I’m not keen on chain restaurants. They have their place but are mostly, though not entirely, quite tiresome. Six By Nico, newly opened in Colmore Row, has branches in many British major cities including Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and at Canary Wharf (as previously reported in Blog 358). So, Six By Nico has come late to Birmingham which is still, until the next Good Food Guide awards ceremony whenever that will be, “Britain’s most exciting place to dine”.
The management of Six By Nico has prescribed for Birmingham diners a menu titled ‘The Chippie’ (not anything to do with carpenters in case you had your doubts) and I arrived at the restaurant on the very first day that this chip shop-themed menu was being served. I’m not convinced that ‘The Chippie’ is a term that Birmingham natives use: it’s all rather northern - more Coronation Street than Crossroads but I suppose that ‘The Fish and Chip Shop’ (or at the very least, ‘The Chip Shop’) which is the term we’ve used throughout my increasingly long lifetime isn’t catchy enough in a era where people text rather than speak and look at their social media rather than have a conversation with the person sitting opposite them at the dining table.
So ‘The Chippie’ it is. There’s no denying that the prices look promising, almost revolutionary, but does the food live up to the hype? Is this just a vaguely cynical attempt to cash in on diners who are poorly educated in cuisine to serve small helpings of tarted up cheap ingredients or a genuine attempt to bring a gastronomic levelling up to those who would normally never dream of, or possibly be able to afford to, eat a six course tasting menu which at least has pretensions of being ‘fine dining’?
Well, let’s see, firstly, the interior of the restaurant is exquisite - smart, chic, spacious, gorgeous even. The decor and furniture in the half-light looks luxurious, the long serving counter separating the diners from the open kitchen is shiny and bustling with an extraordinarily large number of chefs and there are waiting staff everywhere - I haven’t seen so many in a Birmingham restaurant. I had the advantage of being the first to arrive on the day that the restaurant fully opened to the public so I had the opportunity to take in the whole vista of the place without the disadvantage of customers getting in the way.
The staff are young and enthusiastic and delivering their lines for the first time to a real paying audience and they have clearly been well tutored in acting out their part. The front of house staff certainly know how to deliver the goods. And so to the food.
Though the theme is ‘The Chippy’ chips are rather thin on the ground. Indeed a first course, presumably the amuse bouche, features a single small chip and chips did not reappear for the rest of the meal.
The item in question was described a ‘crisp potato terrine’ served with an enjoyable curry oil and a parmesan espuma and curry emulsion. This was very edible, an amuse bouche rather than a course, but tasty and served very nicely. The aim was to dip the rather diminutive ‘chip’ in the espuma but the generous helping of the latter in comparison with the size of the chip resulted in a spoon having to be brought into use to ensure full enjoyment.
Then another small course - a small brandade - again tasty with the hit of salt cod accompanied by grin ache which lacked the hit of mustard which would have elevated this cameo to more of a portrait. The accompanying peas and pea purée continued the attempt to stick to the chip shop theme though the title of this course was rather fancifully named ‘Scampi’.
Then a dish with a little more substance - ‘Steak pie’ - slow cooked beef shin with aere successful duxelle with accompanying slices of raw mushroom along with tasty burnt onion ketchup which cut through the richness of the beef very nicely and a ‘meaty salsa’. Pie alas needs pastry to render it a pie but there was not any - how nice it would have been to have had some.
The ‘Fish supper’ - a good sized piece of coley which was cooked beautifully. The fish was delightful. Where has it been all my life? Why did old ladies, when I was a child, buy pieces of coley to solely serve to their cats? A pleasing mild flavour but perhaps there is a snobbery to it as the fish does not have the virgin bride whiteness of cod but a pinkness which perhaps in the past was deemed to render it inferior and only fit for cats. The fish was served with successful confit fennel but also a somewhat unpleasant and bitter pair of pickled mussels - nice to have a little vinegar but this particular accompaniment had gone wrong somewhere on the way.
The main course was, I presume, ‘Smoked sausage’ and it arrived in a smoke-filled cloche which was fun. When the dish was exposed the sausage element was restricted to a wafer thin slice of black pudding sausage roll which was tasty and moist unlike the main element of pork belly which was overcooked and far too dry and with it there should have been crackling though I could not find any on my plate. The small helping of choucroute was unmemorable and the most successful element was the salt-baked celeriac. Really, this was quite poor.
The dessert - ‘Deep fried Mars Bar’ - was good in parts - true, the main element, chocolate pave, was fine and would have been perfectly satisfactory served by itself and the unusual flavour of the Irn Brew sorbet was a good joke and reasonably enjoyable but the tiny blob of ‘deep fried Mars Bar’ had a horrible texture and was an element that really was not needed. Pity.
This was an interesting experiment and worked on some levels but it gives a very faux impression of fine dining where we expect all the elements to be fine and clearly this was not the case. I fear this is fine dining for the masses and it may well give pleasure and excitement to many people but it is a pastiche of fine dining, moderately patronising, and clearly a very successful model.
No comments:
Post a Comment