I am happy to say that in the last year or so I have travelled around the West Midlands - Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and West Midlands - and dined at many of the region’s great restaurants, though not yet all of them, and of course there are some that have yet to be discovered.
Since the pandemic a couple of trends seem to be emerging -
Firstly, the Guidebooks are in a terrible mess. Well, to start, there are no guide books, just on-line listings with the odd three-lined comment, often nothing to do with the food, thrown in. Michelin has ended its forty-six year-long series of real paper books and replaced it with internet updates usually of restaurants in London or places Michelin inspectors like to visit and are generally often easy to get to, such as Ireland, the Lake District, Oxfordshire, the Peak District, North Yorkshire, the Cotswolds, rural Shropshire, Kent, Suffolk, Cornwall and the West Country and the nicer parts of Scotland and Wales. Their tweeted messages are more likely to tell you about the smart places to eat in Reykjavik, Singapore, Copenhagen or Tokyo than they are about where to eat in Birmingham, Gloucester, Stafford, Hereford or Stoke.
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| Michelin Guides 1974-2020, never any more for the bookshelf? |
In Michelin is largely unhelpful then The Good Food Guide is presently in a real mess. Again in this post-pandemic dining age, the editors of the publication chose to dump paper and go virtual. After a few days trial where the site featured just 300 UK restaurants it then began to charge subscribers about £30 p.a. for access to its list of recommended dining establishments with the promise that it would soon add many more restaurants to the list.
In fact progress has been very slow and relies on its inspectors getting around the country and visiting likely places where they might track down good food. Instead of carrying forward all the names in the previous editions the editor seems to have started afresh and therefore many significant restaurants in Birmingham and the region in general are not yet listed so that if one consults the online Guide as to where to eat in Birmingham the current list will suggest just Dishoom, Tropea, Land, The Oyster Club and Tierra and then goes on to recommend Cheal’s of Henley, Tailors (Warwick), The Boat Inn and Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (both in Lichfield), Russell’s of Broadway, 33 The Homeend Ledbury, The Royal Oak (Warwickshire), Forelles, Old Downton Lodge and Charlton Arms (at Ludlow) and then the recommendations spread out into Derbyshire and Leicestershire.
I assume the full Birmingham listing will have to wait until the unfortunate over-stuffed inspectors have visited the five Birmingham Michelin-starred restaurants and all the others besides which seems ridiculous given that subscribers are currently paying a fair sum for a wholly inadequate list though presumably the list needed the subscriptions to come in before inspectors’ expenses could be paid. In all events it is a wholly inadequate listing at present and for any visitor to Birmingham whose knowledge of the city is very limited its advice is close to worthless presently.
The latest list of 30 restaurants which was e mailed to me as I wrote this piece emphasises what a long way The Good Food Guide has to go with just two West Midlands restaurants featuring on it, both in Lichfield, the others generally in the areas I suggested the Guide inspectors might prefer going to.
The second notable local trend is the rise of the out-of-town restaurant. There are a number of reasons why Birmingham has seen few fine restaurants opening in the city centre in the post-pandemic era - access to the city is by unreliable and, in the evenings, infrequent public transport and yet the left-wing socialist administration in the city with its Council Cabinet Transport member (a silly, twee cyclist previously from Oxfordshire who represents a ward full of silly, preening, well-off, pointless, middle-class socialists) is determined to freeze out the motorist and this coupled with rents that are far too high for independent hospitality businesses to afford but easily affordable to humdrum, mediocre chain restaurants. It is therefore not surprising that exceptional chefs have begun to open restaurants without the city walls (following Matt Cheal who opened Cheal’s of Henley several years ago) - Rob Palmer in Solihull, Tom Shepherd in Lichfield, Andrew Sheridan in Barnt Green, even Didier Philpott in Stourbridge and Glynn Purnell’s opening of his pub, The Mount, in Henley, and for the promising young chefs who want to stay in the city, very small establishments may be the only option - Kray Tredwell in 670 Grams, for instance, or venturing out to the suburbs where the cool young, well-off middle class abound, such as Opus’s departure from Cornwall Street and successful arrival in Harborne.
So important changes are happening - central Birmingham is losing out to the suburbs and the surrounding more rural communities- and at the same time national food guides are not keeping abreast of events.
Therefore to pick out those restaurants worth dining at in Birmingham and the West Midlands region I shall do what I have never done before and give those which I feel worth listing, a rating and quite a detailed one, that does not take into account the standards which a ridiculously wealthy Kensington dweller visiting Singapore might expect for his several hundred pounds off expenses but what an experienced, fine food-loving Mercian diner might hope for in our region.
