530. Snow And Ice And A Purple Sky And Dinner At Asha’s.

 

  I was meeting an old friend who last year moved from Birmingham to Saffron Walden where, he had discovered, dining out establishments are not as he had been used to here in Birmingham. He has the tastes and physique of a true gourmand, and unlike myself, is a lover of game and more impressively, is always able to sink a piece of rare purple wood pigeon from which I shrink away, the ferric flavour of it, like that of that offensive vegetable rocket, too much for my poor tastebuds. 

  We had arranged to stay in The Grand Hotel for two nights and as recounted in the previous Blog dined at Folium on our first evening in town only to be assailed by an irksome snow storm which made our journey from the Jewellery Quarter back to Temple Row somewhat thrilling as our Uber, possibly the last running that evening, slithered on the slushy, slide mean streets.

  I awoke the next morning to a snow-covered panorama looking from my window in room 503, the city paralysed with no effort having been put in by the council overnight to make either the roads or pavements safe. We passed the day quietly and resolved to dine at Asha’s, close by and no further far away than one would wish given the horrific icy state of the pavements. We made it to Asha’s without tumbling to the floor on the compacted snow and ice and heaved a sigh of relief and uttered a silent prayer in thanks for our survival.

  Unusually but hardly surprisingly, Asha’s was as empty as you would probably ever expect to see it on a Friday evening, unless perhaps Christmas Day had fallen on a Friday - I think that we were at one of only three occupied tables. We started inevitably as old campaigners with poppadoms served with some moderately interesting pickles and then we moved on to our starters - my friend judged his Prawn 65 (“batter fried prawns tossed with curry leaves, ginger and onions” to be agreeable and I enjoyed my Fish Amritsari (“Crispy fried fish pakoras seasoned with mint and aromatic carom seeds”) - they were generously portioned, certainly crispy, the unspecified fish nicely cooked but in any real flavour rendering them somewhat dull.

  I chose the again generously portioned chicken dharma curry which had satisfactorily cooked chicken in a nice thick, moderately spicy sauce. This was fine and there was some subtlety in the spicing but there was nothing astounding about it, no sparks of excitement, no evidence that going out for a curry, even at a glitzy, expensive place as Asha’s is, has moved on in any way, since the 1980s when I would often sit in Nirmal’s on West Street while working in Sheffield, being firmly guided to a more expensive dish than I really wanted by that redoubtable woman, Nirmal, herself. We know that “going out for a curry” has indeed moved on as evidenced by Opheem, ten minutes walk from Asha’s, but the latter has not - it lives on its glitziness rather than the excitement of its often quite expensive dishes. My friend enjoyed his chicken jhalfrezi and the accompanying rice, fragrant and tender was very good as was the soft cushion of the  Peshwari naan which was tasty and toothsome.

  I would have liked some kulfi but my friend was too full for dessert and so we settled up our bill and once more waddled out penguin-like on the dangerous pavements in the direction of the Grand Hotel and with a high degree of caution eventually arrived there without fatality or injury.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

January 2026.

  The next morning, I opened my bedroom curtains to the sight of a weirdly pink dawn - the shade of pink never seen by me before in the sky in all my seventy plus years. It emerged that the lights at the Birmingham City football ground had affected the clouds as a result of the snowfall but I certainly had never experienced anything like that before.

  I met my friend for breakfast in The Grand’s Isaac’s restaurant and enjoyed my Full English quite considerably. The ingredients were good quality and well cooked - the black pudding was not dry due to being overcooked though my scrambled egg may have benefitted from a few seconds less cooking and certainly did not need a clump of the omnipresent pea shoot garnish which by now really should have gone out of fashion. I like the spacious side room where guests can chose many different elements of the uncooked part of the breakfast. In all the breakfast was very satisfactory and eating it in the splendour of Isaac’s adds an extra element to it all.

  Lucy the Labrador enjoyed her stay at The Grand as did I. Of course Lucy never got to sit in Madeleine bar as I and my friend did where for lunch we both indulged ourselves in a good hot bowl of sweet French onion soup with large cheesy croutons floating on the surface. And in the evening, after dinner, we relaxed for a pre-bed drink -  a nerve-soothing Old fashioned for me.

    Finally, an interesting photograph, one of very many on display in Isaac’s, of the renovations underway, or about to be started perhaps, of The Grand’s magnificent staircase which led eventually to the hotel being reopened in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis and where I and my much loved Lucy II were among the first guests.

