438. ADC x Highland Park Collaboration.

 

  I feel it in my water - either still or sparkling - that Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult (ADC) is to be the next Birmingham Michelin star recipient come the next Michelin star reveal ceremony, presumably to be held early in 2025. I’ve dined there more than anywhere else this year and have experienced the novelty of the food and genius behind the invention of it. It is special and should be recognised nationally for being so.

  Having long ignored Claridge’s brilliance as revealed by The Wilderness, hopefully the Michelin inspectors will find it in themselves to celebrate his culinary achievements by recognising them in ADC. By doing so, they will not lose face and additionally be seen to do justice. Twenty four hours after Glynn Purnell’s announcement  that he had closed Purnell’s, Michelin had, quite reasonably I suppose, removed the restaurant from its internet site, as had the Good Food Guide, and so it is to be hoped that at least one Birmingham restaurant finds its way on to the list of starred restaurants in the next edition of the guide. If that is to be the case then ADCcould well be that very restaurant. If it were located in London it undoubtedly would be, I have no doubt.

Purnell’s no longer in the guidebooks -

Michelin Guide - 

Good Food Guide -

  Things change. And for the present a new style of dining is riding high so much so that I found myself dining at an ADC collaboration with Highland Park whisky (in the past I had attended a similar collaboration at The Wilderness but it doesn’t hurt to repeat a pleasure from time to time. 

  It was a completely different evening compared with the night before when I had also visited the Jewellery Quarter to experience another one of Kaye Winwood’s enjoyable occasions at GULP (see Blog 439) - the dark evening with teeming rain had changed to one of pleasing late afternoon sunshine and blue skies. What a difference a day makes. How uplifting in mood. I was ready to enjoy what was on offer.

  What was actually on offer were dishes which I have previously eaten at ADC and I, from my own point of view, might have liked something novel but on the other hand, almost all my fellow diners were first time visitors to the restaurant so for them the dishes were new and exciting and, as far as I could tell, greeted with universal acclamation.

  So the first two items were pleasing canapés of Cornish mackerel sashimi - silvery and glinting, as subtle a flavour of the fish that one could wish for, and a delicate croustade packing with orange trout roe the colour of a translucent popping satisfyingly in the mouth like edible  bubble wrap.

   Then exquisite, tender mussels in a scintillatingly and exquisitely gorgeous burst of black peppery velouté matched perfectly with a Highland Park whisky Old Fashioned. The wholly edible with the wholly quaffable. Then came another old favourite, presented I thought better than ever before - an Atlantic scarlet prawn with a deeply flavoured sauce made from the head. The final savoury dish was lovely Chalk stream trout with tom yum. 

  The meal was rounded off with another classic ADC dish - the bowl of silky, delightful sushi rice ice cream with nori tuiles which had the entire room purring with vaguely sinful pleasure. There was a single scallop-shaped mignardise and a draining of the remaining whisky in the diners’ glasses and the deed was done.

   And so, home, under the wolf moon, bright in the clear night sky.