550. What’s The Point Of Restaurant Guides?

   I asked Gemini - at a time when I hadn’t got anything better to do - about the subject of how useful each of the main restaurant guides are to the ordinary but discerning diner who was reasonably prepared to eat novel dishes and experience new cuisines. I know AI is often wrong - it makes things up and its research is not as thorough as it might be and I’m pretty sure it rather grovellingly tries to give you the answer it thinks you want to receive. Still it does its best. Anyway we had a pleasant interchange where it did indeed largely express views which were in line with my own. Firstly, is the Michelin Guide any use? Its reply -

    We then moved on to the Good Food Guide which under its present editor uses flowery descriptions and reviews not sparing in the number of words used and is largely aimed at middling middle class hipsters and students giving it the impression of it trying hard to dumb down good food. It has surrendered to trendiness and coolness and this is much to be regretted. 

  Then there is Hardens which is like a Sunday family roast lunch in comparison with the Michelin Guide which is dining at the Ritz. As such it is to be commended. It is a vox pop but mostly the pop is informed, experienced, knowledgeable and discerning. There are certainly some restaurants included in it which would not make the cut in any other guide. I remember sitting in one of the (Harden-listed) bistros on Stratford’s Sheep Street and talking to a couple in early middle age who adored eating there and dined there whenever they were in the town. I smiled supportively, and hopefully not too patronisingly, as they praised their technically unambitious and quite pricey main course, inwardly grimacing as I tried to find even a glimmer of pleasure from the seriously overcooked fish I had been served. Still, I like Hardens, a Guide For The Common Man.

    Gemini deemed that the AA Guide was the guide for me. And I think it might be right.

 The AA Guide sets out the landmark events its own evolution but in terms of it being a restaurant guide the important dates are -

1967 - Introduction of the AA restaurant inspection scheme

1992 - The AA rosette scheme is revised as a 5 tier rating system.

   To explore which Birmingham and West Midlands restaurants had been featured in vintage editions o tge AA Guide I obtained the 1990 edition and perused its pages in search of well thought of Birmingham and other West Midlands restaurants which the Guide deemed worthy of inclusion. It really was not terribly useful. It took far more interest in the hotels it was reporting on with passing reference to eating arrangements in most of them. I really would have been better served by a 1992 edition when the 5 rosette system was introduced. I ordered a copy from É Bay but discovered that I had mistakenly ordered a copy of the 1992 Egon Ronay Guide which was a good thing as I hadn’t paid any attention to that particular important publication up until now (see below).

  Apart from hotel dining the guide mentioned only two restaurants and indicated their grading while the quality of those located in hotels was not indicated apart from commenting on price and nature of the menu. The two mentioned were Sloan’s and The Lombard Room in Kings Norton - 

xxx “Sloan’s, 27-29 Chad Square … Unusually located in a small square of shops to the west of the city centre, this chic, split level restaurant offers an imaginative menu of dishes in the light French style, making good use of fresh seasonal produce, and complementing its cuisine with a fine wine list and friendly professional service”

xxx “The Lombard Room, 180 Lifford Lane …. About ten minutes drive south of the city centre and convenient for the M42 is the famous Patrick Collection motor museum, within the beautiful grounds is the complex that contains the Lombard Toom, the elegant conservatory which holds the lounge and bar - all furnishings and décor are of very good quality. A short, imaginative à la carte menu offers a selection of tempting dishes. The quality of the food is complemented by professional attentive service and a magnificent of wines.”

  I am won over - for the present at least - by the idea that the AA Guide is the guide of choice for diners rather than chefs. I look forward to the next edition. I shall deal with the Egon Ronay Guide and the story of its editor in a future edition of BFAOBP.

