382. Howard Arms, Ilmington

 

  During my three stays in Stratford upon Avon with my dog last autumn, I had hoped to have lunch at the Michelin-listed Howard Arms in Ilmington, about 7 miles distant from Stratford. It is dog-friendly in the bar area and it would have been an ideal place to take Lucy The Labrador but the public transport timings did not fit in with my plans. However, on another visit to Stratford, a friend gave us a lift and it was an ideal opportunity to visit this lovely public house.

 We were not disappointed.  Built from attractive stone which told us we were approaching the Cotswolds, the oak-beamed interior was immensely welcoming and rusticly cosy. We had been allocated a well-lit table in the bay window and our accompanying dogs made themselves comfortable on the stone flags. This was a place where it was very easy to make oneself very comfortable which we duly did.

  To start we shared a portion of excellent Cotswold Crunch, treacle and ale bread served with some lovely smoky lardo and gorgeously deeply yellow Holmleigh Farm butter. I had a starter of potted duck, whipped liver parfait with crispy skin and slices of nicely toasted milk loaf. This was profoundly tasty and the parfait was smooth and delicious.

 There were at least two menus - the standard dining room menu and the blackboard menu. It was also possible to order sandwiches for a lighter meal. My companion ordered from the blackboard choosing battered haddock, which was very well cooked, accompanied by some excellent chips which would have been difficult to improve on, having, as they did, all the attributes sought in a fine chip and with them were crushed peas and tartare sauce.  I chose Tamworth pork fillet, which was perfectly cooked with an excellent slice of black pudding. The dish was alas served a little cooler than was ideal but the butternut squash and sour cabbage were pleasing.

    For dessert I chose a pleasing apple parfait with delicious sweet pear and adroitly cooked Yorkshire rhubarb, salted caramel and walnuts. It’s arguable that the presentation on the dish, as with the previous courses, might have been a little fussy but it was all very colourful and attractive. My dining companion choosea well made tart with muscavado mousse, blood orange, spiced granola and crême fraîche sorbet and enjoyed it thoroughly.

   This was an enjoyable lunch in a pleasing setting with good service.

  Rating:-  🌛🌛🌛🌛

381. Opheem Becomes First Two Michelin Star Restaurant In Birmingham; Salt Loses Its Star.

 

  The Michelin Guide Great Britain And Ireland 2024 awards ceremony was held at the Midland Hotel in Manchester on 5 February 2024. This led to a large amount of speculation that at least one Manchester dining establishment would be awarded a Michelin star. In true Michelin fashion, by a process known only to the coterie of people who call themselves Michelin Restaurant inspectors (except they can’t do that since they are, in theory at least, supposed to keep their identities secret) those who decide these matters chose to hold their ceremony in Manchester to tell the city that it was not receiving any additional starry recognition.  

  In fact, as is always the case, most new stars were awarded to London restaurants where the inspectors clearly feel at home or, to restaurants in Ireland which doubtless is a destination which must always be a nice trip for the inspectors. Therefore, of the 15 new single Michelin Star awardees in the United Kingdom 11 were located in London and across the Irish Sea, there were 3. None of the four other UK awardees were located anywhere in the West Midlands (or the East Midlands or, for that matter, East Anglia). 

  Meanwhile 18 United Kingdom restaurants have been deleted from the Guide - 6 in London (2 because of closure including of course Le Gavroche) and 3 in the West Midlands (Carter’s of Moseley in Birmingham and Pensons in Tenbury Wells, both because of closure though of course Carter’s is operating as a pop-up in Colmore Row for 3 months) and Salt in Stratford upon Avon which I visited several times last year and, if anything, found it to be delivering better food than it has ever done. 

  Hence the West Midlands region now only has, incredibly, just nine single star dining establishments - Purnell’s,  Adam’s, Simpsons (Birmingham), Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumière (Cheltenham), Grace And Savour (Hampton In Arden), The Cross (Kenilworth), The Royal Oak (Whatcote) and Upstairs By Tom Shepherd (Lichfield).

  

  Not all is gloom of course. For at the ceremony, with a certain amount of drama, it was announced that Aktar Islam’s Opheem on Summer Row in Birmingham, as I predicted in Blog 378, is now the holder of two star status which sets all sorts of records including, importantly, that of it being Birmingham’s first two star restaurant and Aktar Islam becoming the first United Kingdom-born chef of south Asian heritage to be awarded two stars. A glittering and exciting achievement. As I implied in Blog 378, the moment for the award to Opheem had come and I was pleasingly unsurprised to see Aktar up on the stage in Manchester donning his white jacket and making a short impressive speech. Great stuff!

