205. Purnell’s, Lunar,Upstairs.

  As we know the hospitality industry suffered badly during the COVID-19 pandemic though there’s little doubt that a number of government measures saved many businesses which would have otherwise gone to the wall. But eventually business appeared to have returned to normal. Then the omicron variant originating in South Africa, more rapidly spreading it appeared than the then dominant delta subtype which had spread out from India, turned up. Right into early December the hospitality industry seemed to be holding up and diners were turning up happily to their favourite restaurants - there was quite a wait for reservation dates at some favourite establishments - and then Professor Christopher Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical adviser to the government, spoke out about the potential dangers of the new variant and almost overnight restaurants experienced large numbers of reservation cancellations and the vital pre-Christmas trade took a spectacular hit.

  The situation was not helped by large numbers of restaurant workers actually contracting the condition and their employers being unable to staff their restaurants adequately. Thus on 21 December Purnell’s announced that it would be closing early pre-Christmas saying, “Due to current circumstances we don’t have enough staff required to provide the high standard of service that we consistently deliver at Purnell’s”. Clearly this represented a significant financial loss for the restaurant but as the restaurant was planning to close for its Christmas break on 23 December in any case, one supposes that matters could have been even worse.

 

  By 23 December early studies of the effects of the omicron variant were suggesting that it may very well cause a less clinically severe illness than the variants which had gone before and it was becoming reasonable to hope that the renewed threat to the hospitality industry might be short-lived and not as severe as the doom-laden professor was suggesting it might be.

   It was reported on 18 December that the Stoke-on-Trent native, Niall Keating, Executive chef at the Michelin starred Whateley Manor in Wiltshire, will leave his job at the end of December presumably to concentrate on his new restaurant, Lunar, which opened in November in the World of Wedgwood visitor attraction at Barlaston as well as other projects. It is excellent to find another accomplished West Midlands chef returning to his roots and further adding to the gastronomic wonders in the region. Which reminds me that I must get up to Stoke in the new year to visit Lunar.

  Posted on the Michelin Guide Twitter account today (23 December) is a reference to a Michelin inspector’s visit to Upstairs by Tom Shepherd in Lichfield (see Blogs 188 and 194) which is the second time in a period of a few weeks (last reported 12 November 2021 - see Blog 193). I have the feeling that the West Midlands may well have a new starred restaurant when the 2022 Guide is published and rightly so.

204. Chakana.

 

  I wish I could energise myself to visit Moseley a little more often - at least once a year - if only to lunch or dine at Carter’s Of Moseley, the only Birmingham Michelin-starred restaurant I failed to eat at during 2021 but it’s hard to get there by public transport from my part of the city and frankly I really do not like the WWSS (Wealthy, Woke and Self-satisfied) area very much. But after the Chakanita fast food wagon had turned up at Herbert’s Yard in Longbridge and sold me some Peruvian temptations I could not resist taking advantage of the mass cancelling of reservations taking place everywhere at the behest of the government advisor who was warning of the expected Omicron mass doom and make a reservation for the Michelin-plated Chakana situated in that Fourth Circle of Hell otherwise known as Moseley. 

  Actually on arrival, I decided that perhaps I had whipped myself up into an unnecessarily exaggerated dislike of Moseley, finding it to be nothing worse than a rather twee, socialist, upper-middle class suburb, exactly the sort of place in which socialist restaurant critic Jay Rayner, well-fed and red, would feel at home.

  I mention Mr Rayner because he wrote recently an ecstatic review of Chakana so my expectations were high as he seems to know what he’s writing about - when it comes to food at any rate. And he is right. It is a lovely relaxed, fresh-looking restaurant, comfortable and with friendly, informed front of house staff.

  Lunch took the form of the three course Christmas menu which had at least 4 choices for each course. That’s the way to please the customers especially when every dish on the menu looks so attractive on paper at least that the punter feels spoiled for choice. First I had one of the cocktails - Traditional Pisco sour - which brought a new experience to the flavours I have tasted in my life being made from Pisco, a Peruvian grape brandy, citrus, egg white, sugar and Peruvian bitters. Purple corn bread, soft and very tasty, was served with a spicy tiger milk yogurt dip and an utterly delicious little tuna tartare tart served as a delightful, much appreciated amuse gueule. 

  For my starter I chose a vibrant, funky-looking dish of citrus-cured salmon with a blancmange-pink beetroot tigers milk, nasturtium oil, squid ink tuile and puffed barley. A great dish apart, I think, from the puffed barley which had too soft a texture for my taste. But in all it was a memorable dish full of flavour and who would forget its visual appearance?

