331. Summer Rain (3 - Vines With A View; Colmore Food Festival).

 

  During the course of my many decades on this earth I have never before been to the top floor of the Rotunda. I remember the excitement surrounding its construction in the 1960s. The new Bullring seemed like one of the modern wonders of the world to we provincial suburbanites and there, towering above it all, was The Rotunda, magnificent, rampant, dominant. My darling grandmother who entered this world in 1900 came home one day to say that she had now seen the completed behemoth and that it was so tall you had to lie on your back to see the top of it! How perceptions change. 

  Now dwarfed by much around it, the old Bullring long bulldozed away - just as its predecessor had been in the 1960s - the Rotunda stands still as the finest and most memorable, and most loved, remnant of Birmingham City Council’s mid 20th century assault on the fine old city as glorious Victorian and Edwardian buildings were pulled down to make way for the philistine brutalism which replaced them. The Rotunda, and the neighbouring Smallbrook Queensway, which a new generation of philistine councillors is lining up to be demolished, were the only really tolerable products of the 1960s Birmingham architectural revolution that it was ever a pleasure to look at.

  And now, I was finally going to visit the top of the Rotunda myself - how exciting - to spend a couple of very enjoyable hours quaffing wine nicely selected by the maestro, sommelier at the Wilderness, Sonal Clare and nibbling nibbles under the watchful eye of Alex Claridge. There were some particularly delicious crostini on offer and some pleasant people to speak to. Aptly named ‘Vine with a view’, Clare had selected four very pleasing wines to sample and enjoy and the weather was behaving in a sympathetic way so that standing on the balcony of the twentieth floor, an excellent view of various aspects of the city could be taken in.

  Messrs Claridge and Clare, an excellent name combination to add to their other fine points, had amusingly chosen to serve their guests in hotel bathrobes though fortunately the same apparel was not expected to be worn by those being entertained. Birmingham has such clever leaders in the hospitality business presently but they also have their serious side. I was glad to have a couple of minutes chatting to Alex Claridge about his recent appointment by Mayor Andy Street as nighttime economy tsar for the West Midlands. The local hospitality industry has a fine - and realistic - representative in the form of Alex Claridge.

  How nice it was, too, to have a goodie bag to take home afterwards and inside a can of Rotunda Pale. The question is, should this work of art be opened or the ale left untouched with the art intact? To be or not to be, that is the question.

  The summer rains continued. Three days after the trip to the Rotunda, I took Lucy the Labrador along to the 2023 Colmore Food Festival. It was a day of constant deluge and it was so diluvian that the dog, for once, assented to wearing a waterproof coat to keep her back dry. Effort had been put in to the arrangements for the festival and a number of local food and drink businesses were represented there in St Phillip’s churchyard. And when they built it they did come - that is - a respectable number of members of the public were there to support the event given the nastiness of the weather.

  I don’t think they’ve quite got it right. It is a ‘food festival’ with mostly better class street food and entertainment but much of the entertainment has nothing to do with food, being made up mostly of local school choirs and bands - as charming and talented as they were plus a tragically camp host who, one must admit, worked hard to invigorate the proceedings and only very occasional references to food on the stage. Perhaps one of the organisers should visit Ludlow this September to see what a real ‘food festival’ should be like.

  I sampled food from the recently opened Bundobust - I thoroughly enjoyed the spicy chickpea curry though the onion bhajis I also chose were less pleasing - their contents seemed to have become infected with strips of moderately tough spinach. Don’t do it - if your cooking onion bhajis make them full of sweet, delicious onions, adding spinach will make little difference to the healthiness of a splendidly deep fried pleasure such as the onion bhaji and will detract from the pleasure of it.

  The Purnell’s stall served up a somewhat esoteric ‘Glynn’s sausage roll’ which, though having pleasing pastry, did not really contain sausage, the contents having the appearance, both visually and gustatorially, of pulled meat and in the end it was not really all that enjoyable especially at £5 for a small slice. There was an accompanying crunchy coleslaw which was more enjoyable texturally rather than by way of flavour.

  Finally an excellent, hot and tangy Thai red curry from the Zen Metro stall. It was full of tasty, lean, tender beef and a delicious sauce helped it down in a most enjoyable way. A good way to wrap up a wet by happy lunchtime.

  By the way, the organisers, Colmore Bid, looked after their canine guests very well, with free biscuits and chews being generously offered and bowls of water at hand.