443. The Wilderness Celebrates Its Ninth Birthday.

 

  Many happy returns to The Wilderness. It was the restaurant’s ninth anniversary (though it had moved its location and name at least once during the course of that lifetime) and I was at its birthday party. Uncompromising, whimsical black balloons greeted me as I arrived at the door of this great culinary survivor but inside the atmosphere was far from funereal and busily celebratory even if I was the first diner to arrive. Well someone’s got to be the first guest to arrive at a party.

  The long established, easy hospitality was on display as Sonal Clare welcomed and me and the other diners who seemed to be old friends of Alex Claridfes’s unique - a fair adjective I think - and progressive dining establishment and the alcohol was soon being poured and the food began to appear from the kitchen. First an opening snack in the form of a punchy, beefy beignet - a mochi doughnut - rich in the flavour of beef dripping and gorgeously textured with tender former dairy beef and enlivened with a hit of quality wasabi. Then the Big Mac - more beef tartare immaculately presented with the soft crunch of pieces of shallot - the starter that is an integral part of the restaurant’s history.. This was delicious, immaculate, sublime, worth a star by itself. A pleasure which explains why The Wilderness has held on to its loyal diners.

  Moving on, firstly to gorgeous slices of glistening Cornish blue fin tuna, its flavour ideal with none of the aggression that tuna sometimes bring with it and the fermented chilli giving pleasing little pecks at the throat. Next the sensational colour, mildly lurid even, of Claridge’s familiar “Carrot 2022’ bringing with it all the textures you might wish.

  A course of, again, absolutely delicious BBQ red mullet - Alex Claridge really is in good form this birthday party evening - with a lobster bisque and the citrus of blood orange. And then to fine ex-dairy beef, nicely cooked served with mushroom, a powerful purée, truffle and a lovely koshu sauce.

  Finally, seasonal dessert - ‘Mince pie’, a lovely creamy icecream, robustly showing off its dominant cinnamon and gorgeous to slowly wind down with.

Happy birthday, The Wilderness. And many more of them, we hope.

  The 2023 series of the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals failed to feature any West Midlands chefs in any of its programmes. Not one. Perhaps, it’s the thought that recording of the programme will move to studios in Digbeth which has made the producers recognise that the West Midlands in general and Birmingham in particular has a remarkable number of talented and hardworking young chefs who really shoukd be featured in the programme that has meant that suddenly the BBC is giving young chefs from the West Midlands an opportunity to appear in the programme. As we move through the third week of the programme we have so far seen five chefs with West Midlands connections competing in the contest.

  As the above tweet shows - in the first week we had Callum McDonald who is Head Chef at The Bookshop in Hereford, who did not progress to the next round, Dan Merriman who was born in Worcestershire but now works out of the region in Accrington who did progress to the next round as did Jordan Johnson, junior sous chef at Simpsons, and in the third week there was Alin Stoica, who was born in Romania but who is now Head Chef at the Jacobean Hotel in Coventry who did not progress and young Evan Holliday who, like Jordan was born and brought up in Birmingham and works as a sous chef in Simpsons and who won through to the second round (we wait to see his further progress).

Callum McDonald

Dan Merriman

Jordan Johnson

Alin Stoica

Evan Holliday

  Meanwhile, it’s all happening at Simpsons which has just announced that Steve Locklin who previously worked with Niall Keating at Lunar has been appointed to be Simpsons’ new restaurant manager.

Steve Locklin

  Andreas Antona’s other restaurant, TheCross, in Kenilworth, also took the opportunity to draw attention to its relatively recently appointed (September 2024) restaurant manager - Ed  Wilson - who had previously worked at The Churchill Arms, Mallory Court and The Lygon Arms in Broadway.

Ed Wilson