  Then my main course - a plate of rustic deliciousness - shockingly tasty slow cooked suckling pig with crunchy, unctuous crackling, romanesco cabbage two tiny yellow explosively hot chillis which I was warned to be careful with, baby sweet corn (for once not all uninteresting), a wilted pak choi-like leaf and what was called eucalyptus, rosemary and thyme potato tart. A rustic, full-on indulgence rather perhaps like an exotic Sunday lunch and none the worse for that. 

  Then a highly enjoyable dessert - limon de cielo - a very appealing soft, creamy lime and lemon curd meringue tart on which was perched a pisco-poached physalis.  

And it looked very pretty too.

  

  The Head Chef of Chakana is Robert Ortiz who had worked as Head Chef at Michelin-starred Lima restaurant in London until 2019. This present Moseley restaurant gets its name from the ancient Incan cross which was used by indigenous Peruvian cultures. The chakana is said to represent the sun, sea and land (oh yes! that’s Moseley alright) and it promotes the concept of people of living in harmony with each other and their environment. After a visit to Chakana I very much felt that I was living in harmony with … Moseley.

203. Another Young Birmingham Chef Wins Masterchef.

 

  The winner of the 2021 final of BBC’s Master Chef The Professionals which was screened on BBC1 on 16 December is Daniel Lee from Birmingham currently working as a private chef. The winner usually presented dishes which were related to his Chinese background and also inspired from the time he had spent working in south east Asia. By scoring this success Dan Lee follows in the the footsteps of the 2019 winner, Stuart Deeley, now Head Chef at Smoke in Hampton-in-Arden.

  The competition underlined the great present strength of Birmingham and the West Midlands and its brilliant future prospects in the field of gastronomy although Michelin inspectors seem to find it hard to visit the region and if they do their interest is mainly centred on The Cotswolds or perhaps rural Shropshire (as regards the East Midlands they have been flocking to the cosy pubs of the Peak District recently - see below).

  Each dish in Dan Lee’s winning three course menu cooked in three hours earned near-ecstatic praise and no criticism from the three judges in the programme including Marcus Waring and Monica Galleti. Lee prepared a starter of his version of the classic Singapore chilli crab with deep fried bao topped with crab, chilli oil, nashi pear, lime juice, salted egg yolk and Szechuan pepper topped with a squid ink tuile, a soft shell crab tempura with crab and chilli oil.

  The main course was said to be Lee’s take on the Singaporean national dish - chicken and rice - chicken breast stuffed with chicken thigh meat, sesame oil, spring onion, ginger and Thai pandan leaf, choy sum (a Chinese cabbage) blanched in garlic, chilli and oyster sauce, a red chilli sambal sauce, chicken-infused steam rice with garlic and ginger and a chicken and pandan leaf broth.

  The dessert was a smoked hay treacle tart filled with yuzu curd toasted breadcrumbs, pickled ginger, clotted cream ice cream, Japanese shiso leaves, shiso crumb and smoked hay butter tuile

 

  Throughout the competition Dan Lee always looked like he would certainly be one of the three finalists and had a good chance of being chosen as champion and indeed he lived up to expectations. Food lovers here in the West Midlands must now hope that he chooses to continue his career here in Birmingham or the surrounding region - an exciting prospect indeed.

  We must also remember that three West Midlands young chefs featured in this year’s competition - Yasmine Selwood (see Blog 197) and Matt Willdig who made it into the final week of the competition. Such promise for our local gastronomic future.

  Not that you would think it from the latest monthly update to the Michelin Guide of recommended restaurants. Out of thirty new additions in the list published on 15 December absolutely none are located in the West Midlands region which means that since the monthly publication of these lists began ZERO West Midlands restaurants have been featured - the only region in the entire British Isles to have been completely ignored by Michelin. Utterly bizarre. But the Michelin inspectors have clearly been having a pleasurable time pottering around the gastro-pubs of the Peak District as several such establishments find themselves added to the list. I am glad they’re having a nice time.

