463. Adam’s.

 

  The year moves on. Spring approaches. The Michelin Guide has done its worst for another year. Dining out in the West Midlands survives despite the ever building pressures. Restaurants close. Optimistic, or perhaps foolhardy, restaurateurs open new venues. 

  Hot on the heels of my visit to Simpsons came my first visit of the year to Birmingham’s most delightfully formal restaurant, the always admired one Michelin-starred Adam’s. I was looking forward to the restaurant’s reassuring formality, its smartness, its sense of order and appropriateness. It’s trendy to be casual. Each to their own. I was never one for trendiness for trendiness sake.

  The diners were casual and underdressed. Everyone seems to have lost a sense of style. It’s depressing. The service as is usual with Adam’s was still trying to live up to Adam’s’ established touch of class but lacked warmth and a balance really should be struck. Dishes were slow to come out but when they did, were explained as simply yet clearly as one could hope them to be. We chose the five course lunch which was well-priced at £85. Sadly, a number of the dishes seemed overworked with more ingredients than one really would have liked and brought with them overwrought, punchy flavours which suppressed the flavour of the main element somewhat disastrously. The dishes were universally beautifully presented but the flavours gave the impression that excess was the theme of the day.

  The three amuses gueules were excellent. There was an oyster-based pleasure and a little beignet prettily decorated with little white flowers - rock samphire, I think (the waiter could not identify them for me) and filled with toothsome beef broth which literally exploded with flavour and the accompanying bread was excellent too, including a fine sourdough with a pleasing crispy crust and a delightful sweet brioche. The first course proper, too, was excellent - my lunch companion rated it as “outstanding” and it was hard to disagree. It was a lovely thick disc of Skrei cod, cooked impeccably, served with dulse (seaweed) foam, powerfully flavoured lemon grass and a semolina tuile decorated again with samphire flowers a tiny twiglets of samphire. So far so excellent.

  Then a plate of a very nicely cooked hen of the woods with cep, chestnut, pickled  enoki whicb gave a nice acidic bite to this autumnal and blazing fires sort of dish. Nasturtium leaves were there to look green I suppose to amuse the eyes gazing on this plate of brown. If one must have a vegetarian dish then this was excellent but vegetarian courses always seem so lightweight and I often feel as though my life would not be emptier having not been served one.

  Everything till then had been very tasty but moderately gentle on the tastebuds. Then the storm broke. I was very much looking forward to the lemon sole and indeed it was beautifully panfried and a delight to eat. But Chef seemed on the upswing of a manic-depressive episode as he (or she) unleashed a great vortex of powerfully flavoured wild garlic on to the sole, the flavour of which blown away by the all pervading garlic. This was a great pity, the sweet delicacy of the sole should be enjoyed, in my opinion, by a companion ingredient which likes to hang back in the shadows, stepping forward to give added shine - a little citrus perhaps, or a beurre noisette, but something that knows its place and gives credit to the star sitting on the plate waiting to be adored. But if this was not bad enough, there were blobs of aggressively flavoured dill purée also trying to assault the poor noble fish and in turn to help the wild garlic render the diner’s tastebuds paralysed not just during the course, or even during the meal but effectively for the rest of the day. To add insult to injury, the anya potatoes were mildly undercooked and too al dente for my taste.

  And things did not get any better with the main course of delicately flavoured, supremely well cooked Beech Ridge Farm chicken served with a savoury custard-like polenta, well cooked asparagus and another excessively punchy onslaught of wild garlic which eliminated the flavour even of truffle which was alleged to be a witness sitting on the plate to all these goings on.

  The dessert, too, fell victim to excess - it had a Yuletide character to it realised in an excessively, even unpleasantly, over spiced mince pie ice cream which did not in any way enhance the otherwise very tolerable sticky toffee pudding with dulcey.

I have had many fine meals at Adam’s but this was a day when ‘less (flavour) is more’ was certainly needed. I like exciting, punchy new flavours but not those which overwhelm everything with which they are served. A pity but hopefully just an abberation.

  While Adam Stokes remains Executive Chef, the restaurant now has a duumvirate of Head Chefs - Adam Wilson and Simil Gurung. I hope that they can continue with the fine cooking while reining back a little on the power of some of their ingredients and perhaps take a look at getting the food out of the kitchen just  a little quicker.

Adam Wilson (left of picture) with Adam Stokes

Simil Gurung (left of picture) and Adam Wilson

Rating:- 🌞

21 February 2025.