275. Lulu Wild.

 

  Having consumed one or two East Asian meals recently under mildly bleak conditions in Stirchley, with its hipster and Bohemian pretensions and Spartan conditions evident all around me, I thought it was time to return to glitzy, exciting, rather noisy Lulu Wild in Brindley Place for a different style of East Asian restaurant and relive the pleasures I have experienced there before.

  In Stirchley, menus exist which recall the Victorian concept of the Ordinary where diners sat together eating a set meal decided upon by their hosts, the restaurateurs, for a reasonable but set price. They haven’t quite got there yet in Stirchley but they can’t be far off. In contrast, the Lulu Wild was adventurous and luxurious, colourful and promising. I can see how Stirchley diners may feel their that shabby suburban  experience is gastronomically tasteful - outwardly modest and becoming of unworldly socialists - while flashy, pulsating Lulu Wild must, by its glitziness, be an inferior option - Stirchley dining is to Jeremy Corbyn what Lulu Wild is to Boris Johnson. But there’s room for every style and I do like Lulu Wild’s style and find the food served there to be really very good.

  I started off with a generously sized scorcher of a Margarita - a masterful rendition of that particular cocktail - and was served my choice of steamed prawn and scallop won ton accompanied by a blistering chilli sauce. The won ton were perfectly cooked and, I thought, delicious. A great and light start to the meal.

  For the main, I felt I had to revisit the restaurant’s dish of Black cod served with asparagus, raw radish and a generously sized bowl of jasmine rice. The fish was cooked perfectly as was the accompanying grilled asparagus. The rice was just as one would want it to be. 

 It is best not to mention the dessert - mango pudding - which was made up of a lot crumble, a startlingly sweet mango sorbet, accompanied by a glass containing a mélange of ingredients including I expect, mango, but more notably, some gruesomely bitter chunks of grapefruit, which I expect were inserted in an ill-judged attempt to counter the supremely sweet sorbet but which in fact were far too great a contrast and too astringent to pair with everything else. The dessert was, in short, disastrous.

  Mango pudding aside, and let’s face it, ambitious and accomplished desserts are not a feature of Stirchley  East Asian restaurant menus to any degree, this meal at Lulu Wild was excellent.

  Walking back to The Grand Hotel on the mild mid-November evening, Christmas, it seemed, had arrived complete with big wheel, skating rink, other fairground rides and in Victoria Square, the dreaded, tiresome, tacky, well past its sell-by date German Christmas Fair.