My first opportunity to dine at Carter’s’s (late of Moseley) new pop-up at 103 Colmore Row, in Club 18 on the eighteenth floor, came soon after the lovely restaurant opened (on 11 February 204) when Brad Carter staged a collaboration with the highly regarded Birmingham chef Lap-Fai Lee to celebrate the Chinese New Year which in this case was the Year of the Dragon.
Prior to being taken to the long shared table, I had the chance to wonder around the large outdoor balcony area with the city all lit up in the winter evening darkness and fireworks exploding in the direction of Chinatown. What a view.
The meal starting with tasty and quite solid lobster prawn crackers with an excellent shrimp tartare which served in the role of a dip. Then ‘Mouthwatering chicken’ as a starter followed by one of my favourite dishes, the fiercely tasty and beautifully executed ‘Paté en croute Chinois’.
Next was ‘Orkney scallop Fish fragrant’ - a well-executed preparation of Orkney scallop - and afterwards I purred with pleasure at ‘Dragons beard carbonara’, which I doubt is a regular visitor to a standard Chinese restaurant table - it was a lovely play on carbonara with well-cooked noodles to render it vaguely Oriental but given full-bodied flavour by its punchy cheese element and cheeky slices of crispy bacon.
The main course - ‘Drunken phoenix’ substituted Anjou pigeon, cooked in sweet wine, for mythical beast and was very successful, accompanied as it was with a spot on bowl of rice.
A mega-hit was the Mandarin and longan black sesame whippy icecream which would prove to be the ideal way to shuffle off this mortal coil were one to be totally submerged in a vat of it. The dessert proper -‘Dragon’s egg’ looked spectacular but gave more pleasure to my eyes than to my taste buds. Finally a ‘Smiley bao’ was boxed up to take home though it was not as light fluffy as I would have liked and wasn’t all that enjoyable.
So, an enjoyable evening, the dishes a little variable in the pleasure they brought with them but I was glad to have been there for the experience and to see Carter’s back in Birmingham.
Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of returning to Carter’s to enjoy dinner as the ‘18 Experience’ which Brad Carter was offering in this remarkable venue. I arrived in town in the late afternoon and walked through the Cathedral churchyard with the gathering evening gradually ushering in the dark but 103 Colmore Row looked impressive as it loomed over its more elderly fellow buildings. On arriving at my destination I was greeted in the main lobby of the building, as I had been on my first visit to the venue, and set on my way to the eighteenth floor. Holly Carter was there to welcome her guests and in her inimitable way make them feel at home in this chic, bright, modern setting. The sky was now grey and the wind was cold and so I did not venture out on to the balcony this time around. Instead, straight to the table and a fine Margarita.
Three splendid amuses gueules were served while I took in the spacious restaurant. This was the early evening dinner and, rather surprisingly, there was only one other diner, who travelled from Warwick for the experience, to join me at the long table. Several other food lovers were due to come along to the later session. This absence of fellow diners rather subdued the atmosphere but no matter, it was the food I was there for. After a fine Margarita on to the meal proper.
Firstly accurately cooked truffled Orkney scallop and then razor clams of a nice texture though perhaps a little short in number to appreciate them fully, served with pepper dukes which was unremarkable. Next, a Carter’s signature dish - his full-bodied Birmingham soup 2021, a glistening consommé with beautifully tender pieces of turnip and carrot, several degrees more sophisticated than the original invented by Matthew Boulton to serve the hungry poor of Birmingham at the end of the 18th century, topped off with a crispy tuile in the style of the outside decor of the modern Birmingham central library. A very fine dish.
The highlight of the meal was undoubtedly Carter’s ‘Newlyn Hake <240m>’ (the 240m alludes to the height at which the fish was cooked). The fish was perfectly cooked and the sauce delicious. There were little explosions of Exmoor caviar and trout roe which made the texture exquisite and exciting. I thought indeed I was sure, though apparently erroneously, I could taste tarragon in this gorgeous dish - the best fish dish I had had for some time - but I was told that the sauce embraced dill, a more likely suspect I admit. This dish will assuredly be one of my food highlights of the year.
After that, the meat course - beautifully presented and tender pasture-fed beef - had a lot to live up to. It was served with an excellent, rich punchy sauce though the beef itself did not quite have the full bodied flavour I hoped for. It was accompanied by well cooked leeks but the dish looked more thrilling than the was the depth of flavour it delivered.
It had been a good meal with an intermediate dish of mascarpone ice cream and the flavour of sea buckthorn delivering a lot of pleasure.The dessert however was not a success being titled ‘Yorkshire rhubarb <red brick>’. This was a rhubarb flavoured mousse on a sable with the pattern of a red brick wall , typical of West Midlands traditional buildings, on top and rhubarb powder scattered over it. It took me a long time to recognise the flavour of rhubarb - it needed to be a lot more punchy and what the dish needed most of all was … rhubarb, the stalks properly poached and of perfect texture. Sadly this was not the case. More a triumph of style over substance.
However, at the end all was well with a serving of a gorgeous chocolate mignardise. Gorgeous to look at, gorgeous to eat.
Carter’s will continue to operate from this room with a view until the end of April when the brand will begin to offer home meals similar to those that were sold during the lockdowns. Then in the autumn a new restaurant - a first floor brasserie with a ground floor bar - will be opened in a building further along Colmore Row opening on to St Phillip’s Place and across the road from the Grand Hotel. Birmingham gastronomy never sleeps.
Rating:-🌞🌞.
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