8. More Strawberries Than Are Dreamt Of In Our Philosophy.

  For many years I enjoyed BBC's The Great British Menu. Glynn Purnell's appearances on it prompted me to drop in on his wondrous restaurant, for the first time in 2009. After that food became less peripheral to my existence.

  Sadly, GBM has lost its glint for me and I missed countless episodes just because it seemed so, er, .... boring. This year particularly so. I hate the 4 nights when celebrity, sorry, distinguished chefs pontificate on their colleagues' productions. Why can't they cut to the chase?

  I'm not happy that Prue sold her soul to the increasingly awful Channel 4 to participate in the Great British Bake Off, the popularity of which I have never understood despite friends' attempts to convince me that there is something interesting in amateurs producing dubious cakes and even more dubious pastries all sneered over by the unloveable Paul Hollywood. Prue, Matthew and Oliver were such a perfect trio of judges that anyone trying to break into the circle was doomed to failure. Please Prue, come home. Make an old bloke happy.

  Two and a half hours per week of GBM is just too much. It's not hard to tell which of the unfortunate contestants will be axed by the Guest Chef Judge from the first evening or so and seeing grown men and women, enveloped in fear, with shaking hands is not dignified.

  At least the show has dropped the bit where all the participating chefs get to vote on each other's dishes though it was interesting in the way that the chefs voted rarely for the same dishes as the lay judges did. It certainly begged the question as to whether professional chefs really know at all what their customers want and if they do whether or not they really care.

  Another relief is that we no longer have to put up with sequences where the chefs visit somewhere or the other to speak to someone who has "inspired" them. It really is very dull. All I want to do is see what the chefs are cooking, get a glimpse of how they do it, perhaps have a quick peep at the place where they work and then see how it all turns out. Oh, and to hear what Oliver, Prue and Matthew have to say about it all, witness a little squabble between Matthew and Oliver and hear Prue change her mind about a dish in a matter of seconds once the others get to work on her. I just want simplicity rather like a lot of us would like in our food a little more often.

  And so to the 2017 "Wimbledon" and "Summer Dishes" themed GBM. I was annoyed from the very start that the chefs who represented the Central area (The Midlands and East Anglia) generally did not have very much to do with dining in the central region - thus Ryan Simpson works at Orwells in Oxfordshire (actually in the south-east region), Nick Deverell-Smith who works at The Churchill Arms in Gloucestershire (arguably in the south-west region) though he had done a lot of his training in various places around the Midlands and Pip Lacey who works at Angela Hartnett's restaurant in London, Murano, and doesn't seemed to have done any cooking in the Midlands at all. The chefs may have had connections with The Midlands but it would have been preferable if chefs actually working in the area had actually represented the region. This is just another example of bias towards London and the South-east at the cost of the rest of the country.

  As the series drew to a close I tried to knuckle down to watching some episodes. Most of the chefs produced dishes based on strawberries - well you would wouldn't you given that the theme of the show was the Wimbledon Tennis Championships? By the end of it all we had had a surfeit of strawberries. Anything that could be done to a strawberry had been done. The winning fish course was even served with strawberries and pronounced by all the judges to be magnificent. I'm still trying to imagine what it must have tasted like - and failing miserably.

  I've seen so many strawberries this year that I have hardly been able to bring myself to eat one. That's just how bad things have been.

  So that's GBM for another year. I hope they cut it back a bit next year and drop the guest chef and guest lay judges and just have our trio of old campaigners discussing and squabbling and looking fittingly self-satisfied. Oh, and could we please have our region represented by chefs who actually work here please?

10. Birmingham Food Geniuses. The Wilderness Is Regenerating.

The Wilderness ... Not Dying But, Like Dr. Who, Regenerating.

  I've just had a very happy couple of weeks - firstly going to lunch with a very good friend at Alex Claridge's "The Wilderness" and then, the very next day, to lunch at Purnell's, the day before the restaurant closed for a few days for a well deserved summer break. Lunching at the establishments of two geniuses on 2 consecutive days is a true gift from Heaven.

  And indeed Claridge and Purnell truly are geniuses though one of them has had only a short time to prove his brilliance while the other has had long enough to prove that genius doesn't fade.

  The Wilderness - the location is convenient - a minute's walk from New Street Station but Dudley Street is rather insalubrious and uninviting. Still once you've located exactly where the restaurant is and you've entered it then its quirky moss-covered walls make you forget that you're you're located near an adult shop and under a grim concrete bridge.

