405. Restaurant Touring In The City.

  What is the worst day of the week to take a tour of Birmingham - or anywhere else for that matter - which aims to introduce the city’s most notable restaurants to the tourist? That’s easy - Monday. Most restaurants have turned Monday into a sabbath, a day of rest. But close behind Monday in the no restaurants open league is Sunday - the difference is that a few restaurants of note may open to serve Sunday lunch. As a footnote it’s worth mentioning that Tuesday is not much better than Monday and even Wednesday is now a day on which some restaurants find no value in opening.

  Presumably then the Dutch company with an office in Highfield Road in Edgbaston, a close neighbour of Baloci and Simpsons, which is indeed offering walking tours of parts of Birmingham to see the gastronomic sights and savour the gastronomic savouries bore this in mind when it decided that these tours, wherein the tourists amble around following a route dictated by an app and without any human guidance, would take place on Sundays..

  I suppose that the idea that several hundred tourists with Tripadviser expectations might drop in to consume a course provided by the restaurant in the course of a Sunday (which ought to be busy as restaurants open that day have very little respectable competition) - rather like a moving food festival - either appeals to a restaurateur or it doesn’t but what would I know? I do know that if I were a punter participating in such an extravaganza I would hope that the tour might enable me to drop in on some of the city’s most famous restaurants or at least those listed by Michelin, Harnden’s or the Good Food Guide as well as taking me past historic culinary sights in the city. I haven’t seen what the app does offer because I haven’t bought one of £79 tickets but the locations of some of the restaurants to be visited on the tours have been revealed in the publicity.

  The publicity promises that the food tourist will “discover the best restaurants”. One is naturally tempted to believe one will be dropping in on Purnell’s, The Wilderness, Adam’s mayhaps or possibly 670 Grams, Simpsons or, the jewel in the crown, Opheem. Alas, it appears that such hopes will be dashed and dreams will be shattered, as none of the food provided will come from these Birmingham culinary holy grails. Perhaps the walking tour will involve walking past them, I don’t know - it seems a bit like rubbing salt into the wound if that were the case - but the tour organisers could then at least justifiably claim that the tourists are being allowed, in one sense of the word at least, to “discover the best restaurants”.

  So where are the tours actually taking the trusting tourist? ‘The City Edition’ tour will take the aspiring gastronomes to three types of restaurant as defined by the organisers’  - Classic and refined (Hotel du Vin and Fazenda in Church Street - hotel restaurant and upmarket steak joint respectively), Cozy and nice (this must be the Dutch spelling of cosy) (Bundobust, The Botanist and Sabai Sabai - Indian street food, cocktail bar and middle range Thai restaurant) and Hip and happening - Riva Blu (Italian chain restaurant). No Michelin restaurants there and minimal walking around a very small geographical area - clearly no intention of showing the tourist the real gastronomic sights of Birmingham. These restaurants generally serve food or a good or reasonable standard but are hardly the city’s ‘best restaurants’.

  Other tours are on offer including The Digbeth Tour - Kilo Zero, Cafe Love Life, Original Patty Men and Baked In Brick (all defined as hip and happening) and Chaophraya and Ba-Ha (both defined as Cozy (with a zee) and Nice). Digbeth therefore offers a collection of ‘Birmingham’s best restaurants’ in the form of a good burger joint, pizza specialist, wine bar and food of various ethnicities. At least this tour should give the tourist a close encounter with The Old Crown in Digbeth said to be the oldest secular building in the city to have hosted a hostelry. What a pity the tour doesn’t offer a dish served in that worthy establishment.

 A tour of the dining establishments of Harborne is proposed as is one embracing the restaurants of Moseley, what few that are left in that declining suburb.

  It will be interesting to see just what happens when this venture gets underway. To be honest, if I’m in town on a Sunday I would rather invest my £79 in the Chateaubriand lunch or perhaps a fine Dover sole at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes which is open till the evening on Sundays or perhaps I would amble down Newhall Street and indulge in the thali on offer at the splendidly atmospheric Itihaas.

  Perhaps the reader might like to tour the past, present and future Birmingham food scene in a different and much cheaper way - the soon to be published  Dining Out In Birmingham and the West Midlands Then, Now and Next.