Stars being already claimed by the French tyre makers, I shall retain a celestial theme for my ratings but use a sun and moon theme so that -
4 suns 🌞🌞🌞🌞 Exciting original faultless food, exemplary service, perfect atmosphere and setting
3 suns 🌞🌞🌞 Exciting, original, precise dishes throughout, very good service, pleasing setting
2 suns 🌞🌞. Finely cooked, interesting food in the main, very good service, pleasing setting
1 sun 🌞 Finely prepared and served food, attractive setting, good atmosphere
4 moons 🌛🌛🌛🌛 Food is well prepared and tasty, good service, pleasant environment
3 moons 🌛🌛🌛 Solidly prepared pleasing dishes in the main, service may have a fault or two
2 moons🌛🌛 Good cooking resulting in pleasing food served satisfactorily
1 moon 🌛. Mostly enjoyable food, service generally unproblematical, comfortable setting
So looking at restaurant visits over previous months how do the restaurants in which I have eaten rate?
The Walrus Shrewsbury 🌞🌞
Forelles Ludlow 🌞
Fishmore Hall Bistro Ludlow 🌛🌛🌛
Opheem Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
670 Grams Birmingham 🌞🌞
Tropea Harborne Birmingham 🌛🌛
Café de Paris by Didier Stourbridge 🌛🌛🌛
Upstairs By Tom Shepherd Lichfield 🌞🌞
Purnell’s Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
Adam’s Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
Black And Green Barnt Green 🌞🌞🌞
Folium Birmingham 🌞🌞
Isaac’s The Grand Hotel Birmingham 🌛🌛🌛🌛
Simpsons Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
The Wilderness Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
Pulperia Birmingham 🌞
The French Pantry Ludlow 🌞
Lulu Wild Birmingham 🌞🌞
Pick Thai Stratford upon Avon 🌛🌛
Cheal’s of Henley Henley in Arden 🌞🌞🌞🌞
The Mount Henley in Arden 🌛
Oyster Club Birmingham 🌛🌛
Sabai Sabai Stratford upon Avon 🌛
Lambs of Sheep Street Stratford upon Avon 🌞
Toffs by Rob Palmer Solihull 🌞🌞
Butchers Social Aldridge 🌞🌞
Grace and Savour at Hampton Manor Hampton in Arden 🌞
The Woodsman Stratford upon Avon 🌛🌛🌛
Peel’s Restaurant at Hampton Manor Hampton in Arden 🌞🌞🌞
Rajdoot Birmingham 🌛
Lunar Stoke on Trent 🌞🌞🌞
Harborne Kitchen Harborne Birmingham 🌞🌞
Carter’s of Moseley Moseley Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
Chakana Moseley Birmingham 🌞
Craft Birmingham 🌞🌞
Larder Lichfield 🌛🌛🌛🌛
Boat Inn Lichfield 🌞🌞
Land Birmingham 🌛🌛🌛🌛
Smoke at Hampton Manor Hampton in Arden 🌞🌞🌞
Qavali Birmingham 🌛🌛🌛🌛
Charlton Arms Ludlow 🌞
Dishoom Birmingham 🌛
Docket No. 33 Whitchurch 🌞🌞
Asha’s Birmingham 0
About 8 Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞
Salt Stratford upon Avon 🌞🌞
Russell’s of Broadway Broadway 🌞
The Lygon Arms Broadway 🌛🌛🌛
Le Champignon Sauvage Cheltenham 🌞🌞🌞🌞
Mortimer’s Ludlow 🌞
The Bookshop Hereford 🌛🌛🌛🌛
The Cross Kenilworth not visited recently
Chapter Harborne Birmingham not yet visited
Le Petit Bois Kings Heath Birmingham not yet visited but on my way there later in the week. See Blog 260.
Wild Shropshire Whitchurch not yet visited
Lumière Cheltenham not yet visited
Penson’s Tenbury Wells not yet visited
Haughmond Upton Magna not yet visited
Tailors Warwick not yet visited
Of immense significance in the history of modern English gastronomy and therefore of how we eat here in the West Midlands now, Chef Alastair Little, who died on 3 August 2022 in Australia, should be mentioned here. He first worked as a waiter and then moved to work as a chef at the notable London restaurant L’Escargot in 1981 at a time when English gastronomy was really on the move. In 1983 he cheffed at the restaurant 192 in Notting Hill and then in 1985 opened his own restaurant, Alastair Little, in Frith Street in Soho where the kitchen opened out on to the dining room, the tables had no table clothes and had paper napkins and the menu changed twice daily - years before these became regular features of restaurants as we know them today.
The cooking under chef and Head Chef Juliet Peston was immaculate and strove to remove itself for once and for all from the French cuisine which had dominated fine English restaurants since the days of Escoffier and earlier. Little brought to English restaurants the cuisine of simplicity and subtraction in which he investigated what could be removed from a dish to enable the remaining ingredients to be even more effective. He opened a second restaurant, also called Alastair Little, at Ladbroke Grove in 1995 and his two openings 1985 and 1995 bookended the appearance of other landmark London restaurants which all pointed English cuisine in the direction in which it should travel - St John, The French House and The Blueprint Cafe. Little ended his work as an active restauranteur in 2002 having stamped his mark on English cuisine as notable as the contributions of Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay but far less flashy.
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