257. Tropea

  Tropea is a popular neighbourhood Italian restaurant situated in well heeled and self-regardingly cool Harborne. The journey by public transport from my home about 6 miles away on the edge of southwest Birmingham is tiresome and the food on offer in any restaurant I visit in Harborne needs to to make the journey worthwhile. So did Tropea’s offering indeed make my journey worth enduring?

  Firstly a little background. Tropea is one of only five restaurants in Birmingham currently mentioned on the nascent Good Food Guide list of recommended restaurants. It has a ‘good’ rating. It is not to be found, yet at least, in the Michelin Guide. The restaurant was opened in 2021 by Ben Robinson-Young and Kasia Pietkowska, who had met each other while studying at University College Birmingham in 2010 (and graduated from there in 2014). The restaurant is named after the Calabrian coastal town of Tropea. 

  I started with a rather good cocktail called Paper Plane served with a degree of wit in the form of, er, a paper plane. Whilst sipping it I was able to observe how popular this smart, modern, relaxed restaurant with soothing decor seems to be. The service was very good and I received excellent advice on how much to order to satisfy my needs - I was pleased to see that half orders were available for many dishes. How very wise especially when old men with faltering alimentary systems are sitting at the table with the menu in their hand.

  The choice of antipasti was pleasingly varied but I could not resist ordering two of the battered fried courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese and mint, the bitterness of the cheese balanced gloriously by oozing streaks of honey. These were highly commendable and should be indulged in on a daily basis. I also had a second antipasto of Devon crab crostini with lime mayonnaise and pink grapefruit but I thought there was a little too much bitterness, I guess from the grapefruit, and this spoiled the otherwise excellent flavour of the crab.

    On to the pasta. I chose ravioli stuffed with ricotta and served with a pistachio and fresh herb salsa and topped with Parmesan. The ravioli were very good and tasty and the pistachio added a bit of crunch to ii all which enhanced the dish. If anything the dish was just a little too salty for my taste and the half portion I had was sufficient.

  For the main course I chose rolled lamb shoulder with white beans, samphire, salsa verde and confit lemon. The meat was lovely - tender, lean and tasty - but everything accompanying was either not contributory (the beans had little flavour) or downright antagonistic. I eat Italian food rarely so maybe the ingredients are in fact classic combinations and I am ignorant of the fact but really the samphire seemed out of place to me (and like the beans had surprisingly little flavour and no bite to it) and the confit lemon was plainly ruinous to the flavour of the sweet lamb. I ate the course and gained pleasure from the lamb but had my reservations about the whole dish.

  

  For dessert I enjoyed affogato with a glug of Frangelico. 

  So, a decent enough meal with some satisfying pleasures and I think dining there will always be a rewarding experience but plucking up the courage to battle with Birmingham’s dire bus service may mean some time may elapse before I return. Meanwhile the restaurant is not short of local customers to keep it busy. There’s just that thought gnawing away at the back of my mind - I must have some more of those remarkably enjoyable fried battered stuffed courgette flowers. So perhaps the city’s buses will have to be battled with again after all.

254. 670 Grams.

 

  My history of dining at 670 Grams is one of always arriving there as a downpour begins and secondly being depressed by the appalling state of Digbeth as unending roadworks cause mayhem for the traffic as it tries to escape the city centre. But once I’m there at 670 Grams life gets a lot brighter.

  The first course is ready and waiting to drink down and to nibble at. Immaculate flavours from the word go. It’s impossible to recall the details of everything that was delivered to the table during the following 170 minutes as 16 courses eventually ended up on my table. There was a danger, at least to start, that this might look like series of a canapés but Kray Tredwell is far too clever, far too astute, far too tuned-in not to make this an experience which built up to a sturdy and memorable and utterly satisfying meal. There was no menu, dishes came along in a steady flow of happy surprises, some of them with the most luxurious of ingredients - scallops, lobster, wagyu, some of them as witty little twists on classics such as cauliflower cheese and New York pastrami sandwich, often surprising and novel but totally apt combinations of flavours. It’s hard not to find at least one course you didn’t enjoy in a tasting menu but it is true to say that I enjoyed everything that came across the counter from the pass even though there were no fewer than 16 opportunities for me not to do so.

