390. The Wilderness.

 

  A busy week dining at The Wilderness, firstly as a pre-booked Sonal Clare Drinks Special - this time, titled Collision Course: Fine Wine and Fast Food with, as the event’s title suggests,  accompanying ‘fast’ food and then, the following evening entertaining a younger visitor from New Zealand at relatively short notice and hoping that TheWilderness’ unique atmosphere would prove both interesting and enjoyable to him.

  The menu was a pleasing five courses long - quite adequate - and kicked off with The Wilderness’ supremely delicious steak tartare dish, named in a witty, understated way, The Big Mac. This is one of the finest dishes appearing from time to time on a Birmingham menu and if the meal had consisted only of it, there would have been no cause to complain.

  The second course was a Fried chicken dish, successfully crispy and tasty served as it was with chicken butter and yuzu koshu.

 The third course appeared on the menu as BBQ scallop, Singapore broth and smoked eel. The dish was very enjoyable with the scallop well cooked and the excitement of the dish enhanced by the flavour of the  smoked eel and the broth.

  The main was not so successful - an unremarkable flatbread which gave me no pleasure and which seemed rather short on the amount of keema spread across it. The dessert was Bacon apple pie which certainly was not a pie though one would be foolish at The Wilderness to expect what appears on the plate to look anything like one’s preconceptions taken from the name of the dish printed on the menu.

  

  And so back to The Wilderness the following evening. Before doing so I took my guest along to a Cocktails and canapés collaboration at Baloci in Highfield Road in Edgbaston with Robert Wood, now of Lucky 7 in the Jewellery Quarter, providing some fairly exotic cocktails designed to match Baloci’s stated theme of a journey along the Silk Road. The canapés were pleasing - four types - Persian prawn puzi (prawns with citrus mayonnaise served in a crisp puzi ball), Nihari croquettes (braised beef with ‘Baloci spices’, saffron emulsion and Parmesan), Bell pepper hummus (hummus served with halloumi) and Moroccan chicken cone (“aromatic chicken and signature Moroccan spices served in a spinach cone” - Morocco seems to have shifted its geographical location from North Africa to Central Asia for the purpose of these canapés but we will forgive chef since the canapés were tasty and most of the people in the room looked unlikely to be able to tell the difference between Asia and Africa). Wood’s cocktails were interesting to say the least and very quaffable. 

Robert Wood at Baloci

 

  And so to The Wilderness again to dine from the 7 course menu - six courses for £100 plus a scallop dish which I opted for in the full knowledge that it was priced at a quite extraordinary £28, of which more later.

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  So here was another The Wilderness menu. The restaurant was full and buzzing. Marius Gedminas was at the range. The music was pounding out. This was cutting edge dining out for a visitor from a country with no gastronomic scene at all other than his father-in-law going out fishin’ and huntin’and then barbecuing all the creatures he had slaughtered. My guest seemed to enjoy it. Well it’s nice to have a change isn’t it?

 I’ve worked my through describing several The Wilderness menus in this Blog over the years. This menu reflected all that is happening at the restaurant presently. There were a pair of delicious canapés to start in the form of croustades and tarts and then a fun beetroot dish livened up with sliced jalapeño.

  Then pink fir potato with Parmesan and dashi which brought to mind, for some reason - probably the presence of the pink fir potatoes - Aktar Islam’s sublime Aloo Tuk, in its many manifestations a signature of Opheem. All very edible.

  Next came pleasingly cooked veal sweetbread with lemon grass curry and little slices of pickled carrot and then the optional dish of ‘Orkney scallop’. This was a bit of a shock. The scallop was moderately sized and cooked satisfactorily and was accompanied by a quite tiny piece of smoked eel and rainbow kale; the  elements set adrift in a sea of emulsion. This was good enough but the price of £28 seemed very punchy given that I’ve had bigger, more succulent scallops in my time and never paid so much (yes, I know that was then and this is now but I did feel that The Wilderness is now making a play to sell its food at London prices - perhaps that is necessary to survive - but a bill of £56 for two scallops, one each, did make me feel a little queasy.

The £28 scallop dish

  Let us pass on. We both enjoyed our main of barbecued Cull Yaw lamb with seaweed, shiso and wild leeks and then we prepared for landing with a dessert of dark chocolate entremet nicely accompanied by with malt icecream and hazelnut and the ghostly presence of the subtle and occasional taste of black garlic. It was getting late and it remained only to pay the bill - disfigured as it was by the price of the scallop dish - and take note that the Wilderness’ frog mignardise had hopped off and been replaced by its noted predecessor, the white chocolate skull.

Rating:- 🌞