281. Slow ‘N’ Low At The Wilderness.

 

  The highlight of this year’s Ludlow Food Festival (see Blog 264), beyond doubt, was the now traditional Fire and Feast event held inside the castle itself on Saturday evening and the highlight of the event was the mesmerisingly, stupendously delicious truffled beef prepared and served up by Andy Stubbs. As he circulated to talk with the diners he chatted and confirmed that he was close to opening a restaurant in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter after years of running his slow cooking, live fire street food business from a mobile stand at venues such as the Digbeth Dining Club and food festivals. He began his business in 2013 after being made redundant from his previous non-food related employment and eventually successfully crowd-funded the establishment though he said he had had problems along the way.

  But now the restaurant is close to its opening date and to fill in till then Alex Claridge, who told me that he had known Stubbs from the days when he was doing a Nomad ‘pop-up’ himself in Kings Heath’s Garden Cafe, had offered Stubbs the use of The Wilderness facilities on days when the restaurant would not normally be open for service. And that meant that an opportunity existed for a very promising alternative Sunday lunch.

  The menu was made up of small dishes with a couple of larger ones. I kicked off with an unusual and powerfully flavoured Rita From Austin cocktail, the nature of which can be guessed from the list of ingredients - poblano peppers, fresh citrus, jalapeño and  mezcal. If that didn’t set me up in the right frame of mind for what was to come then nothing would.

  After a little debate, I settled on the pair of smoked brisket and ox cheek chilli tacos with cheese, pickled onion and lime. The meat flavour was very robust and the pancake-like tacos on which the meat rested made a comfortable bed for the strong taste sweetened by the little pieces of pickled onion and livened up with lime. This was a dish which announced that Andy Stubbs had arrived, was passionate about what he did and that he was going to assail Birmingham with his style of food. To Birmingham’s benefit of course.

  The other dishes of my order came out together, a stupendous ex-dairy short rib, the meat falling from the bone (well near enough anyway) with fresh and textural ‘kraut slaw’, delicious house smoked sausage served with a sweet and pertinent chilli de Arbol BBQ sauce and cosily Sunday lunch-style pleasing ‘Beef fat spuds’ with crême fraiche and herbs (these are how potatoes are served to the good souls who have led a good life and made it to Heaven).

  It’s rather nice sitting in The Wilderness for Sunday lunch with the friendly, familiar faces of The Wilderness staff bringing one exuberantly tasty, solid, powerfully flavoured, unpretentious food to eat at a comfortable pace. I find I have just written myself into making another reservation for a repeat Sliw ‘n’ Low lunch very soon.

279. Michelin Listing For Black And Green and Mo; Peel’s To Close.

 

  24 November 2022 - The Michelin inspectors have been on one of their rare visits to the West Midlands and apparently washed up in Barnt Green with the result that Northeast Worcestershire has its own Michelin-listed restaurant in the form of Andrew Sheridan’s Black and Green which I last visited in June, very shortly after it had opened. I rated it 🌞🌞🌞 which places it, in my estimation, on par with one Michelin star-rated restaurants and so it is good that the Londonophile Michelinos have recognised the excellence of Andrew Sheridan’s small-but-delightful dining establishment, situated sweetly in this pretty upmarket North Worcestershire village and listed it. Is a star about to shoot across the firmament of north Worcestershire come the annual publication of the definitive Michelin awards for 2023?

  Another Worcestershire restaurant, Mo, in the south east of the county, in gorgeous Broadway also joins the Michelin listing this month. The restaurant is situated at Dormy House Hotel and Spa and, according to the hotel’s website, offers “an intimate dining experience…where dining is “an interactive chef’s table-style experience, offering a unique 8 course tasting menu to just 12 guests at a time”. Shades of Grace and Savour perhaps.

  On the subject of Hampton Manor, where Grace and Savour is the third restaurant, the local newspapers have been reporting that the Michelin-starred Peel’s Restaurant is to close after 14 years of serving fine food and seven years since it won its star. The restaurant, where the Head Chef has been Monty Stonehewer in recent months will close on new year’s eve. A fresh development is expected to replace Peel’s.

  Twenty five year old Monty Stonehewer trained at University College Birmingham and was a contestant in the 2019 Masterchef The Professionals at which time he was a sous-chef at Peel’s. He reached the knock out stage of the competition. He took over as Head Chef at Peel’s after Rob Palmer departed to set up his own restaurant in Solihull (see Blog 231). It will be interesting to see what will be the next step in Stonehewer’s career.

276. Grace And Savour.

 

When I recently attended the 2022 Good Food Guide Awards at the Groucho Club in Soho, I was delighted that a restaurant I visited very soon after it opened at the beginning of this year, Grace And Savour, was named the 17th most exciting restaurant in Britain. 

  I had a reservation to revisit it shortly after my first meal there but the restaurant had to cancel the booking because there were staff health problems on the day that I was due to visit. So my second visit was delayed much longer than I expected but by the time I eventually returned the format had evolved and the food had reached new heights. The guests gathered as before, like the denouement of an Agatha Christie movie, in the comfortable pre-dinner lounge, smart and chic, and thence were guided to the dining area where we sat at comfortable tables rather than on high chairs around the serving counter (I prefer the more relaxed comfort of table and chairs rather than sitting perched on high).

