105. Michelin Guide-Featured Restaurants Of The 1970s.

As the weeks of inactivity pass by and having now spent months in or in the vicinity of my home at the southwest edge of the city and never once venturing even to the large shopping centre a couple of miles away and certainly not risking life by travelling on public transport, the old proverb that the Devil makes work for idle hands comes to mind. And old Beelzebub has got the upper hand and tempted me into completing my collection of modern British Michelin Guides. Well, as demonic temptations go it’s not the worse sin the old Devil could have come up with and it is one which is pleasingly cheap with some very nice copies of the various editions being on sale on internet sites for as little as just over £2 post free. It’s also a victimless crime apart from my local postman who now greets me with increasing bemusement and the words, “Some more books for you”.
As we know the first edition of the guide to be published after publication had ceased in 1931 was the 1974 edition. It featured a paltry seven Birmingham restaurants, two of which served Italian style food and one was located in Sutton Coldfield and one in West Bromwich. The Guide found Birmingham city centre to be a gastronomic desert saved only by Italian food which was served by La Capanna and also Lorenzo which was something of a venue for any celebrity who found themselves stranded in Birmingham and in need of being seen by celebrity spotters and decently fed at the same time.
In the whole of the 1970s (74-80) Birmingham was represented in the Guide by only 14 restaurants. Italian was very much the theme of the half-decade. British food, if it had defined itself by then, was treated with the contempt it was perceived to deserve as restaurants serving French, South Asian and even Austrian cuisine were prominent in the publication.
In fact Indian food was represented in the 70s solely by the splendid Rajdoot, then located in Albert Street - it served not only delicious dishes but there was a lot of theatre about the place and it was not only a place to eat what was for many still exotic food but also a destination in its own right.
Below is the list of featured restaurants and the editions of the Guide in which they appeared:-

Burlington 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979.
Lorenzo (Italian), 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980.
La Capanna (Italian), 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980.
Lambert Court, 1974.
Danish Food Centre, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978.
Royal (Sutton Coldfield), 1974.
Manor House (West Bromwich, Hall Green Road), 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979.
Diment’s (Sutton Coldfield), 1975, 1976.
La Gondola (Sutton Coldfield, Italian), 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980.
Rajdoot (Indian), 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980.
Pinocchio ((Italian), 1978, 1979, 1980.
Giovanni’s (Kings Heath, Italian), 1978, 1979, 1980.
La Copper Kettle (Bearwood, Provençal), 1978, 1979, 1980.
La Caverna (Sheldon, Italian), 1979, 1980.

It’s worth mentioning Lorenzo, or in some editions Lorenzo’s, which was opened by Lorenzo Ferrari in the early 1970s in a building in Park Street which dated back to 1863 and had been first a concert hall and then, from 1912, a cinema. As written above, throughout its life it had a reputation as a celebrity haunt and only closed in 1993 when Ferrari retired to Italy. The restaurant retained its Michelin listing right up until the year Ferrari closed it.