  As the omicron variant of the Coronavirus threatens to spread rapidly across England, restaurants are suffering from a large number of cancelled reservations as shown in this appeal from Folium, Ben Tesh’s restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter:-

202. Purnell’s At Christmas.

 

  Birmingham is Birmingham is Birmimgham. Everyone, well most people at any rate, will see the place where they live as the best place in the world. And so it is here in this second city. We know that Birmingham is fairly unique. It’s a second city, true, but relatively, it’s fairly small. One point one million people live within its boundaries. They have origins from just about anywhere - for all I know there are people who were born in Kiribati or The Marshall Islands or Tristan Da Cunha or Svalbard living here. But the backbone of the city remains those who came here from Warwickshire and Worcestershire and Staffordshire and Shropshire and Gloucestershire and Herefordshire in the course of the Nineteenth century (various ancestors of mine were born in all six of these counties) . Agricultural workers seeking work in Birmingham’s burgeoning industries. And then too came the Irish fleeing poverty and famine and prepared to do the work that not even the poor native Mercians were keen to carry out. And so we had Birmingham. The rich lived in Edgbaston and Handsworth and the poor who served them or worked for them lived in Ladywood and Bordesley Green and Small Heath. The city thrived and evolved. You had the jewellery industry, Guest Keen and Nettlefolds which brought the Chamberlains to the city, the Quakers in south Birmingham which gave us the Cadburys, the car industry which found Herbert Austin in Longbridge, King Edwards School which gave us Tolkien, numerous city professionals and latterly writes such as Jonathan Coe, and military men such as Viscount Slim and do not forget politicians including the now notorious Enoch Powell and by all these influences the Brummies became the Brummies. What a great city and what fine people live here.

  I reflected on this as I sat in the bar of Purnell’s quaffing a glass of bubbly and following up with a Japanese version of a Martini. Well, at least it was a Purnell’s Japanese Martini containing sake and yuzu. And a mighty fine drink it was too. My reflections were initiated by the arrival of a good Brummie family with a dominant male in late middle age - probably a rough but very wealthy builder or scaffolder (likely with a big house in Four Oaks) - two sons who obviously worked in and shared the profits of the family business plus daughters-in-law and a much cherished grandson aged about seven or eight. I thought momentarily of the Shelby’s. How I love my fellow Brummies -  ‘My people’, to quote Kathleen Dayus, I thought. The pater familiaris asked me if I was doing the Full Monty, by which, I gleaned he meant the Tasting Menu, to which question  I had to reply in the negative. I was having what looked like a very promising five course meal from the lunch menu. Purnell’s is all about Birmingham. It’s comfortable with the Brummie voices around you. It’s the right atmosphere. It does a good job just like the city at whose centre it sits.

   And so onwards into the dining room. To start as always, and ever welcome, the edible charcoal, black potatoes and delicious chorizo dip along with the relative newcomer - the celeriac and apple ball. All delicious, original and mesmerising to those eating them for the first time. Then, of course, Purnell’s’ own light and gorgeous pain de campagne.  By then mellowness and contentment had set in and the delightful butter-roasted cauliflower starter enhanced my contentment. 

  

    Moving on to the second starter of a Purnell’s favourite which always looks different every time you have it but is always silky smooth and gorgeously flavoured - chicken liver parfait, perfectly poached pear in red wine with roasted grains and a wafer thin slice of the pain de campagne. Such pleasure. Then the ‘fish du jour’ - wonderfully cooked cod which may have been slightly over seasoned  - others might disagree - with perfectly flavoured black salsify, butternut squash purée, sorrel gel and an orange sauce. More pleasure.

  The main course was finely prepared pork belly with sprout leaves, red cabbage gel, purple carrot and chestnut. The dish reminded of why I so enjoy visiting Purnell’s and why I have developed my own personal tradition of making sure I dine there immediately before Christmas - a visit to this doyen of great Birmingham restaurants is my Christmas gift to myself. I had so enjoyed myself that I forgot to photograph the lovely dessert, new to the menu, of milk chocolate and hazelnut delice perfectly and joyfully accompanyed by mango, coffee cream and candied pistachio. 

  Purnell’s remains my favourite Birmingham restaurant for many reasons covered in previous Blogs. I had the opportunity to have a short conversation with Jarek Samborski who took over as Mâitre d’Hôtel of Purnell’s a couple of years ago and has done a very fine job in that role. I was sad to hear that after the final service this December he will be leaving his job there and will soon after return with his family to Poland. The end of another era at Purnell’s. As to who would take over his role in the new year it does look very much as though Adrien Garnier, Purnell’s present sommelier, will be promoted to that post and I expect he will do a very good job of it.

201. Peruvian Street Food in Longbridge.

 

  I have expressed in previous Blogs my lack of excitement when faced with the threat of having to consume Street Food. I have had one or two overpriced stinkers in my time and all eaten uncomfortably seated on some stray street bench somewhere or the other with a gale whipping around me, drizzle in the air and the dog looking utterly miserable.

  Digbeth Dining Club made consuming street food in Birmingham somewhat more comfortable and, more importantly, cool, (or whatever word is now used to denote cool) and eventually sent out little satellites on a regular basis so that street food was not just confined to the inner city (by which I mean Digbeth and, lattetly, the Jewellery Quarter) but also suburban neighbourhoods and notably distant, near-rural Longbridge. 