Egon Ronay 

551. Summer Crab And Frites At Wildmoor Oak Inn.

 

   The last day in July and summer’s lease now started to feel as though it indeed had too short a date. I had had an eventful two or three days and I felt like I should reward myself for coping with it all by hailing an uber (not literally obviously) and zooming off to the wonderful pub with the Brontëesque name, the Wildmoor Oak Inn, near Bromsgrove, now very familiar to me and already a location which had given me some happy dining memories. Upmost in my mind was the summer special of crab and frites with aioli which I still had not got to eat but I thought this late afternoon just might be the day to enjoy what sounded like a fabulous repast. And so it proved to be.

  Having been warmly greeted and seated in my favourite corner (I could have had an outside table to make the most of this lovely summer evening but outside dining is fraught with its own challenges though it was perhaps getting a little late in the day for pesky wasps to ply their trade) I chose the summer special cocktail, a strawberry daiquiri, and it proved to be the most deliciously flavoured strawberry thing out of all the strawberry things I had consumed this summer. 

  My starter was excellent, from the sheet of ‘specials’ of the day. It was a most generously sized serving of thick slices of gravad lax with sweet little crayfish, crispy sourdough and ribbons of sweetly pickled cucumber to set it all off. Summer’s lease was bringing great pleasure with it.

  But of course, just as Charity was the greatest of its trinity (Faith, Hope and Charity), so the main course was the greatest of the three courses served that evening. Simple but gorgeous. A feast of dressed crab served in a crab shell, a magnificent burst of intense crabby flavour with every mouthful that had me purring with pleasure. Not a single hint of even the tiniest fragment of crab shell (and that does not happen everywhere) and accompanied by the simple citric contrast to the richness of the dish brought to the plate by a good wedge of lemon. There was as well a triumphantly enjoyable pot of aioli, its garlic flavour sweet and soothing and not stringent nor savage and the frites were very good. 

  After this feast I was replete and could not manage one of the formal desserts but instead I asked for some vanilla ice cream and espresso and put together a happy little affogato which rounded off this fine meal in a very satisfying way.

  Still unrecognised by the Food Guides (which questions their validity), Wildmoor Oak Inn continues to deliver high calibre pub food which brings much happy pleasure to the diner.

Rating:- 🌞

31 July 2026.

549. Summer At Tropea.

 

  Push aside the ragus, and the bolognese and ossobucos, it seems to me that Italian food is really all about summer - the vegetables, the fish, the sea food, the lighter meats. And it was summer in June as a blighted first few days of June turned golden as the sun came out, the blue skies became cloudless and the god of weather turned up the temperature.

  I was in the mood for a trip to Harborne heading specifically for one of my favourite restaurants Tropea on Lordswood Road where an Italian summer seemed assured.

  A smooth and friendly - but not over the top - welcome and a suggestion that I might like to start with a Paper Plane which was either well remembered from my previous visits or information cleverly retrieved from records of bills settled up on former occasions. Regardless, I had my Paper Plane and I was all the happier for doing so. The accompanying complementary giadiniera - pickles - and olives were very pleasing - the pickles are sweet and toothsome and are a perfect hors d’oeuvres /antipasto.

  And it was a summer menu indeed. I had come with a picture in my excited mind of the lightly tempura-battered courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese and mint and enhanced with Moor Pool honey - I was lusting for them; it was the need for them that drove me to travel to Harborne - and they fully lived up to my expectations and memories of them. My only regret was that I ordered just two of them - three of them would have been more sensible or perhaps even four and why not five ….?

  But we cannot say that the choice of another small plate was an unwise one - the pasta - I had the fabulous lobster cappelletti, the excellent pasta filled with tasty chunks of the fine crustacean and served with a delicious lobster and Datterini tomato sauce and dressed with Arënkha caviar (smoked herring roe in the firm of small black pearls currently popular among restaurateurs and a cheap alternative to the real stuff), This was an excellent dish, faux-caviar or not.