  The Michelin-listed restaurants in the West Midlands are now:-

Birmingham -

Opheem **

Simpsons*

Purnell’s*

Adam’s*

The Wilderness 

Folium 

670 Grams

Harborne Kitchen

Asha’s

Land

The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes

Plate by Purnell’s

Chakana 

Tropea,

The rest of West Midlands county -

Grace and Savour* Hampton in Arden

Smoke Hampton in Arden

Toffs by Rob Palmer Solihull

Cheal’s Knowle

Purnell’s Cafe and Bistro Coventry

Worcestershire -

Broadway (wrongly listed as being in Gloucestershire by Michelin)-

MO

The Back Garden

The Inn at Welland (Bib) Welland

The Butcher’s Arms Eldersfield

Eckington Manor Eckington

Black and Green Barnt Green

Herefordshire - 

The Bull’s Head Craswell

Kilpeck Inn Kilpeck

The Baiting House Upper Sapey

33 The Homend Ledbury

Shropshire -

Ludlow -

Forelles

Mortimers

The Charlton Arms (Bib)

Whitchurch -

Docket No 33

Wild Shropshire

The Walrus Shrewsbury 

The Bear Inn Hodnet

Staffordshire

Lichfield -

Upstairs by Tom Shepherd *

The Boat

Larder

Duncombe Arms (Bib) Ellastone

Lunar Stoke on Trent

Little Seeds Stone

The Flintlock Cheddleton 

Warwickshire - 

The Royal Oak* Whatcote

The Cross* Kenilworth 

Stratford upon Avon -

Salt

Woodsman

The Howard Arms Ilmington 

The Bower House Shipston on Stour

Fuzzy Duck Armscote

The Mount Henley in Arden

Gloucestershire -

Halfway at Kineton Kineton (wrongly listed under Warwickshire by Michelin)

henne Moreton in Marsh (wrongly listed under Warwickshire by Michelin)

Cheltenham - 

Le Champignon Sauvage*

Lumière*

Purslane

Memsahib’s Lounge

Prithvi

Bhoomi Kitchen

JOURNEY

Cowley Manor Cowley 

Buckland Manor Buckland

Atrium Upper Slaughter 

Daylesford Organic Farm Daylesford

The Fox Lower Oddington

Old Butchers Stow on the Wold

Ox Barn Southrop

Wilder Nailsworth

5 North Street Winchcombe

This makes a total of 69 Michelin-listed restaurants including just one with 2 stars, nine with 1 star and three Bib Gourmands. 

Michelin itself does not get any stars for placing four of the restaurants in the wrong counties! Regardless, Aktar Islam is this year’s star of the show and well-deserved it is too.

380. The Wilderness and Gusbourne Collaboration 31 January 2024.

 

  Having enjoyed a collaboration between Gusbourne, the Kent-based English wine maker, and Simpsons restaurant quite recently I was pleased to trip along to The Wilderness for another Gusbourne collaboration with a leading Birmingham restaurant in the expectation of downing the highly enjoyable wine alongside a wholly different style of cuisine.

  

  The wine was indeed enjoyable with particular pleasure flowing from a glass of Blanc de Blanc, its minerality particularly refreshing and even exhilarating.though the Pinot noir served with the meat course was still somewhat insubstantial signalling that English red still has a fair distance to go before one is ready to go out of one’s way to order it. But the story of English wine is gradually unravelling as new chapters are turned to. 

  But the food’s the thing and it seemed that Marius Gedminas was in particularly good form for this happy event. The delightful little snack of cheese and onion espums tart, playfully named Ploughman’s, lead off a parade of enjoyable dishes and was immediately succeeded by a pleasing dish which involved crème fraiche, tonic and a smidgeon of caviar.

  Then a truly great dish was presented to be accompanied by a Gusbourne rosé, this was a little pile of tasty crab covered with an espuma of rhubarb, ponzu and rose and enhanced brilliantly with charred leaf. This was a highly memorable which I pray I shall encounter again in the future. Then another memorable and delicious dish of BBQ halibut - accurately cooked - gorgeously balanced with a citrus espuma and given an exciting texture and additional flavour from hazelnuts.

  I found the meat dish of BBQ hogget with beetroot and shiso to be, sadly, the weakest dish with the meat looking beautifully cooked but not as tender as I expected and I did not particularly enjoy the accompanying elements of the dish.

  But we were back on track with the pleasing dessert - poached pair with Dulce and a ginger ice cream - and the now cpvary familiar Wilderness chocolate frog to accompany the coffee. Gusbourne’s representative kept the full house of diners informed as the wine which accompanied each course was served and a good evening was had by all. Different, it is true, from that staged at Simpsons but then again you woukd expect that wouldn’t you?

376. Rabbit/RiverineRabbit.

 

  There’s no doubt that when it comes to promising new, if small, restaurants then Stirchley, not withstanding the Jewellery Quarter, is the place to seek them out at present. The latest is what was to be called Riverine Rabbit, but seems now to be plain Rabbit, located in the shopping area along the Pershore Road.