  On 19 November 2021 St Modwen, the company which redeveloped Longbridge, with Digbeth Dining Club, opened Herbert’s Yard, named after Herbert Austin who founded the Longbridge motor factory, to house diners buying street food from stalls set up by regular stall holders of Digbeth Dining Club. There are dozens of tables which from the first day attracted hundreds of people local to south west Birmingham and northern Worcestershire - families, the young, the old and … their dogs. At last - street food at Longbridge in dry, spacious, wind-free surroundings (and Longbridge can be so wondrously windy that any denizen of Digbeth would believe that they had been transported to another planet by gastronomic aliens). 

  South west Birmingham has no restaurant to thrill the gourmand and so Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Herbert’s Yard is an opportunity not to be missed with approximately six Digbeth Dining Club stall holders turning up every week to sell their wares; the vendors changing every week. On the opening day I ate Taiwanese style with a delicious spicy jackfruit bao and in contrast then turned my attention to a hot dog but the size of the ‘jumbo’ sausage’ was far too excessive for my taste and Lucy The Labrador came to my aid and polished it off. The accompanying crispy onions were also no substitute for sweet gently fried onions which are traditional accompaniments with hot dog - sometimes change is not always for the better.

  I was unable to revisit Herbert’s Yard for a couple of weeks being away in Ludlow and Lichfield dining very well as previously reported. However on a return visit I was delighted to find that there was a stall there named Chakanita, run by those behind the Michelin-plated Chakana Peruvian-style restaurant situated in Moseley (and which was recently gushingly reviewed by Jay Rayner in a swooning ecstasy after visiting Chakana). There was no competition for my interest this week. It had to be Chakanita. It had to be Peruvian. After all, how often can you eat food prepared by a Michelin-listed establishment in these distant outer reaches of the city?

  We must remember that this was street food, prepared on relatively primitive cooking devices in a wooden shack. Not a smart Michelin-listed, food critic-pleasing, restaurant in a wealthy, Champagne- socialist, inner suburb of the city. I had long viewed Chakana as a restaurant I really must visit but I have an aversion to Moseley which I find hard to overcome and I still had not summoned up the moral fortitude to head to Moseley to enable me to eat at Chakana. But here was Chakana, or its smaller wayward sibling at least, plying its trade in modest Longbridge. 

 I chose a chicken tomale with an excellent, fresh spicy salsa which proved to be very edible indeed. The chicken was nicely cooked and the slickness was perfect. The pork in a blue corn bun - not a lot to say about it except that it gave a lot of pleasure.

  These few minutes of pleasure at Herbert’s Yard were the spur I needed and when I returned home I reserved a table at Chakana for a few days time. It was time to overcome my Moseleyphobia and set off to see if I could also experience Jay Rayner’s ecstasy at Birmingham’s mothership of Peruvian cuisine. The excitement of anticipation is growing already.

200. Craft.

 

  As this strange year draws to a close I can not help but muse about the remarkably excellent dishes I have eaten in this end of year period. After recently waxing lyrical about meals at Smoke in Hampton In Arden and in some excellent restaurants in Lichfield (see recent Blogs) I must now celebrate again a truly excellent meal back here in Birmingham at Craft Dining Room prepared by Chef Jake Smith, originally from Herefordshire, along of course with Chef-Patron Andrew Sheridan (see Blog 163).

  Finding our way through a restaurant set up like a motionless dance of the seven veils, see below, my dining companion and I were a little taken aback by the changes to the decor and the seating; the latter now taking the form of backless benches instead of the very attractive gold and silver chairs which made the once spacious restaurant look so very attractive when it was first opened. But Helena, now in charge of front of house it seemed, guided us safely to our benches and low table as though through solid mists which the diaphanous curtains surrounding each table.resembled. We thought the decorations were not too appealing, especially with the dark wall colouring and the absence of normal light. But no matter, it was the food that we were there for.

  We chose the £60 six course meal and the price included a pleasing cherry flavoured cocktail. But the food was what really mattered and each course was an absolute delight. The bread was a very eatable sourdough with a black garlic butter and this was turned into a full first course by serving it with an egg shell containing the elements of a deconstructed Welsh rarebit made from Lincolnshire Poacher cheese served in an egg shell which was clever and very tasty (illustrated above).

  The next course was a delicious goats cheese cream with chive oil, artichoke and artichoke crisps. A delicious dish with a lot of originality and I remarked to my companion how pleasing it was to have a vegetable starter, which are now almost de rigeur, that was not a variation on the carrot theme. Thence to the first main course - a memorable beef tartare with an apt amount of acidity coupled with a tempura coated oyster, hollandaise and lovage oil. I did not really get a lot of flavour from the meaty oyster but it was still a  pleasing dish. 

