282. Autumn Ends, Winter Begins.

I had hoped to visit Shropshire or The Cotswolds during November but with various trade unions trying to bring down the government by fomenting strikes by their various members and particularly in the railway industry, arranging travel even around the West Midlands counties was fraught with uncertainty.

Hence I found myself roaming less widely and once more taking a three day break in Birmingham itself, which Time Out has recently judged to be the second best place to visit in Britain (after, rather improbably, Eastbourne of all places). I had reserved a table for dinner at Orelle several weeks ago to see what an evening experience there, looking out over the near and distant city lights, would be like.

And quite spectacular it was. The restaurant itself was fully booked, a lot of smartly dressed diners out to soak up the upmarket atmosphere in this pre-Christmas time. There was little evidence of the )Cost of Living Crisis’ here on the 24th floor of the recently opened building on Colmore Row. No-one that evening looked as though they were choosing between ‘eating and heating’.

The service as usual was close to immaculate and the meal got off to a fine start with a couple of tasty gougéres and a generous amount of bread with beautifully crispy crust and butter.

To start I chose what turned out to be a somewhat subdued ham hock terrine riven through with black pudding and served what I took to be pickled vegetables. There was very little flavour in the terrine - it seemed rather half-hearted - and there was no contrasting sweet-acid flavour in the vegetables. There was more salt than I would have wanted and it was all rather dismal.

My main course of pork loin and pork belly was hardly any more exciting. True, the helping of pork was. generous - more than I could manage - but its temperature on arrival was cool and again there was no contrast in the rest of the dish to the meat itself apart from some tasteless halved small plums Eating it was just going through the motions. I was becoming depressed. I thought my spirits would be raised by the appearance of the dessert trolley. However, it did not appear. I was simply asked what I should like from the menu and the ordered Paris-Brest was duly delivered unadorned and unloved and not very much enjoyed for that matter. There was little left to do but pay the bill and head back to The Grand for an early night. Still, the lit-up city and the bright lights of the restaurant itself had been pleasurable so the experience, though expensive, had not entirely been a failure.

In its recommendations of what to do in Birmingham, Time Out recommended starting the day coffee at Waylands Yard (though, to be precise, it does not specifically recommend eating breakfast there) which is conveniently just around the corner from The Grand Hotel, in Bull Street. Why should I not follow that advice? I did so and was pleased to find a spacious dining area, not too busy at 9.30AM, helpful and charming serving staff and an interesting menu. Less pleasingly, about 10AM, the place filled up with hipster types, there to buy takeaway coffees (can’t they make their own at a fraction of the price?) but by then I had consumed my chosen breakfast, whether or not that was a specific Time Out recommendation,

The breakfast was excellent. There was a fine pork/beef sausage, two supremely perfect poached eggs, excellent crispy, spicy house baked beans and a hash brown - tasty and substantial - plus sweet little grilled cherry tomatoes and a couple of good slices of sourdough toast. If Time Out was not specifically recommending the breakfast it should have been.