  And to be fair, you can’t blame ambitious young chefs and restaurateurs opening up in Stirchley where they will have a captive audience, heavily hipster, all living within a short walk of what is charmingly described as the High Street. The exterior of Riverine Rabbit is very Stirchley with a small name sign which is rather difficult to spot especially on a dark winter evening. Looking through the window, you can see it is pleasantly bijou, with a well planned interior. Lucy The Labrador and I visited the restaurant soon after it first opened. 

  Having correctly identified the right location, the dog and I walked into a a not over-brightly lit but smart-looking and warm dining area with just 18 seats running along the counter at which the diners sit. There was a pleasingly adequate space in which the dog could relax. There were two people behind the counter - Erin Valenzuala-Heeger, who by the way has a day job as a metallurgist at Birmingham University, and her wife Ash Heeger, the Chef.

  There’s an interesting background story to the couple. Ash was born in Transkei in South Africa and brought up in Capetown and ran the 70 seater restaurant - also The Riverine Rabbit - with her sister Mandy in that city until it was closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She came to Birmingham with Erin who works in the Midlands Industrial Ceramic Group at the University and worked at Carter’s of Moseley before Brad Carter decided that his restaurant should shift its location. The originally intended name of the new restaurant (and that of the former Capetown restaurant) derives from that of a species of rabbit (they might perhaps have used the Latin name Bunolagus monticularis, though to be fair it doesn’t really have hipster appeal when you think about it) which lives in the Karoo desert in Ash’s homeland  and the choice of name highlights Ash’s and Erin’s efforts to support sustainable farming practices. The Birmingham restaurant’s name seems to have been shortened, probably wisely, to plain and simple Rabbit, which has much more good down-to-Earth Brummie appeal even in a hipster zone such as Stirchley.

  As the first diner of the evening to arrive I was greeted most warmly and Lucy the Labrador no less so. After seating myself in my designated chair at the counter I was given a nice, warming, interestingly flavoured tea of South African origin and shown the drinks on offer which were brought around from Couch next door which seems to work very well for the customer while Rabbit is sans alcohol licence. I ordered a gimlet which was brought round very rapidly andas regards wine, pre-warnedI had brought a half bottle with me.

  The menu looked very exciting - small plates often with South African connections - and while Erin set about preparing my ordered dishes I dived into an excellent plate of fresh salty crisps with accompanying dip. The first dish was an excellent beef tartare with the meat marinated deliciously in rapeseed oil, smoked soy and fava bean miso. This was a generous portion of perfectly tender beef and was accompanied by wafer-sized pieces of nori which powerfully ushered in the flavour of the sea making this a rather clever surf and turf, if you like.

  Next I was served a gorgeous crab muffin; the tasty crab alive with the perfectly balanced citrus of pickled lemon and enhanced by a brown butter mayonnaise. Again this was a sizeable dish  the muffin adding considerable volume to it all and I might in retrospect have not also added fine hash browns served with spiced salt and ponzu mayonnaise to my order. On the other hand, who can resist a well cooked hash brown?

  I had not even then finished as I had ordered quite the most beautifully cooked pork belly I can remember ever having been served, the fat all melted away but all the flavour lying deep inside it from miso and gochujang, served on a triumphantly light and fluffy bao with charred hispi and cucumber. A very fine and delicious dish which, alas, I forgot to photograph, but shall return to when I next visit Rabbit in 3 or 4 weeks time. 

  Despite repletion having long set in, I allowed myself the sole dessert on the menu which was a soothing miso banana cream with the added flavour of crumbled speculoos, otherwise known as biscoff - a Belgian spiced gingerbread biscuit - along with coconut and the sweetness of ‘sprinkles. This was very good and different from most desserts which are often.

  As the minutes passed the denizens of Stirchley gradually came in and took their places at the counter and placed their orders. One irritating young woman, accompanied by lighting equipment and a doubtless expensive phone-camera, oblivious to all the other diners, obsessionally filmed the explanation of each dish given to her and her dining companion by Erin as she served them. I assume she is some sort of ‘influencer’. No matter, it was lovely to sit at the counter chatting with Erin and Ash and enjoying their food. The dog was content to lie back, rather in the way I’m afraid, but causing no trouble and being fussed by some of the diners who, naturally as dog owners do, first enquired about her age and then told me all about their dogs. By the end of my couple of hours in Rabbit, I felt as though I had been visiting and dining at someone’s home rather than having been seated in a restaurant.

  This is a great restaurant and possibly already the most important new restaurant in Birmingham to open in 2024. The opening of Carter’s in Colmore Row of course is of great importance but it is a reopening so I feel justified in giving that accolade, for the present at least, to Rabbit (though you may argue, if you must, that technically Rabbit is also a reopening given its predecessor in Capetown but I would say that that was not the same thing at all).