512. GULP Collaboration With 1485 Wines.

 

 Back to the Jewellery Quarter and an evening at Kay Winwood‘s Gulp where she was serving an Italian 6 course meal in collaboration with the wine merchant 1485;which was showcasing Terre di Serrapetrona wines.

  The meal started with a sharing plate of various antipasti which was delicious and then moved on to what I think was quite the best salad I have had this year (and I have had quite a lot of salads inflicted upon me in 2025). It was made up of pecorino, the sweet citrus of orange which really lifted the dish walnut plus some bitter leaves which worked wonderfully well with the orange’s sweetness, fig and the happy crunch of candied. This was a delicious and delightfully memorable dish.

  Some excellent bread was served and a very tasty 15 hour-cooked beef ragu with not quite al dente tagliatelle and more pecorino adding to the pleasure of it all.

   Next porchetta which was a little dry for me with, tenderstem broccoli (this particular green is ubiquitous) and truffle polenta and sweet, sharp cherries to really give the dish a pleasurable lift.

  The dessert was lovely - warmed plums with nicely chewy almond ricciarelli (a biscuit originating in 14th century Sienna), lemon ricotta and pomegranate seeds. It was a fine, perfectly balanced dessert both in textures and degree of sweetness. I loved the little spoon provided to eat it with - it was a good example of the charming and original quirkiness of dining out at one of Gulp’s occasional dinners. 

  This was a highly enjoyable evening in Gulp’s unique setting which ignites a companionable chattiness among the dozen diners, usually strangers to each other prior to the meal, sitting around the prettily laid table. The wine pairings were excellent and a good time was had by all.

Kay Winwood 

Peter Bridgwater of 1485 Wines

Rating:- 🌞

27 September 2025.

511. Hotel Du Vin, Birmingham.

 

  I attended a dinner at Birmingham’s Hotel du Vin in Church Street, nextdoor neighbour to the Grand Hotel. This was my first visit there although, as reported in several previous blogs, I have dined at the Stratford upon Avon branch on a number of occasions and found the food there to be generally very enjoyable and I had watched a cooking demonstration by the Hotel du Vin’s Group Director, Matt Powell, who prepared a fine looking Mont Blanc at this year’s Colmore Food Festival.

  It has to be said that the entrance area of the hotel, which in a previous life was the Birmingham Eye Hospital, is chic and exciting and has a bit of razzamatazz about it. The dinner was for forty people and those present included the former West Midlands Mayor, Sir Andy Street, and the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mel Stride, interesting people to listen to in this setting when the present government seems to be doing everything in its power to wreck the hospitality industry, miserable visu.

  We started with what was described as a ‘spring vegetable soup’, somewhat displaced in time as autumn is now well advanced. It looked spookily murky and one wondered what lurked beneath the surface but on plunging one’s spoon into the depths what was met was thoroughly enjoyable. There was a brunoise of very nicely cooked vegetables in a light, tasty broth with particularly pleasing bits of fennel and a very nicely judged underlying taste of tarragon. 

Next, for the main, braised ox cheek was served as bouef Bourguignon in luxurious, silky sauce with charming, sweet shallots and button mushrooms. There was also a reasonably successful mash, a little cloying, and some very nicely cooked new potatoes and some almost garishly green beans which were reasonably tender. On the whole this was a satisfactory dish but somewhat unexciting and less than lukewarm. I am pretty tired of ox cheek (I did not choose the menu) but I appreciate that when cooking for forty people, slow cooking cheek like this makes the process pretty simple and it isn’t easy to get forty dishes and keep them as warm as they should be. On the other hand, just because something is not easy it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. If I am going to ear ox cheek repeatedly everytime I attend an organised dinner perhaps chefs could steal an arch from Tom Shepherd and serve it as alive. To annEnglishman the mere word, “pie” has a draw to it.

  

    There was a competent crème brûlée to close - a little ramekin of custard with a crispy top to it will rarely displease anyone unless incompetently handled but this was a crème brûlée not striving to reach the heights (one thinks back to Glynn Purnell’s 10-10-10 egg surprise and is downcast at the demise of Purnell’s). Perhaps chef might have served a neat little sable biscuit to lift this dish up from the level of strictly basic.

  This was standard mass cooking for a large group and was generally quite edible and did what it said on the label (though how much more pleasurable it might have been served warm or even hot and with some extra element to jazz it up a bit.

Rating:- 🌛🌛

26 September 2025.

Former West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street

Shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Mel Stride.

