403. Cuubo.

 

  On 24 June 2021, as the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic which had raged around both diners and those who served them in the hospitality industry, had at last settled and tentative bright sunlight was once more beginning to peep through the clouds of national anxiety, a young chef, Dan Sweet, who had trained at Birmingham’s University College and subsequently worked for more than three years at Simpsons, where so many careers have taken off to subsequent success, opened a fine dining-style ‘take away’-style establishment in the very well-heeled suburb of Harborne called Qbox. 

The interior of Qbox

  This proved to be very successful - Dan had wisely chosen the right location and the right audience, those who wanted to go to his culinary theatre as well as being able to afford to buy a metaphorical ticket for it, though, in truth, his food was very fairly priced. By 2023, the pandemic being largely forgotten except as something else to blame the government for, Sweet crowdfunded enough money to enable him to equip a full kitchen and dining room, titled Cuubo. 

  Soon after opening, he was blessed by a visit from a god descending from Olympus  - the socialist restaurant critic Jay Rayner of The Observer - who pronounced that Cuubo was “as exciting a new restaurant as” he had “encountered in a long while” although he had reservations about the crab risotto “Just to prove my critical faculties didn’t completely desert me”. Mildly for him, he stated, “there was a crab risotto that didn’t taste especially of crab” (a fault I find that happens with crab dishes far too often in even expensive and ‘fine’ restaurants. Chefs, use crab in a dish at your peril).

  Thus, trailing in the wake of the good food-loving, fine dining, socialist restaurant critic from the rarified and excruciatingly expensive culinary atmosphere of The Smoke (though to give Rayner his due, he does gird up his loins more often than most others to haul himself to the provinces and notably to Birmingham to report on our fine new restaurants (doubtless he’s champing at the bit to get to Rabbit in Stirchley) and indeed, now close to two decades ago, reported on Glynn Purnell’s first voyage into gastronomic distinction, Jessica’s (ahead of Matthew Fort by a head)), I myself found myself in a rainy Harborne High Street festooned as it is with a near excess of dining and coffee-imbibing establishments and wondering if it always rained in Harborne. The reservation, please note, had been made some time before our well-fed Olympian socialist writer had reported on his visit there.

  But enough of food critics, it’s the food that counts. The restaurant definitely looked smaller on the outside than it did on the inside - a reverse TARDIS effect - and while it’s true that it is quite small, it’s comfortable and the tables are not uncomfortably on top of each other. I had booked lunch for 1PM and the place was full as I arrived - populated mainly by elderly diners taking advantage of a three course lunch for £40. The restaurant was decorated brightly and anonymously, which in itself was not unwelcome as it conveyed newness and freshness and a canvass yet to be fully realised. The two front of house staff knew what they were doing, were appropriately friendly and were not at all perturbed by me changing my prebooked request for the lunch menu to the 7 course tasting menu (£75) although providing the premeal snacks was a problem which bothered me not at all since I was responsible for the last minute changes of heart.

  I was pleasingly sat by the pass and was able to watch Chef and his young sous chef going about their work calmly and smartly. And what a pleasure it all was.i was served some good sourdough bread and then was launched into the menu proper with a fresh, well flavoured dish of tasty heritage tomatoes served on sourdough. Summer was bursting out all over ignoring the ongoing onslaught of rain outside in Hungry Harborne. The dish reminded me that many of the dishes were to nod in the direction of Chef’s partial Italian heritage and the wines, well chosen, were also mainly Italian.

  Then a plate of very well cooked pork belly with crispy skin and mostly melted fat with smooth bacon cream split with nduja oil and accompanied by a fennel salad though it has to be said that the flavour of the fennel was a little too subtle. Pork belly does not rank highly in my list of favourite meat ingredients but this dish was considerably more enjoyable than most pork belly dishes I have been served elsewhere.

  Next, the crab risotto which had disappointed Zeus during his descent from Olympus and it has to be said that the old lightning hurler had a point - the flavour of crab was not as discernible as one would have hoped but the texture of the rice was spot on and the wafer thin slices of cauliflower gave texture to the dish. Still, crab should have been the centrepiece and, as Rayner wrote, it really was not.

 Next the main course - a fine, meaty, plump piece of very nicely cooked chicken with broccoletti (or friarelli) and a supreme sauce and a delicious little pile of mild wild garlic purée and a sliver of Iberico capping the chicken. An excellent dish.

  As an avoider of desserts, I was delighted with the charming vanilla and basil mille feuille paired with a blisteringly tasty strawberry sorbet. Given that Dan Sweet had spent three years between 2013 and 2016 at Birmingham’s University College working on a Diploma of Education in Baking and Pastry Arts and had been a baker and pastry chef it is little wonder perhaps that he was turning out a very admirable dessert.

  So, a very enjoyable lunch in Harborne at Cuubo. I shall have no hesitation in returning. Perhaps I will bump into another member of the Pantheon down from Olympus to see what wonders Dan Sweet is cooking up.

Rating:- 🌞.