431. Trentina.

  The Good Food Guide added Trentina, an Italian-style restaurant located in Mary Street in the Jewellery Quarter, to its list of recommended restaurants as a ‘local gem’ on 4 August 2024. It described the restaurant as, “a truly local diamond, a cheerfully informal addition to Birmingham’s Jewellert Quarter scene. Inside it looks and feels sparsely contemporary”. The Guide goes on to say that “Here you will find big flavours on a short menu that leans heavily on the pasta roller….”.

  It’s always difficult to find somewhere to eat on Sunday in the city centre but Trentina opens then and so, off I went. Autumn was well and truly entrenched and the continuing rain that had infested us for months coupled itself with a greyness worthy of Gandalf but Trentina was pleasingly easy to find, on the corner of Mary Street and Caroline Street, in the very heart of the Colmore family names system of roads, and was warm and welcoming on arrival, both from the front of house staff and the restaurant’s heating system.

  I sat opposite the bar on a not terribly comfortable wooden banquette but as my lower body gradually accustomed itself to the vaguely masochistic seating I had chosen, the discomfort was gradually dispelled by a pleasing gin and Sicilian lemon tonic and a perusal of the promising menu. I discussed the options with the helpful and pleasant front of house young lady and opted for nduja and mozzarella arancini and then the pleasingly decorous mafaldine ribbon pasta with pork shoulder, finely chopped leek all enlivened by sofrito.

  The arancini were magnificent - impressively large and even more impressively, gorgeously crispy and tasty with the rice being beautifully textured. The starter was a meal in itself.

  The freshly prepared pasta was excellent, irreproachably textured and accompanied admirably by the pulled pork and the perfectly pitched flavour of the sobrito. This was a generous portion to which I failed to do full justice but I enjoyed it very much.

  The desserts on offer were variants on the theme of soft icecream and I opted to have it as an affogato which closed the meal very nicely, especially with an accompanying limoncello. The Good Food Guide’s label of this restaurant as a Local Gem is very apt. If I lived in the Jewellery Quarter I can  see myself happily visiting there not infrequently.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