507. Ludlow Food Festival 2025.

 

  The whirligig of time brings in his revisits, to paraphrase Malvolio, and once more the Ludlow Food Festival was with us. Sans sausage trail, which in all events was good as my new puppy was so full of energy and the need to jump up everyone she saw - and there were lots in Ludlow for the festival especially on the Saturday - that taking her around the sausage stalls, so loved by my late, lamented old girl, would have been a dangerous operation. I hope the new Lucy will be more mature and calmer next year and that once more the good butchers of Ludlow and Shropshire will be in active competition.

  We were accommodated, at a not immodest price, in a room with a ghost (or so I was informed when we checked out of the historic The Feathers at the top of Corve Street though that particular spectre - a woman apparently - did not make its presence known to us - perhaps it was nervous of being nipped multiple times by my pup -as it surely would have been).

  On arrival, while getting settled and preparing for the short walk to pick up my preordered Festival tickets, I had a Ploughman’s Lunch in the bar of The Feathers. This too was not inexpensive but seemed to have been prepared with as little love as possible - Cheddar cheese, 4 thin slices of apple, a rather sweet chutney, two flavourless mini-pork pies which it seemed likely had found their way to the hotel kitchen via Tesco just down Corve Street, some sorry-looking celery sticks and the one saving grace - a lovely slice of tasty ham which had nothing of Tesco about it. Oh woe for the Ploughman’s Lunch! 

  With Lucy comfortably installed in out atmospheric room where, when the sun moves across the window, the stained glass in it projects a lovely pattern on to the bed, I set off for the Friday afternoon session of the Festival. This was mainly an orienteering exercise for the big event was in the evening - the Slow Food Feast and this turned out to be one of the most delicious meals I have eaten for quite a while.

   The meal was introduced by Shane Holland, Executive Chair of Slow Food and Trustee of Borough Market and curated by Steve Guy. This was a remarkably enjoyable meal - one of my favourites of this year - delicious in every respect from the opening ‘Bread and Stuff’ - ‘surplus’ bread with ‘surplus’ local butter, lovely sweet ‘surplus’ vegetable pickles with an astonishingly delicious marrow, Shropshire salumi and local n’duja ragu. Such pleasure.

  Next came a lovely slice of Great Berwick organic roast beef (Great Berwick Farm is situated slightly upstream of Shrewsbury with its fields adjacent to the river Severn), cooked immaculately, with a summer salad where there was a heavy emphasis on fennel and heritage tomatoes which were joyously refreshing. A hit! A palpable hit!

   We moved on to a delicious Spanish pork stew made up from Mockleton Meats pork shoulder and bacon cooked with Teme apple juice and served with B-road bean gildas, smokily tasty charred cabbage, miso and almonds to gives a nice crunchy texture. This was very good indeed.

  How lovely to be next served a local cheese course - Appleby’s Cheshire and Monkland Little Hereford (there are no Shropshire-made cheeses apart from Ludlow Blue made at the Ludlow Food Centre - Shropshire Blue is made in, er, Lincolnshire) - happily accompanied by plum chutney, overripe figs and cream crackers.

  Finally, the dessert - a pleasingly light blackberry and apple upside down cake with sweet roast plums and queijo fresco (a mild, soft, creamy, white unaged Iberian cheese). 

  This had been a remarkably delicious meal and a very happy start to the Food Festival.

Steve Guy

Day 2 - I discovered that The Feathers serves a very fine Full English in what used to be, and may still be for all I know, its Richard III restaurant. With oak beams and an impressive fireplace and comfortable furniture, I thoroughly enjoyed every element of my cooked breakfast - the scrambled egg was mildly baveuse as I prefer, the bacon was neither under nor overcooked, the hash brown was beautifully crispy, the tomato juicy and black pudding not dried out. 

  There was a lot going on inside the castle grounds - George Egg was amusing during the first session and then I took the opportunity to buy myself a Beefy Boys Beefy Boy burger. These burgers are produced with passion and toothsome when consumed. I then moved on to Mr T’s Pies stall to buy some of his excellent produce to take with me and to enjoy once I returned to Birmingham. I had the version packed with delicious slow cooked beef, ox cheek I should think, moist and bursting with flavour and contained in excellent pastry.

George Egg

Beefy Boy burger.

Mr Tee’s Pies stall

  I sat through an interview with the restaurant critic and food writer, Jimi Faruwewa, and then had a good tour of the stalls in the castle grounds - gins, ciders, beers, wines, cupcakes, cooking equipment, ceramics, books, charcuterie, cheeses, bread and patisserie, various rural organisations, meat, fast food - there was much to look at. But as the afternoon drew to a close I returned to The Feathers to prepare for the annual Fire Feast to be held, as in previous years, in the ancient castle banqueting hall.