528. Events Dear Boy Events - January To June 2026.

 

See also Blogs 400, 416, 452 and 492.

12 January 2026 - Aktar Islam, Chef Patron of Opheem, announces that he intends to open a new restaurant, Oudh 1722, in Borough in London during spring 2026.

15 January - Harborne Kitchen announces that it is to close permanently and will not reopen after the Christmas holiday break.

6 February - Chef Angelina Adamo and Charlotte Carter open Vieni in the Goodsyard in the Jewellery Quarter and serve Sicilian-style cuisine.

8 February - The Michelin awards ceremony is held in Dublin and Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness and Liam Dillon’s The Boat (Lichfield), each are awarded a Michelin star for the first time. Opheem retains its two star status and Adam’s, Grace and Savour (Hampton in Arden), Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumière (Cheltenham), Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (Lichfield), The Cross (Kenilworth), The Royal Oak (Whatcote) and The Homeend (Ledbury) retain their single stars. Bibs Gourmands are retained by Tropea, Riverine Rabbit, Duncombe Arms (Ellastone) and The Inn at Welland (Welland). Forelles (Ludlow) is removed from the Guide.

527. Christmas At Hotel du Vin Stratford Upon Avon.

  In recent years, the beloved and greatly missed Lucy II and I have passed our Christmases in Ludlow at Fishmore Hall. In early 2024, the owner, the remarkable Laura Penman sold the boutique hotel with its Michelin listed restaurant, Forelles, to a businessmen based, I think, in West Bromwich and immediately large cuts were made to the quality of service in the hotel (while the room rates and food prices remained high) and the quality of the food served in Forelles. The service was often chaotic despite the efforts of one or two loyal staff and chefs came and went (I was told one stayed just a couple of hours) and last Christmas everything came to a head with a restaurant full of annoyed customers there for Christmas lunch for which they had paid a very large amount of money.

  I had still hoped to visit Fishmore during 2025:but my dear old dog died in March and little Lucy III, then aged 9 weeks, came to stay with me on 21 May and really was not ready to stay in other people’s property for a few months though I hoped to take her to the Ludlow Food Festival in the second weekend of September and stay at Fishmore then but I was told there were no vacancies and that was why Lucy and I passed the Food Festival weekend at The Feathers in Ludlow town. I contacted the hotel about staying for Christmas but I was told that Christmas 2024 had been such a disaster that it had been decided to close for three days. And so it was that Lucy and I had a change of location for Christmas 2025 and chose the Christmas package being offered by a hotel we regularly stay in whenever we are in Stratford upon Avon, the very dog (and human) friendly Hotel du Vin located in Rother Street. As for poor Fishmore Hall, it is up for sale again. Let us hope it finds a buyer who will treat it (and its staff and customers) with a lot of love and respect after the disgraceful way the present owner has abused the whole idea of hospitality.Bizarrely, Forelles remains in the Michelin Guide. I suspect this provides evidence that Michelin inspectors do not visit the restaurants that are included in the guide on a yearly basis or even on a two yearly basis because if that were the case, Forelles would certainly and sadly not find a place as a recommended restaurant in that particular book at present.

  The welcome to the Hotel Dublin was lovely, the room was familiarly spacious and we settled in instantly after opening the rather nice gifts left for us in our room, of which more later. Because this Blog is mainly about dining out, let us proceed straight to the food, after all this was Christmas and first there was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve dinner allowed a spending of £35 as part of the Christmas package and this went a nice way to paying for my starter of prawn cocktail (it surprised me when it arrived at the table as I had ordered coquilles St Jacques en croute. I queried the order and I was told that I had definitely ordered prawn cocktail - the confusion was not easy to explain because although ‘coquilles’ sounds, I suppose, rather like ‘cocktail’, the word ‘scallop’ had been used more than once during the ordering process. The prawn cocktail itself was unremarkable - the salad only made up of lettuce and nothing else but the Marie Rose sauce was passable & the prawns plentiful. Still, I was rather lusting after the coquilles.

  The main course was an extremely well cooked piece of pan fried cod (pavé de cabillaud) with a nice crispy skin served with a accurately spiced curried cauliflower and absolutely delicious vinaigrette of pomegranate, golden raisins, red onion and lime. This was a great success and my disappointment about the coquilles was rapidly dissipating. Four dessert I had a somewhat disappointing trifle - there was hardly any fruit in it and no sherry. Trifles need sherry and in generous amounts. So a very good main but not somewhat unsatisfactory bookend dishes.

