286. Sunday Evening At The Oyster Club, Monday Evening At Laghi’s.

 

  It is not easy to find an upmarket restaurant to eat in Birmingham on either Sunday or Monday evenings.

  Staying in the city after a couple of days of travelling, made difficult by an overpaid train driver abandoning his passengers at Dorridge Station en route to Stratford on a freezing day, with no station staff to help them and no train for two hours, because he, like the other £60,000 a year train drivers, are banning overtime, and then after going on the following day to Sheffield where a heavy snowfall threatened public transport even more, I was delighted to find that back in Birmingham on the Sunday evening at least, Andrew Stokes’ The Oyster Club was open to serve the public unlike the railway workers, postal workers, nurses and so on who have lost a sense of duty to the people they are paid to serve.

  The staff were welcoming and seemed pleased to be carrying out the service they had chosen to provide to the diners who all looked very happy to be sitting in The Oyster Club that bitter Sunday evening. I had already resolved to have the lemon sole until my attention was drawn by the helpful waiter to the Sunday meal offer of Chateaubriand served with all the Sunday lunch extras. 

  And it was magnificent. There were two gorgeous slices of beef, supremely well-cooked, served with just about everything one could possibly want to make Sunday a happy one. The roast potatoes were happily crispy, the cauliflower in cheese sauce was very well done, the Yorkshire pudding was competently presented, there were carrots, parsnips, florets of broccoli, a fine gravy and a horseradish sauce with just the right amount of heat to it. As good a Sunday meal, but with the twist of very fine beef indeed, as one could wish.

  For dessert, I received much pleasure from a lovely creamy rice pudding with figs and Armagnac- a wondrous combination - I shall never have rice pudding again without the pleasure of Armagnac bathing it. Afterwards, 2 lovely little mignardises were served with the coffee - a little truffle and a strawberry jelly. 

   This had been a comforting meal but in the finest of ways. Well done to The Oyster Club.

Rating:- 🌞

  Still staying in town, it was dinner at Laghi’s the following evening to pay a second visit to this pleasing little restaurant not well sited at the monstrous Five Ways (calling the area ‘Edgbaston Village’ really doesn’t make it any more appealing).

  However, once inside away from the heavy traffic and noise, it did not take long to relax and lie back and think of Italy. I am a great charcuterie lover and so I allowed myself to, perhaps disrespectfully, opt for a starter which did not give Chef the chance to show off his expertise. But I do so enjoy cold meats and I am  sometimes given to surrendering myself to temptation so that on this occasion I chose the charcuterie to kick off the meal and very enjoyable it was too.

  Then, an unusual choice for me - I opted for pizza (I’m not usually a pizza person) - Toscana style - lured by the presence of roast potatoes and pancetta. The pastry was very good but I found the pizza lacking in flavour apart from a strong hit of salt which was too much for me and I greatly regretted choosing one of the two pizzas on the menu of which tomato was not an ingredient - that would have made a lot of difference.

I rounded off again with affogato. I like the restaurant and on another visit I shall endeavour to choose dishes which enable the Chef to show off his skills more.