  Naturally I could not resist indulging myself in the Tropea aubergine parmigiana which was as good as ever though naturally the portion is rather too large for an old bloke though I made a good fist of it and no-one could have asked more of me. I also splashed out on a very healthily sized plate of barbecued Wye Valley asparagus with a lemon dressing, a good sprinkling of pecorino and pangrattato on top to give that  little extra peasant crunchy texture. The asparagus was lacking in flavour to some degree  - I have had better this summer (from Sainsbury!) just in the last few days - plump and bulky, oozing asparagusic acid and high with flavour. But, allowing for the asparagus’ lack of exuberance it was still a pleasing dish. 

  I also had the Jersey Royals, sadly roasted instead of being plainly boiled, with roasted garlic aioli trailed across them and parsley. As I hinted, I would have preferred the new potatoes to be boiled perfectly and allowed to calmly bathe in the aioli but chefs must be chefs and sometimes they overdo things for the sake of showing they’re putting in the effort.

  And of course I closed with the magnificent Tropea tiramisu which must have been eaten by the Roman gods on Olympus. I was full but made sure I did not leave a cubic micrometre of it.

  Such pleasures, some finer than others, but the whole a delight. 

Rating:- 🌞

12 June 2026.

548. Dinner At Samo.

 

  People who know or who say they know, are raving about Samo, the French-style bistro in the Great Western Arcade, at present. Who am I to argue with them?

  I returned for my third visit there having already had a delightful, generously portioned Sunday lunch there and a weekday lunch there where I found the choice just too limited (and I had also found the Café de Paris butter melted on my well-cooked bavette steak too challenging as it overwhelmed the steak with an unhappy bitterness). But dinner offers a far better choice, so I was looking for a restoration of the pleasure I had experienced at Samo when I had eaten Sunday lunch there.

  Pleasurably crispy baton sliced into five pieces with two types of butter was my pre-dinner nibble and consumed alongside a very pleasing glass of Maison Antech Crement. Being old, and remembering antediluvian times when bread was, as Glynn Purnell would call it, “a gift from the kitchen” £5 seems a lot to pay for a small baton with butter but the bread was good and I looked at forking out this sum of money as my personal act of generous support to a small independent restaurant.

  For starters, I chose the only ‘special’ of the day which was monkfish cheeks in tempura batter with a very fine tartare sauce. This was adventurous of me - monkfish is rarely as successful as it should be and I wonder if chefs are a little frightened of as it seems so easy to overcook it and render it into the chewy state of a badly overgrilled steak. Sometimes they overcautiously undercook it and that is equally verging on unpleasantness. I remember entertaining an already fussy friend who believes himself to be something of a gourmet as well as being a fine home cook, to dinner at Forelles restaurant in Fishmore Hall near Ludlow in the days before an Asian businessman from West Bromwich took it over and by way of profiteering destroyed its Michelin-rated reputation in a matter of days though Michelin, clearly failing to review it for long after the business had been taken over, retained its listing for one or two years after Forelles fell from grace.  Regardless of all that, at the dinner in question, I was served a well cooked piece of monkfish tail while my friend had delivered to him a gloriously barely cooked piece of fish meat which sent him to paroxysms of frantic scraping away at the fish to find any part that was edible, behaviour which only ceased when I asked the kitchen to replace the horror on the plate. Maybe it was just an error but I suspect it resulted from a need to attempt to not overcook the fish. There’s certainly no doubt that overcooked monkfish is a progenitor of tiresome excessive mastication and should be avoided at all costs and serving the cheeks, an obviously cheaper cut than the tail, is risky. I thought the cheeks were as well cooked as one would hope for but there were three on the plate and I had lost interest by the end of the second piece - they were only moderately chewy which was good and the accompanying piquant sauce tartare was really very good. Perhaps when next serving a similar dish, chef may opt to use cod cheeks wbich are less fraught with danger and serve just two rather than three.

