488. ADC’s First Birthday.

  I have not visited Albatross Death Cult (ADC) for some time simply because I had dined there so many times that I felt that I needed a rest from its seafood menu and abundance of sake. In the meantime Grace Dent had dined there and pronounced it to be one of the five best seafood restaurants in Britain and the highly talented and ebullient Senior Chef, Piotr Szpak, who led the ADC team, is no longer in his post there having worked at The Wilderness and ADC for six years. 

Piotr Szpak

  

Leading the service at ADC therefore was Oliver Grieve who had been working alongside Piotr Szpak while studying for his degree in Culinary Arts Management at University College Birmingham and being recently awarded it asa  First Class degree with Honours. In his Linked in page Grieve noted his role as Senior Sous Chef at ADC, to which role he was appointed in January 2025, and described the restaurant as, “a brutalist Japanese-inspired restaurant” 

Oliver Grieve.

  But ADC has now reached its first birthday and this seemed like the right time to renew my acquaintance with this remarkable dining establishment and so I made a reservation for lunch there. The day started sunny and mildly humid but thunder was threatened in the late afternoon; was this the weather forecast or the fine dining forecast? In the end there was no thunder in the skies but there was a thunderously spectacular display of culinary brilliance inside the lovely old factory which is home to ADC. Quite simply, much of the food served, if not all of it, was quite fabulous. And the drinks on offer made this restaurant very unique and a sort of miniature Wonderland and I, very much, was the man who disappeared down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the white rabbit of gastronomic superlativeness.

  Entering and then sitting in the anteroom to sip a fine cocktail, one immediately appreciates that ADC is no ordinary restaurant. In the restaurant proper, Ollie Grieve and his assistant are busy preparing the first dishes of the meal  - some are reassuringly familiar and warmly welcoming while others are new and promising. The menu, handed over at the end of the meal to the diners as they prepare to pay the bill and head off back on to the mean streets, provides a resumé of the pleasures which have been delivered over a joyous three hours or so. None, absolutely none, have failed to delight.

‘Oyster’

   There’s the remarkable ‘oyster’, an old friend to tickle up the tastebuds and reignite the sea in the mouth of the diner. And then the lovely trout tartare with crémeux fraiche and wasabi croustade served alongside a brutally tasty prawn and nam jim tartlet. The dishes are illustrated below - some familiar, some new - the crispy cod skin with taramasalata was perfectly balanced by the rhubarb gel piped on to it.

‘Trout, Crémeux fraiche wasabi’ croustade & ‘Prawn/Nam jim tartlet’

‘Cod skin/Taramasalata/Rhubarb’

Mackerel/Seabuckthorn

‘

Oily mackeral is always a challenge to my aging digestive system but the fish’s strong flavour was matched by the strong hit of sea buckthorn and then a new dish - tuna nigiri - in the form of faux nigiri whereby the boat of rice was substituted for by a pleasing little beignet. A clever little soupçon.

‘Tuna ‘nigiri’’

  The following ‘cox crab - apple - sorrel’ dish was an old faithful but very toothsome for all that and the new dish of supremely beautifully cooked cod with an onion broth was lovely.

‘Cox crab/Apple/Sorrel’

‘Cod/Onion/Tallow’

‘
Mussel/Black pepper/Iberico’

  It seemed to me that ADC’s signature mussel/black pepper/Iberico has reached a new punchy level of flavour and the plump mussels were much to be admired but the little bits of Iberico and tang of pepper are the secret to the pleasure that the dish brings to the diner. A new monkfish dish was certainly the most tender use of this ingredient I have experienced in many a moon and the subsequent chalk stream trout with trout roe and sesame was simply beautiful.

‘Monkfish/Seaweed’

‘Chalkstream trout/Roe/Sesame’

‘Sushi rice ice cream/“Umami”’

  Another ADC signature arrived as the sole dessert - the gorgeous sushi rice icecream with crisps of nori and a nice punchily fruity pate de fruit rounded everything off. ADC remains at the top of its game and indeed may have reached new heights.

 

‘Petit four’ pate de fruit.

  A lovely touch by the charming staff as I left - a gift bag for my new Labrador puppy.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞

13 June 2025.

490. Cuubo.

 

My visit for lunch in February was generally enthusiastic and I awarded it one 🌞 which is equal to a mention in the Michelin Guide which is something that happened subsequently. It’s a lovely bright place and everything that goes on there speaks the words, “Fine Dining”. Indeed Cuubo is very much a representation of fine dining eating for the first fifth of the 21st century. The dishes come out clean and elegantly poised and of course it’s all served as a tasting menu and it all looks lovely and is well cooked and presented.

  But is chef Dan Sweet living in the, admittedly recent, past? Is Tropea at the other end of Harborne, 

more at the cutting edge of quality dining in the city? Do we want more rusticity asthe second quarter of this century approaches. Perhaps we want something more aggressively down to earth - a good, man-sized dish of aubergine parmigiana rather than a rectangle of sea bream with pretty sauces and emulsions ad creams. Or perhaps we don’t. What we do want if we are sticking with fine dining and paying high prices for the artistry rather than the ingredients is precision of cooking. My dining companion and I both felt that a couple of dishes presented to us on this lunchtime visit to Cuubo were, while being good, not quite as precisely cooked as we might have wished.