  Lucy the Labrador settled in for the night, happily comfortable and quite tired. In the morning on leaving the room, I saw that each room had been visited by Father Christmas during the night and little individual knitted socks were hanging from the door handle filled with a tiny candy walking stick and three chocolate gold coins. How sweet and what fun. On arrival, on the previous day, gifts of a bottle of champagne and a container of bath salts awaited me on my arrival along with a packet of toothsome chocolate praline Christmas trees.

  And so to Christmas Day lunch and I arrived in the restaurant to find a charmingly laid table had been allocated to me. There was a splendidly sized, pleasingly cheesy gougère as an amusement gueule and then I had chosen a very good starter of chicken liver terrine with a sweet fig and plum chutney, cornichons and toasted brioche. Things were going stingingly and the dog found her first Christmas lunch (as an observer up until then) to be a gripping and fascinating experience.

But the proof of the Christmas lunch lies in the turkey. This was really very, very good. The turkey was full of flavour and absolutely perfectly cooked - it was unimpeachable and the best Christmas Turkey I have had for years. It came with a good stuffing and a marvellously phallic pig-in-blanket and tge vegetables were generally well cooked - the red cabbage tender and not oversweet, the roast parsnips and carrots tender and tasty and the roast potatoes reasonably well done. The only disappointment for me were  the Brussels sprouts - sprouts, like Christmas, come but once a year and should celebrated by perfect cooking. I have been presented with some real stinkers in my time - boiled to a soggy pulp or served as hard, and bitter, as bullets. I do like my sprouts to be tender and not al dente  which is how many chefs seem to serve them. The texture of these sprouts, for me, erred too far towards the latter but others, no doubt would have praised them for the restraint applied to cooking them. Such is life.

  I had preordered my dessert and had chosen trifle again. It was similar to the first dish that I previously bred served but had more flaked almonds which made it a little more interesting. 

  Boxing Day dinner was somewhat disappointing though it started very well as I was able to pay 50p for a £14 glass of Kir Royale in the cosy bar due to a couple of offers the hotel was making. And very good it was too. For my starter I had a very satisfactory pâté de foies de volaille, an enjoyably not over-rich chicken liver parfait again with a nicely complementary chutney and toasted brioche.

  I was not happy with my main which seemed to be the leftovers from Christmas Day. It was suggested that I might like the roast beef - which sounded highly tempting and looked good but had the feel of being reheated meat from the day before and the accompanying vegetables had the same look about them. There was a nicely puffed up Yorkshire pudding but it was dry and unexciting and gave little of the pleasure that Yorkshire pudding should give.. There was the ane unctious gravy, which was needed, as at Christmas lunch. This was not a good main course. If I had wanted the Christmas Day leftovers then I could have stayed at home and served them myself.

  I had ice cream and a sorbet for dessert. 

   My final evening at the Hotel du Vin was altogether more enjoyable. After two heavily discounted kir royales in the bar, I had a hot, warming, bowl of sweet French onion soup with its cheesy lid - splendid - then I continued with the French theme by choosing roulette de ratatouille en galette des pois chiches gratinée au four (ratatouille in chickpea pancakes baked until golden). This was a great pleasure after all the heavily traditional English meat-based fare of the preceding days. The ratatouille was delicious with a toothsome sweetness to it and the pancakes were crispy and gave a necessary texture to it all. French and vegetarian - what is happening to me?

  I coukd not resist a class of splendid Royal Hungarian Tokaji to accompany my dessert. It was a great priblem - there were two new desserts on the menu. Firstly there was rum baba for which I always have and had then, a great longing but there was also galette des rois, the famous French dessert served at Epiphany and made from puff pastry and filled with frangipan and here served with an excellent vanilla ice cream . It was too good an opportunity to miss and I opted for the galette and was overwhelmed by the pleasure of it - it had the correct swirling patterns in the pastry which was perfectly cooked and was an inviting golden brown. The frangipani was delicious and the whole extremely memorable. A perfect dish to round off Christmas.

   The next morning, the dog and I once more enubered after an initial crisis in which  the driver who had taken on the job as a uber pet job suddenly decided he could not take Lucy because he had a allergy to dogs. Luckily, another driver appeared to be just seconds away and whisked us away from Stratford to bring us back to Birmingham and a necessary rest.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

After thought - as above - Christmas comes but once a year. Just like sprouts do. 

The painting below is titled ‘Seven Brussels sprouts’ and was painted by Eliot Hodgkin (1905 - 1987), a well-known painter of still life’s, in 1955