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.

423. The Wilderness Pairs With Passing Fancies.

 A special event at The Wilderness recently saw Alex Claridge in the kitchen cooking a modestly priced menu to be served with accompanying cocktails invented and made by Matt Arnold of Passing Fancies. I enjoyed all the cocktails apart from the last, Short and Stout with Glenmorangie Signet and stout caramel, which was far too sweet and while one might drink a sweet wine with dessert, this rule did not seem to apply to a sweet cocktail. The other cocktails were all very quaffable and the novelty of it all was very enjoyable but perhaps we might learn that wine is the best accompaniment of a fine meal. 

  As regards the food, the dinner started with a delightful tartlet with a carrot purée and vadouvan (‘French curry’, a ready prepared mixture of spices with added aromatics including shallots and garlic). This worked very well, the pastry of the usual high standard one usually experiences at The Wilderness and the mixture of sweet and spice a great pleasure. This was paired with an appropriate and enjoyable cocktail, elegantly presented, which Arnold had called Rhubarb & Rye (bitter rhubarb, rye whiskey and honey).

  Next, a fine and fairly familiar dish to Wilderness/ADC regulars of seared mackeral nicely balanced with apple and sorrel and well matched with Watermelon 75, the ingredients of which were apricot fino sherry, watermelon and champagne. 

  A course of aliums and wasabi was fairly unmemorable and there then followed a nicely cooked piece of wild turbot (which was added for an extra £15) served with a pink fir potato confection. This was very enjoyable and accompanied by Dinosaur Food, a cocktail made up of rhubarb, rum and palo santo (derived from a Peruvian wood used in the aging of beer and, in Ecuador no less, a palo santo tea). 

  After there was another dish familiar to regular diners at the restaurant or its sister, scarlet prawn with the happily punchy, hot prawn head sauce but this dish was raised to fabulous new levels by the addition of a bubble of wasabi. Now a truly great dish. It was paired very appropriately with Metric Margarita.

  On to the main course of moist quail with barbecued cabbage and tom yum. This was tasty and matched with a cocktail,  Adult Ribena, a combination of cognac with blueberry and kumquat.

  The dessert took the form of various forms of peach but the flavours were severely suppressed by the excessively powerful vanilla flavour of tonka bean which rendered the dessert somewhat difficult to eat. As mentioned above the accompanying cocktail awas too sweet and did not match well the flavours of the dessert. This was a shame. Generally it had been a fine meal, full of innovation and experimental combination of flavours and the involvement of Passing Fancies had brought an added intriguing aspect to it. The Wilderness with ADC is right at the cutting edge of gastronomy and dining out in the West Midlands. Claridge’s food continues to evolve and wait to see what comes next.

22 August 2024.

 News

  Under my radar for a while, new Head Chefs/Executive Chefs have been appointed recently or at least in the not too distant past, in a couple of interesting Birmingham dining establishments.

  At Adam’s, which I visited recently (see Blog 422), while Adam Stokes remains Executive Chef, the role of Head Chef is now shared by a duet - Adam Wilson and Simil Gurung. Presently it’s hard to find any background information about either of them. 

  The Grand Hotel has finally appointed a new Executive Chef to replace Adam Brookes who departed there in April. Highlighting its new head of the kitchen on Facebook and Instagram without any particular fanfare that I could see, the Grand Hotel management state that, “Andrei is the mastermind behind the magic in Isaac’s restaurant and in the Grand Hotel kitchen!….”. The posts give no other information about Andrei, not even his surname. Doubtless all will be revealed in due course. For the present at least, the New York-themed menu remains unchanged. Let us hope that the new Executive Chef will come up with something more enticing. What about a Birmingham-themed restaurant, I don’t think anyone’s ever done that.

  The Good Food Guide added The Bell At Selsley in Selsley near Stroud in Gloucestershire to its list of recommended restaurants on 16 August 2024. That’s almost as far south in the West Midlands that one get to before crossing over into undisputed West Country territory.