  It was as spectacular as ever but also proved to be a good reminder than autumn had now established itself with chilly evenings and early darkness. The first course was finely barbecued scallop with its coral interestingly accompanied by a sauce of local Perry which was very pleasing and then an excellent plate of local charcuterie and cheeses served with figs.

  An impressive slice of fine local beef  was accompanied by a selection of seasonal vegetables, some of which I would have liked a little more if they had been cooked for longer. Still, it was an impressive dish and I would have regretted missing it. There was a very happy dessert of plums (this has been a great year for the fruit - and damsons - with my own trees yielding far more than I could deal with) with an ‘autumnal ice cream’ and flaked almonds to give a nice crunchy texture to it all. 

  I have been to every Fire Feast apart from the first and never regretted doing so even though the food is often quite cool by the time it gets to the table and the chill of autumn nags at one unless one is well  wrapped up with warm clothing. There are plenty of fellow diners to talk to - I was delighted this year to chat to a group of farmers from Norway and interested to hear about the socialist government in that country which seems to be oppressing Norwegian farmers as much, if not more, than is Starmer’s regime here in England. The farmers had travelled to Ludlow expressly to attend the Food Festival and a good time they were having as a result of their travelling here.

  Day 3 - The following day, after another excellent Feathers breakfast, I returned to the festival to attend some more food demonstrations and talks. Firstly to the talk by Da Hae West on Korean cuisine which was interesting enough to tempt me to buy a signed copy of her book Balli Balli.

   Jonathan Howe and his wife Helen of the Michelin-starred Lumière in Cheltenham gave an illuminating demonstration of some of the dishes served in their restaurant and I also enjoyed the contributions of Shane Holland of Slow Food, Andy Link of the Riverside Inn in Aymestrey and James Sherwin of Wild Shropshire in Whitchurch.

  By mid afternoon, the weather had decided it was really time for the festival attenders to pay the price for the pleasures they had enjoyed during the weekend and a downpour from leaden skies gave Ludlow a good soak. But it had been a good weekend which marked my tenth Ludlow Food Festival.

  I had dinner at The Feathers on Sunday evening. To start I chose the nicely presented chicken, apricot and pancetta terrine which was pleasant and tasty. For my main course I opted for the generously portioned slow cooked pork with a tasty little black pudding Bon Bon with its successfully crispy coating, slightly cloying chive mashed potato, tenderstem broccoli (I maintain that whereever I eat it, the adjective ‘tenderstem’ applied to this irritating vegetable is a distinct breach of the Trades Description Act) and a delightful cider jus. Although cider had found its way into the sumptuous jus, I do feel that every pork dish should be blessed with a good dose of apple and this dish would not have suffered in the least if some of that fruit had been included in it.

Rating:- The Feathers Richard III restaurant dinner - 🌛🌛🌛🌛

14 September 2025.

Day 4 - Prior to departing The Feathers, I enjoyed another excellent breakfast and espied something interesting - standing on a table were two historic Richard III restaurant lunch and dinner menus dating back probably to the 1970s and the second a little later. The older of the two was a magnificent work with a lovely picture of The Feathers on its cover and decoratively hand written list and description of dishes. In the first menu, prices were in decimal currency and so it clearly dates to post-February 1971 but the dishes on offer were very much of their age, as were their prices - prawn or seafood cocktail (£1.95), crab stuffed eggs (£2.10), chilled lettuce soup with fresh cream (90p), spinach and tomato quiche (£1.50), Feathers potted savoury (£1.75), roast sirloin of English beef (£5.50), grilled whole Dover sole (£8.50), gammon baked in Cumberland sauce (£5.25) - in all a choice of a total of 11 starters and 10 mains though the list of desserts was not included and so I can not report on what sweets the diners were enjoying then

  The second menu was a typed one - technology had taken over - and, as part of a lunch menu priced at £5.95, included such dishes as curried eggs, melon and grape cocktail, seafood ramekin, poached fillet of lemon sole in cheese sauce, loin of pork with cherry sauce, chicken cider casserole, roast saddle of lamb with rosemary and garlic and a dessert “from the Trolley” (ah! those were the days. Bring back the dessert trolley).

  

  And so the dog and I checked out of The Feathers leaving the ghost of room 201 unseen behind us and after a splendid weekend in Ludlow I took with me a couple of souvenirs - a signed copy of Dae Hae West’s book and some Stych Farm ceramics..