  The slick front of house manager served us first with some pleasing sourdough and truffled butter and then there was a satisfying dish of reasonably tasty tomatoes with a cold tasty tomato tea which all seemed very apt for a hot summer lunchtime.

  Next there was a very pleasing pea gazpacho. This had a hint of mint and was as refreshing as I hoped it would be. A well judged dish.

   Next, chunks of crispy pork belly which were indeed beautifully crispy, very moreish, but the meat itself was a little dry and mildly cloying and, we suspected, a little overcooked. It was a tasty dish however served as it was with a bacon cream, the mild heat of chilli and chicory salad which worked well with the main element. The next dish was also very colourful but here the panfried sea bream was definitely a little over though the skin was nice and crispy. The dish included sweet dattarini tomatoes, sea herbs and nduja cream and would have been excellent save for the cooking of the fish. 

  The final savoury course was made up of three small slices of beautifully cooked chicken breast. The meat was moist and delicious and enhanced by guanciale (cured pork jowl) cream and at the risk of turning this main course into a sort of Sunday roast, nicely and simply cooked Jersey Royals and green beans were sevednalongside and much appreciated they were. I’ve noticed that guanciale is one of Dan Sweet’s more favourite ingredients and the flavour came through very nicely to add to the pleasure of the dish.

 

  The single dessert was not particularly awesome being as it was, a deconstructed Eton Mess (well, I suppose you can’t really deconstruct an Eton Mess but if you could then this is what would look like) but it was an apt dish for a hot day and the accompanying raspberry sorbet was toothsome enough.

  We came away agreeing that it had been a “nice meal but not a great one”.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

26 June 2025.

491. Wildmoor Oak Inn, Wildmoor.

 

  It is not hard to write a piece about another visit to the Wildmoor Oak Inn at Wildmoor near Bromsgrove. I need merely to state that it is excellent. It’s a joyous place - wonderful, welcoming friendly service, a lovely location and a splendid, atmospheric building, a business perfectly run and conceived and best of all, food that one really looks forward to going to eat, the work of Chris Jackson, former Head Chef at Carter’s of Moseley and Brad Carter’s brother-in-law. Food, too, which one is also feeling very happy about when leaving the pub while at the same trying to work out how soon one can return there.

  This most recent visit did not disappoint as my lunch companion and I purred happily at the pleasures we had just consumed as we left the little garden across a fairyland bridge over a small babbling brook, as clear as glass, to return to the car park. We ate from the recently adopted summer menu and as a starter I had chosen a gorgeously gooey crab rarebit crumpet with a splendidly crispy crust with the joyous flavour of brown crab meat and nicely textured and tasty little brown shrimps and perfectly textured samphire. A hit! A palpable hit!

  The main course, which we both chose and were glad to have done so, was fabulously tender and delicious Blythborough pork Milanese with parmientier potatoes and a nicely moderately-flavoured aioli. The soothing summer taste of tomatoes permeated the meal and caused great pleasure which complemented the excellence of the cooking of the pork. Ruthlessly and joyously rustic fare. Such things are dreams made on.

    The dessert which again we both opted for was from the Specials menu and again was exquisite without being overwrought. This was a strawberry mille feuille. The pastry was excellent and the accompanying vanilla icecream delivered the flavour of vanilla most pleasingly.

   Wildmoor Oak Inn is excellent. I want to move in there. Time for the established food guides to recognise it as somewhere very special.

Rating:- 🌞.

27 June 2025.

489. Tropea.

 

  Tropea has extended its opening time on Saturdays so that service continues now between 3.30PM and 5PM and this resulted in some extra availability and the opportunity to grab a last minute reservation at the restaurant and once more set about consuming its remarkably good food.

 It was both the hottest and longest day of the year but the misery of the excess heat was soon forgotten once I was seated happily in the really very attractive and impressive dining room. The place was very busy - the denizens of Hungry Harborne have clearly embraced the place; and sorbet should - and quite noisy as these well off middle class diners clearly felt disinhibited when it came to making loud conversation and telling the world all about themselves. It seemed like a good idea to take out at least one of my hearing aids to damp down the row a bit. Perhaps, that’s Tropea’s only fault - the loudness of the volume of the chat of its entitled diners in there. 

  Regardless, I ordered a paper plane cocktail and got on with the exciting action of studying the menu and placing my order. First an antipasto of two delicious tempura coated fried courgette flowers stuffed with goat’s cheese, mint and Moor Pool honey. The time spent eating these sensuously wondrous culinary creations was time that could never have been better spent and the sweet mild acidity of the bowl of giardiniera (home made pickles) which I also ordered was a perfect companion to eat alongside them. There are few greater pleasures under this sun than the consumption of Tropea’s stuffed courgette flowers.

  The pasta too was delightful - linguine with tasty, perfectly textured wild red prawns and a broth which included sweet Datterini tomatoes and some texture from pangrattato. Then the main of a very generously sized portion of poached stone bass in a classic light broth (Acqua Pazza) again with datterini tomatoes and it was nicely cooked and and bursting with the feeling of summer. I had alongsidebit some modestly flavoured English asparagus tips enhanced with a snowfall of pecorino and a lemon citrus sauce.

  This splendidly seasonal meal emphasised just how brilliantly Tropea has brought itself to where it is now. Future distinctions await I am sure. For myself, I was too full for any dessert other than an affogato which rounded off the meal very nicely.

Rating:- 🌞🌞.

21 June 2025.