passes, see Blog 181 and also 172) and having good friends visiting from New Zealand this seemed like a perfect place to take them for Sunday lunch and to demonstrate to them just how fine this English traditional meal can be.

  Now £28 for two courses (£25 last autumn but given everything that’s happening in the national economy one can hardly complain) I reordered the dishes I had pleasured myself with 8 months ago. Once more I chose the delightfully tasty chorizo starter served with tomato. What can I say other than I would gladly eat a plate of it every day?

  Then the magnificent Argentinian roast beef itself. Beautifully cooked and seasoned, perfectly tender and pleasingly tasty, it was accompanied by all manner of trimmings - a fine Yorkshire pudding, creamed shredded cabbage, truffled cauliflower cheese, splendid roast potatoes and nicely cooked roast heritage carrots with a little blob of flavourful caramelised onion purée. There was more than enough for all of us and we were one happy Englishman and two happy New Zealanders. As before I had nothing more complicated than ice cream to finish but I concluded that Pulperia has kept up its superb standards, remains a great pleasure to visit and it’s hard to think that its Sunday lunch can be bettered especially in terms of value, service and the excellence of the food.

  The pleasure derived from lunch at Pulperia was a great relief having dined the previous evening at a rather alarming school reunion (the first I had attended in fifty years) where very ancient men were constantly reassuring each other of how young they looked, greedily glugging the accompanying wine in quantities that suggested it was going out of fashion and shovelling down food of a slightly less than middling quality - a not particularly pleasant pâté, a tiresome but accurately cooked blade of beef accompanied by some grim vegetables (though a potato fondant was really rather good) and a surprisingly pleasingly tasty lemon tart. Having been to two of these affairs in the past month or so I am saddened that they are used as an opportunity to present generally dull dishes of varying qualities. It can not be easy to cater for hundreds of people but the Shakespeare Birthday lunch I reported in Blog 236 showed that it is indeed possible to present excellent, interesting, delicious dishes on such occasions to such diners but clearly if they want something special the diners have got to be prepared to fork out a goodly sum of money for the upmarket food.

  We regularly pontificate on how much the quality of good English food has changed in these last fifty years but, not for the first time, I’m not so sure. These two dispiriting reunion meals suggest to me that most Englishmen are really not all that sophisticated about the food they’re eating even if a lot of them, or at least their wives, like to go around photographing what they’re being served. Most men, when given the choice, will opt for steak and chips and rarely bother if the cook/chef has not even cooked that accurately. There is much that is mediocre out there, some of it even masquerading as ‘Fine Dining’ (certainly sold at Fine Dining prices) and it will be the huge piece of the iceberg of English catering as long as English tastes allow it to continue to exist. Myself, I intend to avoid any mass catering events for a good while now, as they really are awful in the main. I shall endeavour however to make sure I get my hands on a ticket to next year’s Shakespeare Birthday lunch because that is a great example of just how things like mass catering really should be done.

Reunion dinner starter, really not very nice.

Michelin tweets from the West Midlands continue to be rare. Here are the latest:-

1 April 2022 - Adam’s, Birmingham:-

10 April 2022 - Charlton Arms, Ludlow - 

26 April 2022 - Ludlow - 

11 May 2022 - The Fish Hotel, Farncombe Estate, Broadway, Worcestershire (new) - 

13 May 2022 - The Plumicorn, Tawny Hotel, Consall, Staffordshire (new) - 

242. The French Pantry

 

 

 Before moving on to report on my visit to Ludlow’s Michelin-listed The French Pantry, I can not resist mentioning having a second enjoyable dinner in Fishmore Hall’s bistro restaurant. I had so enjoyed my meal there the previous evening (see Blog 241) I resolved to eat there again instead of choosing from the à la carte menu in Forelles and quaffing a Monkey 47 and tonic I set about consuming a highly enjoyable simple but luxuriously glistening and deeply tasty chicken liver pâté enhanced by a little blob of English mustard and tiny sweet pickles together making a witty deconstructed piccalilli.

  I then moved on to braised beef shin served with creamed garlic potatoes, well-cooked celeriac fondant and pleasing braised red cabbage. The beef was satisfactory, a little dry, but the nicely unctuous sauce and red cabbage helped it along. Finally, for dessert, I had an old favourite, an absolute gem - coconut panna cotta, tiny cubes of pineapple, toasted coconut and a wondrous basil ice cream. There was much to be happy about in this meal.

  And so to lunch the next day at The French Pantry. Outside woodwork painted a soothing light blue and inside a French bistro nicely recreated complete, as everyone who reports on the place just has to mention, the tables covered with red chequered tablecloths and blue padded seating along one wall, all very Tricolore and cosily delightful. A quiet and pleasant welcome and I was seated in a very comfortable padded chair which would have been lovely to snooze in postprandially. Rustic and yet not rustic to judge by my starter of robustly flavoured gateau of crab (actually a mousse sitting in a tasty, buttercup-yellow saffron beurre blanc), beautifully crafted and, for the crab lover, highly desirable and delicious..

  Then a stupendous confit duck leg served with prunes, garlic sautéed potatoes and prune sauce. Crispy skin, succulent duck meat, the sweetness of the prunes and the sauce, the perfection of the potatoes, total Gallic delightfulness. 

  And then classic tarte tatin. No messing about with daft fruits - good, down-to-earth perfectly cooked apple placed mosaic-fashion on a pleasing pastry with lots of gooey unctiousness and helped along with a simple vanilla ice cream.

  With food like this you have to wonder what revolting French peasants were moaning about back in 1789.

  A trip to Ludlow in the future will not be complete without a visit to The French Pantry. It’s extremely good value, serves delicious food and has just the right atmosphere.