  The menu is presented as a story though I was not entirely sure what the story was though my own interpretation was that the story was about fabulous, inventive, delicious, brilliantly original edible works of genius. The menu, the story, is depicted below. I won't describe each course because I shall find it hard to not overuse words such as delicious, brilliant, wonderful and so on. But particularly memorable - I shall never forget this dear little bird whose fate it was to give the utmost pleasure to an old bloke - was the quail dish with its little thigh so beautifully tasty that I still say that this was the most enjoyable little bit of bird that has ever delighted my taste buds.

  I must not fail to mention the perfectly cooked Iberico pork dish with its remarkable pickles and the splendid rhubarb-based dessert.

  Claridge is a great cook but also a clever and inventive artist. Birmingham has a number of great chefs but Claridge has added brilliance which makes me use the word "genius".

  Don't forget Claridge's spooky petit fours, where else can you get to eat chocolate human skulls? And he has carried this spooky quirkiness over into a trailer video titled "The Wilderness Is Dying" to draw attention to his news that he is to move the restaurant and open it up along with a bar to the building which is next door to Adam's pop-up restaurant when it was situated in Bennett's Hill off New Street. The old, moss-infested Wilderness will close on 23 December and reopen in February 2018 in this much more appealing location. Personally, I can't wait to see what it's like though being rather staid and old I should like the decor to be that little more conventional but then again who knows what Alex Claridge will come up with? Something pretty unique I expect. More chances to show us his genius are coming along. And Birmingham food lovers can only be delighted at the prospect of what 2018 will bring us. The Wilderness is not dying but, like Dr. Who, regenerating into a new body.

  And so to another genius whose history I covered in Blog 9. I've developed my own personal tradition of lunching at Purnell's on the day before (always a Friday so far) the restaurant is closed for the staff's summer holiday. It gives a chance to make sure I taste Glynn's summer menu and also just a chance to experience a great pleasure which is to be denied for the next couple of weeks or so.

  And of course, as mentioned in Blog 9, "Purnell's" has now been open for 10 years. And I'm sure he's just getting better and better. I had the 5 course lunch which is immaculately good value at £45, the illustration below details what was served.

  Pork's obviously the meat of the moment - it was served both in The Wilderness and Purnell's - but how lovely to have fillet rather than tiresome belly which we diners have had to put up with from various establishments all over the country for many years. You might guess that Purnell's Wiltshire pork dish was cooked perfectly and the accompanying tamarind blatjang and the splendid little turnips made this a dish to remember.

  But before that had been a truly fabulous dish of pan-cooked plaice (hopefully sous vide cooked fish is an entity never to have to be endured again) with remarkable Rose pickled onions and summery broad beans. The fish was so perfect and tasty that it is wrestling with Claridge's little quail thigh I mentioned above for my award of favourite dish of the summer.

  These dishes do, though, have strong competition in the form of Purnell's ingenious and delectable "Chocolate and cherry" - the ultimate word in deconstructed Black Forest gateau - with its eminently delicious sorbet and quite magnificent frozen cherry "cloud" which is another one of those gastronomic experiences in life which one should not miss. The dish was let down a little by some rather flavourless fresh cherries but such was the brilliance of the rest of the dish that one could forgive Chef for the vagaries of English fresh fruit.

  There are also some new petit fours served with the coffee and delicious they are too but I am pleased that the fabulous blackcurrent and anise jellies are with us still. I always save these little flavour bombs so that they are the very last element I consume of my Purnell's meal. I can live happily on a diet composed entirely of these products of Purnell's brilliance but then again I'd never have got to taste Purnell's Brixham plaice dish or Claridge's wonderful little quail thigh and how much emptier my life would have been!

  Birmingham is Food City with its great chefs and Culinary Geniuses be they long established or newer to the scene. We are lucky, aren't we?

  And on the subject of new young culinary geniuses, we await news of Ben Tesh's new restaurant and of where it will be and when it will open. Even more to make us happy and full of expectation.

  Finally, the Digbeth Dining Club pleasingly had an away day in Longbridge. Here on the edge of the city in south-west Birmingham it can feel a little remote from the activity and excitement of the city centre so full marks to DDC for coming here and treating we yokels to the pleasures of a street food selection of some variety. The locals - what no doubt Giles Coren would call "One eyes" (see Blog 6) - turned out in their numbers to make the most of the opportunity- there were families in notable evidence and a number of accompanying dogs - my Labrador would have been mortified to miss the event, she just loved sniffing out any food that had been dropped.

  Hmmm...it hasn't been a bad summer at all really.