  I still had a good view of the action in the kitchen, if a little more removed from it than on my first visit to Grace and Favour. It was as thrilling as ever to witness the well-oiled gastronomic machine working as chef David Taylor and his immaculately turned out crew plied their trade and studiously prepared the food and plated up each exquisite dish. The menu was only presented at the end of the meal, signed by Chef, so each course was a mystery until revealed by the front of house staff and sometimes the chefs.

 The meal opened with a deeply flavoured Mushroom broth with cream of Berkswell cheese, chanterelles and truffle; then came a dish Chef had reinserted on the menu because of its popularity - a Jerusalem artichoke and apple combination - its popularity is quite understandable.

 

  Following on were more canapé-style wonders eventually emerging into more substantial dishes including a little crisp made from sourdough leaven with beetroot and wild garlic caper, swede with beef tongue and beef heart with pickled tagette, burnt leeks in butter and beef garam emulsion, scallops with a butternut squash sauce and finely cooked Cornwall cod with a fabulous cream of mussel, horseradish, herbs and pickled mustard. All of these courses were unimpeachable and a great delight to eyes and taste buds.

  The meat course came in the form of finely cooked Aylesbury-Peking duck from Worcestershire, deliciously glazed with spiced plum and pickled cherries. A well established favourite appeared as the intermediate dish - caramelised whey and sheep’s milk sorbet with a compote of red currants which recalled a Swedish breakfast and the land of birth of Chef’s wife. On to a ewe’s milk yogurt sorbet with rhubarb root oil, then a splendid-looking, hedgehogesque and wondrous dish of little slices of Concorde pears glazed in wild pear syrup with a custard and apple marigold. Finally, and perhaps the least successful course, was a sort of bread pudding - a ‘cake’ made from left-over sourdough with cobnut ice cream. This seemed like a course too far but the whole meal had been, as the Good Food Guide has described the whole restaurant, “exceptional”.

278. Gambas, Bristol.

 

  Bristol feels like a smug city. Perhaps it has every right to be. The city centre is full of hipsters and students and very few people who look like working people. There are hundreds of electric scooters shooting inanely all over the place - on pavements, on the roads, frequently very fast and nerve-wrackingly dangerous to an old bloke and an old Labrador. The scooters are driven almost entirely by young men in the 20 to 25 age group who are just the group who can most easily walk anywhere and are least in need of some form of subsidised electric transportation. The dog did come close to being mowed down by a dowdy middle-aged hipstress who, entitled and privileged, barely noticed the distress she caused to an ancient and well beloved canine.

 Still, Bristol is an attractive city despite its residents, and from time to time the dog and I enjoy a visit there and we do sympathise with its justified smugness at least as regards its scattering of good places to eat. Michelin lists 17 restaurants in its Guide (including two one-starred and two Bibs Gourmands - Birmingham has only 15 listed restaurants though five are starred). I felt a great urge to revisit the excellent container-housed Spanish restaurant at Wapping Wharf, Gambas, Michelin-listed but not so far on the list of restaurants recommended by The Good Food Guide (the error is on the part of The Good Food Guide in this case). True, The Michelin Guide is rather over-enthusiastic about the view from the site where Gambas is located, “Set in a lovely first floor location in the bustling Wapping Wharf, Gambas comes with a terrace on two sides and lovely river views”. 

  This takes poetic license too far though I accept that beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder. Use of the word “lovely” to describe the row of container-housed dining establishments is inappropriate, though what represents good taste in the field of architecture is always open to debate and the view does indeed give a river view though again the use of the word “lovely” is highly contestable - the observer looks across at a vast building, presumably constructed in the 1930s, which recalls the monstrous architectural style of Nazi Germany and in the foreground everything is a little too ramshackle to contribute any degree of loveliness. Still, those who run Gambas can hardly be blamed for misdescriptions by Michelin inspectors.

  The restaurant was certainly “bustling”, comfortably intimate rather than overcrowded. The welcome is pleasing and enthusiastic and a jug of water is soon delivered to the table along with the exciting menus. The service is delightfully solicitous and the diner can not help but feel comfortable and relaxed in this busy little dining space. There is a good choice of dishes - small dishes in the main to be served as tapas - and any problem with understanding the Spanish names used on the menu are soon dealt with charmingly.

  I started off with a local Psychopomp gin and tonic and ordered Gambas pil pil along with hake served with sweet little peppers and, inevitably, Patatas bravas. The three large prawns prepared with garlic and chilli were delicious, the enticing look of them was more than matched by the flavour of the dish, the crustaceans being perfectly cooked. The sauce had to be mopped up by the bread that had been delivered to the table. The hake again was cooked perfectly with a fine crispy skin and melting white flesh. The sweet peppers were a joy and the remains of the bread were once more put to good use to ensure none of the joyous sauce was wasted.

