The West Midlands dining scene is ever evolving and necessarily so as diners find themselves as cash strapped as the days of the banking crisis and financial collapse brought on by the profligate spending of the Blair-Brown government. What goes around comes around.
Now the post-COVID and Ukraine war-linked worldwide rise in commodities prices has seen enormous increases in the costs of all facets of the dining out industry with the result that those diners who were contemplating eating out have thought twice about it and doubly so as the younger section of that market, in well-paid jobs in modern industries which did not exist a generation or two ago and which are not demanding in the amount of effort they need to put in to them allowing them much time for leisure, have found their mortgage costs soaring so that a much larger part of their generous salaries has had to go to paying their housing costs rather than allowing them to go nightly to the Jewellery Quarter or Digbeth to quaff their negronis or espresso martinis.
Restaurateurs and chefs have been pulled up short by the threat to their businesses in the fall off in the numbers of diners. It took a while for them to come to terms with it all. Naturally, the government was blamed for maintaining what was viewed as an excessively high VAT rate on the hospitality industry. The feeling was that if VAT was cut then there would be a significant cut in the cost of a meal to diners and they in turn would come flooding back into the less-than-full restaurants. But considering how much a cut in VAT would reduce the cost of a meal in comparison with the vast increase in prices of commodities, energy and staff costs (increased due to the COVID- and Brexit-related exodus of hospitality staff of European origin) then possibly the hope that a VAT cut would have a significant effect on encouraging diners to return to restaurants was always rather over-optimistic.
Now, rather like the various stages of grief, chefs seem to have put aside the phases of anger and depression and (one-sided) bargaining (with the government through social media) and finally arrived at acceptance. And with acceptance comes renaissance and a sense of relief. Multi-course, expensive tasting menus are pushed into the background and suddenly everyone’s offering meals with fewer courses and at lower prices. La Grande époque culinaire des Anglais may well have reached a natural conclusion which is a death that some will not mourn. Yes we have long had ‘Modern English’ cuisine but sometimes it has been a triumph of style over substance. And much of the population has been untouched by it, if only because the price for them has been prohibitive though they may never have had the will to try it even if it had been cheaper.
A recent edition of the Birmingham Post has published a report that Kray Tredwell (sadly the author of the piece failed to spell the chef’s surname correctly) of 670 Grams, recently visited by me, is tired of tasting menus and all that frippery, and instead is going to cook the sort of food he enjoys cooking. Which I suppose begs the question of whether a chef should ever cook food that he doesn’t enjoy cooking.
Tredwell will introduce menus based on small plates (yes, this is the era of the small plate it seems, everyone’s doing it). Formality in dining out takes a further step backwards I think. But Tredwell steadfastly keeps his eye on his Michelin status - and why shouldn’t he? - as these are not just any sort of plates - he is planning beef tartare with an oyster emulsion, Wagyu rib with KT pickle, shrimp with kimchi and cured carrot and cured monkfish with date and tomato wafer. There will be side plates of beef-fat potatoes with smoked vinegar and Mayan Gold-roasted onions in beef garum and desserts are to include caramel tart and fig cake. Which all sounds very alluring and doubtless in line with Tredwell’s inventive and often ingenious creations with which we are already familiar.
Elsewhere, Glynn Purnell has a Spanish-style restaurant serving ‘plates’ in Edmund Street and a ‘plates’ restaurant in Coventry, a reborn ‘bistro’, and we may soon expect ‘plates’ from Alex Claridge in his soon-to-be-opened second restaurant presumable in the former Atelier. Luke Tipping is offering short lunch menus at Simpsons and we must see what Brad Carter is planning if his sojourn in Evesham comes to an end at the end of the year. Everywhere there’s revolution in the air for Birmingham and West Midlands diners.
I have two upcoming reservations for the new Six By Nico which will be the Birmingham branch of the chain of that name and which was originally founded in Glasgow by Nico Simeone in 2017. The chain now has branches in various British cities as well as Dublin and its fare may be considered as falling into the affordable range which fits in nicely with what I have discussed above - £39 for a six course tasting menu with an optional £30 wine flight. The restaurant opens on 30 November and the opening menu, which is changed every six weeks, is to be a ‘chippie tea’, as shown in the following illustration -
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| Nico Simeone |
Whether the dishes will be more a triumph of style over substance - prettied-up soupçons of cheap ingredients, I will no doubt soon discover. Still this is an interesting development in opening fine (-looking) food to the masses in these times when prices are high and even Good Food Guide inspectors are moaning (as in a recent article) at the number of restaurants charging well over £100 for tasting menus which all contain the same predictable ingredients - chalk stream trout, truffles, wagyu and so on. How much of a problem will this be for the city’s established upper echelon restaurants or is it just an irrelevance since they will always have a culinary elite population of prospective diners ready to stump up the cash for those more special ingredients and styles of cooking which the elite restaurants offer?
It’s telling that the first menu seeks to appeal to basic English working class food enthusiasts by serving dishes which might originate in a working man’s fish and chip shop (by the way, native Brummies have never called them ‘chippies’) and interesting that Simeone, or whoever is responsible for the menus in the dining establishments attached to his name, should feel that the chain’s Glasgow roots should be emphasised by the serving of a dessert on the theme of the deep fried Mars Bar. This is an alien dish to Birmingham - I’ve never seen any being offered anywhere before here in the West Midlands - but if Brummies are prepared to embrace Sushi or Vindaloo then I suppose Deep fried Mars Bar may not prove as revolting to the city’s diners as it ought to.
I look forward to my cut price meal if only to assuage my curiosity. But there is some preprandial doubt - a low cost six course meal is almost unappealing when I consider that a good plate of fish - fine cod, please note - recently costed me about £17 in Weston-super-Mare’s excellent Papa’s, a fish and chip shop for all classes. Mushie peas were a startling £3.50 for a small tub of them. In comparison I am nervous at the thought of being served the inferior coley in my ‘chippy six course tea’. Still, I’m game to see what’s going on.
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| Excellent cod and chips at Papa’s but at a price. |
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