 

   I clearly had some reservations about my starter but the main was a wholly different kettle of fish - it was a magnificent gurnard, cooked so that its flesh was perfectly textured and moist and its skin charred and smoky and served with a delicious vierge sauce studded with pieces of tomato and tiny chunks of caper, aromatic with joyous hits of tarragon, The side dish of frites was very pleasing with the chips again being nicely crispy and tasty with beef fat, but not quite as overflavoured as the first time I had eaten at Samo. The dish was generous in size and astounding to see when it first arrived at the table - ‘wow!’-worthy - and showed that there is some truly great cooking going on in the Samo kitchen.

  

     For dessert, something not even vaguely French but whose ancestor was described by the very English Thomas Dawson in 1585 - trifle and in this particular case -  “disco trifle” made with what were described to me as ‘best English strawberries’ as well as lashings of cream and plenty of hundreds and thousands. A perky little number.

  Over the course of my three visits there I have developed something of an affection for Samo - sitting at a window table watching the myriad and eclectic Arcade denizens pass by, quaffing a glass of something or the other, temporarily feeling Demi-Français in this quietly atmospheric petit bistro being unobtrusively served with rustic fayre from Elliot Brown’s menu which is as much English as Gallic. I shall return, I hope.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

25 July 2026.

  Finally, worth mentioning is the sight of Ozzy the Bull wearing a pair of giant groovy spectacles which I saw at New Strreet station en route to Grand Western Arcade. He was thus adorned to commemorate the recent first anniversary of the death of the Birmingham-born heavy metal singer, Ozzie Osbourne.

547. The Oyster Club, Where Now I’ve Lost My Sole.

  Having enjoyed my final chateaubriand roast Sunday lunch just a few days before (see Blog 546) at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes, to give this fine Michelin-listed restaurant its full name, I was determined to enjoy one final seafood meal - the usually splendid Dover sole served for a very reasonable £40 - as the respected restaurant was due to close for good on Saturday 11 June. 

  The outgoing prime minister and his chancellor had achieved nothing good in the two years they were allowed to oversee the nation’s finances but they had done much harm with their policies and that included wilfully destroying the hospitality industry and reigning over the closure of many fine restaurants. Starmer might easily be viewed as Britain’s worse prime minister of recent times and such a view of him would be quite correct. He will be a footnote in English history but a looming black shadow in the social history of dining out.

  Get though behind me, Starmer. Let me return to the joy of sitting in The  Oyster Club.

  And so, for a final time, I descended the stairs to the dining area - as always, stylish and comfortable and soon to have no more customers. But let’s live in the moment and have a Cotswold gin and tonic and tempura king prawns with gochujang. This ‘snack’ which was as bountiful as any ‘starter’ was excellent - the batter excellent though to be honest there was, perhaps, a little too much salt used somewhere in the dish.. The prawns were firm and tasty.

    My much anticipated sole arrived - cooked magnificently - the texture moist but firm - and served in a ‘warm tartare sauce’, clad in samphire and sharp with pickled capers in a silky brown butter with sweet little brown shrimps. This was an excellent dish, alive with the pleasure of fine fish cookery. The opportunity to order it again will be greatly missed. I washed it down, by the way, with a nice glass of white wine Rioja - from Bodegas Muga - and it paired very nicely with the sole.

  For the dessert, not for the first time, vanilla panna cotta, nicely set though not absolutely perfectly wobbly, and a mocktail which though I ordered ‘Bakewell tart’ was rather more like ‘Black Forest gateau’

    I will miss The Oyster Club. Birmingham bad,y needs a fish restaurant of quality. You can say of course that we do have Albatross Death Cult but for many it is too esoteric, too clever, too experimental, too challenging. We need a fine restaurant where fish is cooked as close to perfect as we might hope it to be - baked, fried, roasted, steamed, en papillote and where lobster is as good as that served on Mount Olympus and where crab is exploding with flavour and where nouvelle cuisine never happened and sous vide cooking went undiscovered. Fish, simply cooked, enhanced by the most apt accompaniments. The Oyster Club was a good part of the way there and so I say, Adieu! 

  One final glance back -

10 July 2026

Rating:- 🌞