  Tredwell hit the flavour button with just about everything -  the opening chunk of grilled pineapple set the scene as it became much more than a chunk of pineapple. And gradually I worked my way through, pleasured every time at the clearing of another fascinating ceramic till what I suppose might be described as the main course came along, Tredwell’s fine and witty take on char siu. After that, no less than four predessert/desserts/petit fours, each a delight and the the 16 course tasting menu had come and gone. This was a tasting menu in the true sense, soupçons of flavour (not for getting textures), original frequently delicious and all admirable. This restaurant remains unique in Birmingham. It’s vaguely anarchic, elsewhere it would be served in a grand dining room where it would be ceremonious rather than that little bit cheeky. You have only to catch sight of Chef, driven and in the zone, putting his dishes together to see that something truly great is hatching in this little restaurant in the Custard Factory.

Sorry, That one got away before I could get around to photographing it.

Beef on my first shiso leaf.

Tredwell’s twist on char siu pork and egg foo young 

256. Café De Paris by Didier.

  The dog and I have committed ourselves to touring the West Midlands in easy bite-sized journeys. Over the decades I’ve experienced the horrors of international travel to 115 countries, visited some wonderful places, stayed in some remarkable hotels and dined rather well but on the other hand I have also endured trips to pretty awful spots on this globe, stayed in cockroach infested hotels, been offered food to eat that the dog would most assuredly have turned her nose up at, been in a city where a coup was taking place, been in Kuwait just before the Iraqi invasion, been given rides in lorries along roads on sheer cliff faces where the road has been half washed away, been close to being arrested in Eritrea for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, stuck in Athens for days on end when I needed to get home because of that wretched Icelandic volcano … the list goes on. Frankly I can’t do it any more. So touring the West Midlands in bite-sized chunks of journeys is just up our street. 

  And we’ve covered a lot of ground. So where to go next? Well I hadn’t been to Stourbridge for about fifty years. So Stourbridge it was. And what did I discover there quite by accident? The newly opened Café de Paris by Didier. Didier, I thought, could that be Didier Philpott whose Toque D’Or was listed by Michelin 20 years ago and who was also chef patron at Edmund’s? A quick google revealed that yes it was - it was the legendary Didier Philpott, now 44 years in the business. So there was nothing to do but reserve a table and head back to Stourbridge for dinner to see how this chef was faring in his new venture.

  Serendipity had resulted in my discovering the Café de Paris’ existence and sometimes the best things happen as a result of serendipity. Firstly there was the fun and bemusement caused by Stourbridge’s own, probably unique, rail service which involves travelling by a normal train to a station called Stourbridge Junction and then boarding a strange little one carriage train on a single track which dawdles backwards and forwards pleasantly and uneventfully to Stourbridge Town.

  And so to the restaurant. Bright, modern decor and a pleasant welcome awaited me and I rapidly settled into feeling comfortable and relaxed. Chef and his kitchen staff could be glimpsed through a large window which gave him as good a view of the diners as they got of him. The menu was simple, broadly French and appetising.

  A pleasingly fresh and crusty baton was served with butter from Netherend Farm, the origin of it being indicated by the foil paper containing it (probably best served without I’d have thought though all very honest in this era of cultured butters with various additions inserted in them). Personally I like good honest salted butter. Then the starter of Coquilles St Jacques - very spot-on cooking of the gorgeous scallops served here with pea purée and nicely salty bacon and a herb butter sauce. Rustic, less simple than it looked and enjoyable.

  For my main course I chose boudin noir - delicious blood sausage - with pork shoulder steak which was a little more chewy than I might have wanted, and caramelised apple, 3 little mounds of lovely mashed potato and excellent mustard sauce. Then, for dessert, a finally crafted tarte Parisienne with summer berries. 

  Chef came out of the kitchen and spoke to all his diners. It was interesting to talk to him about the Toque D’Or and Edmund’s and hear his thoughts about where restaurants are now.

  This was a relaxed and satisfying meal. None of the mad scramble we’ve got used to with multiple tiny dishes flying out of the kitchen, front of house staff reciting inaudibly a string of ingredients making up each course, an excess of glasses of wine ushered in as a ‘flight’. It did feel very French. And unpretentious in a well-judged sort of way. It was as though Chef had decided this was his approach, it suited him regardless of the daft madnesses of modern fine dining and if it didn’t suit a Gallic shoulder shrug was the answer. The food looked like it should do - basically it looked like food rather than a post modern piece of art. Happy recognisable flavours. I think that Didier Philpott might just be on to something with his Café de Paris.