  Then to the second main course of partridge breast with a very tasty partridge drumstick with parsley oil, pearl barley and partridge sauce with accompanying delightfully crispy tartlets with sweet beetroot and apple. It was apparent, as is usually the case at Craft Dining Room, that Chef had gone the extra mile to produce not just tasty but interesting, exciting and beautiful, often delicate, presentations of the fine, usually local, ingredients used in the meals.  This was a lovely seasonal dish.

  Next, the excellent pre-dessert, an excellent transitional dish, of yogurt cream with a yogurt sorbet and fabulously tasty fennel crumble. A great combination.

  And then to the final pleasure of chocolate mousse in a chocolate mille feuille with a Palma violet-flavoured crunchy element and more Parma violet in the sorbet. Served to those in a state of Bliss who have lead a good life on this Earth, or so it should be.

    What a pleasure it always is to lunch or dine at Craft. The decor and seating may have seemed rather strange to my dining companion and myself - it was mildly claustrophobic being surrounded by the forest of net curtains but the food was very fine and the service attentive and excellent. We admired the efforts put in to put local Midlands food and drink on the menu but such admirable intentions have their weakness - as we found on previous visits long before lockdown, English red wines are just not up to accompanying robust dishes of beef and red meats and the restaurant struggles to provide a dessert wine (I suggested Helena tries Yoxall Ice Dessert Cider which originates from near Lichfield and which I had thoroughly enjoyed on visits to Smoke in Hampton In Arden and Rob Palmer’s pop-up at Thyme Kitchen in Lichfield).

  Apart from the excitement of trying to avoid any possible Minotaur lurking amid the maze of curtains the restaurant’s decor added further interest to dining there by displaying art by the local but Lyons-born artist, Frédéric Daty, obtained from neighbouring Castle Fine Art, including an enjoyable Peaky Blinders piece.

  Food, art and …. literature. On sale in the restaurant. Andrew Sheridan, like a number of other distinguished local chefs has written a beautiful book, not surprisingly perhaps titled 8, which details many of his fine recipes. It is a lavish and richly luxurious book, a literary equivalent of an evening at About 8. A great addition to a library devoted to West Midlands gastronomy. Both Andrew Sheridan and Jake Smith were kind enough to fleetingly leave the kitchen to sign my copy. 

  I was interested to hear that there is a plan for 2022 where Craft will hold a programme of meals, each week the dishes connected to the six counties of the West Midlands (I take it that they will be the traditional counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire and will ignore the modern invention of West Midlands County). I think that is very exciting and I hope to visit all six.

Peaky Binders by Frédéric Daty

Signed by Andrew Sheridan and Jake Smith.

  There was disappointing news from the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals when one of two West Midlands chefs appearing in the programme was eliminated in the quarter finals. Sadly former Chef de Partie at Adam’s restaurant, Yasmine Selwood, failed to get into the semi-finals firstly cooking a paneer curry - paneer cheese cooked in curry oil, chilli curry sauce and peas, green tomatoes, fennel and apricot lime pickle and a cumin flat bread topped with halloumi - as her response to a brief which required a dish showcasing cheese. The judges felt that she could have done more with her dish.

  The next task was to prepare a two course meal for three critics including Jay Rayner and Tracey MacLeod. She prepared an over-simple starter of green and white asparagus with crispy egg finished with Parmesan, truffle and lemon zest but the egg was severely overcooked with the yolk being almost solid and not at all runny.the main coarse was goat loin cooked in spiced butter with curried carrot purrée, Scotch bonnet Jersey royal potatoes, pickled hispi cabbage, grilled grillotte onion and a red wine jus but the judges felt that the curry element of the dish was largely missing and Marcus Wareing felt that the dish was lacking “energy and power”.

  The result was clear and the outcome inevitable but Selwood remained charming and pleasant throughout.

 

  Michelin Guide Tweet watch.

The latest visits of Michelin Guide inspectors indicated by ‘tweets’ are:-

4 December - Prithvi in Cheltenham. The restaurant already has a Michelin Plate.

  I was interested to read that Andrew Birch who was Head Chef at Forelles in Ludlow, then the Wild Rabbit at Kingham, then at Ellenborough Park outside Cheltenham, all of which I am familiar with, has now left his role at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill where he had a six month contract after moving there from Lainston House in Winchester. He is planning to open a new venue in the new year along with his wife Rachel who is also a chef. Will he return to the West Midlands?