  Then to the dessert. This was the most exquisite crema Catalana I have ever had. Presented aflame and embraced in the gentle flavour of orange, such pleasures should not be available as earthly ones only as the rewards of an entry to Paradise. But fortunately for this sinner, this crema Catalana was indeed an earthly pleasure and memory will not let it fade.

  The meal was accompanied by a fairly priced and enjoyable house white and a fine and filling meal had been consumed with much attendant happiness. No future trip to Bristol will be worth making without a trip to Gambas. 

  One little post-prandial pleasure was a visit to a nearby independent book shop. It had a good selection of books on the subject of food though the turn-off was the profusion of -ism books embracing every fashionable left-wing and grandly high-moralled trend known to post-2000 England. But the title of the food section raised a smile - not ‘Food’ as one would find in any normal bookshop in any normal English City but ‘Sustenance’, as pretentiously hipster as one might expect to find only in Bristol (and Oxford I expect). But, as I say, it raised a smile. And if a bookshop ever opens in Stirchley, I shall not hesitate to recommend that the owner places a ‘Sustenance’ label at the top of his Food section.

277. Lisa Goodwin-Allen At Simpsons.

 

  One of the interesting developments in dining out in Birmingham in recent years is the increasing number of special dinners laid on by notable restaurants where the restaurant’s own chef shares the duties of the kitchen with a visiting, usually well-known, chef who may be best known to the dining enthusiasts through appearances on television. These events are not new to Simpsons and yesterday I was delighted to have a reservation for a dining collaboration of Simpsons’ Executive Chef, Luke Tipping, and distinguished chef, Lisa Goodwin Allen, Head Chef at the one Michelin-starred Northcote Manor in the Ribble Valley in Lancashire.

  Simpsons has improved out of all recognition this year after a time a few years ago when the service was chaotic and the food reasonable but hardly breath-taking. The front of house staff, charming, polite and extremely helpful, worked like elements in a well-oiled machine and it was not long before I was seated comfortably in full view of the kitchen watching the cooking side of the operation gearing up for service. It was easy to spot Lisa G-A with her shock of white hair and the slim, distinguished-looking Luke Tipping in their joint role of performance conductors. The excitement was building.

  The meal started with two exemplary canapés - Tipping provided a delicious bacon and egg tartlet - robust with flavour - and Goodwin-Allen presented a wonderful and original ‘butter pie’. The pair made me suggest to the waiting staff that they should not distribute any more of the canapés to the rest of the room but deliver them all to my table for my consumption only.

  

  Next came Tipping’s frothy seaweed custard with a plump crispy mussel and topped with Imperial caviar. Sweet and salt and elegant.

  After the excellent bread came Goodwin-Allen’s roast quail which was so perfect I felt it must be the best quail dish I can remember eating. The little bird had not died in vain accompanied as it was by sliced pickled turnip, apple versus and an inspired frozen element. Next came Baby gem lettuce used as a receptacle for a heady combination of summer truffle shavings, artichoke, confit maitake mushroom and L’Etivas cheese. This had luxury written all over it but the lettuce seemed insubstantial and lacking in pleasure and I could only dream of having it all served up in nice crispy pastry with real bite to it.

  Luke Tipping’s finely cooked Cornish cod restored the deep pleasurability of the meal after the lettuce leaf and was served with tasty little shrimps, various forms of  kale and a delectable shellfish cream which had to be mopped up with my remaining chunks of bread. Such stuff are dreams made on. But the absolute peak, the outstanding dish, was yet to come - Lisa Goodwin-Allen’s fabulous rhapsody of deer meat and beetroot - her stupendous Scottish venison dish. Never, truly, never have I enjoyed a plate of venison quite so much. This, if it were any other form of art, would have been a museum piece. Just venison and beetroot. A triumphant rendition of the pairing. The photograph at least tells part of the story. Look at that absolutely perfectly cooked piece of venison, see the astonishingly delicious meatball by its side, regard those brilliant variants of what to do with beetroot also sitting on the plate. A symphony of gastronomy. And there I rest my case.

  Luke Tipping then gave the by now ectstatic diners a pleasing dessert of a classic combination of black figs, salty Cashel Blue cheese, Bournville honey and the bite of chicory. The figs themselves were a little lacking in flavour but the other elements on the dish were admirable.

  Then in one last flourish, Lisa Goodwin-Allen strove once more to hit the evening’s gastronomic ball out of the park with a sweetly lemon dessert the flavour of which launched the most pleasant assault on the diners’ taste buds. She presented a very convincing lemon lookalike made from lemon-flavoured white chocolate served with meringue, limoncello and the perfect addition of thyme. This too was the stuff that dreams are made on.

  A great evening came to a close. The chefs circulated among and chatted to their guests. Menus were autographed. Carriages (well, taxis at any rate) were summoned. Mellowness lingered all around.

    In the reception area, whilst waiting for my taxi, I took the opportunity to buy Andreas Antonia’s fine new book with its enjoyable 1970s patterns and colours. Well worth a read.