466. Great British Menu Central Region Heats 2025 (1).

 

  For the second year running the Central and East regional heats of BBC’s The Great British Menu, now in its twentieth year, were scheduled to be shown towards the end of the programme’s 2025 run.

  There was much to dread - the judges still included the jollily bullying Tom Kerridge, the not at all funny comedian Ed Gamble and a new judge in the form of a stony-faced, dour Scottish woman chef with the disapproving, unsmiling demeanour of a dreich day in the Highlands and the sense of us all being ‘doomed’ (to recall Private Fraser). Perhaps it is unkind to label the trio as ‘The Bad, The Worse and The Miserable’ or perhaps not. Of course, this trio was balanced by the excellent Andi Oliver full of energy, discernment, knowledge and ebullience - there could be no better celebrity to front the programme than she in her colourful glad rags and distinctive look, less a wet weekend in Edinburgh and more a calypso on an Antiguan beach.

  The region’s four competitors included only two who worked in the West Midlands, the others inevitably working in London. This latter pair were Sally Abé with her East Midlands roots who seems to be a perpetual Great British Menu competitor though always very charming and Harry Kirkpatrick from Norfolk, Head Chef at Trinity in Clapham, that well known Midlands/East Anglia suburb.

  The West Midlands however was well represented by two chefs - Thom Bateman, chef proprietor of The Flintlock in Cheddleton in Staffordshire, who has previously appeared in the programme although he was beaten on the Judges day by Tom Shepherd, and Grace and Savour’s and Kynd’s David Taylor, originally from Nottingham but now well established as a star of West Midlands cuisine. I have dined at Taylor’s restaurant several times and enjoyed watching demonstrations by Bateman at last year’s Ludlow Food Festival.

Kirkpatrick, Thom Bateman, Andi Oliver, David Taylor and Abé.

  This being the 20th anniversary season of Great British Menu the theme of British heroes, in particular those local to the individual chefs’ regions, was chosen, presumably implying that the BBC and all who sail in it are also heroic in some way or the other. The West Midlands has its fair share of heroes of national significance and it was inevitable, and quite right, that our chefs should give the nod to the likes of Shakespeare, Josiah Wedgewood, Dr Johnson and their ilk.

  The meal started with canopés - David Taylor’s took the form of Jerusalem artichoke crispy skins filled with fresh artichoke with bay leaf pickle and apple and thyme while Thom Bateman served a Staffordshire cheese custard and salt-baked beetroot tart with black garlic ketchup. Unfortunately the guest chef-judge, Tommy Banks, felt that David Taylor’s canopé did not have “the depth of flavour” he was hoping for and the canopé was his least favourite of the four. Thom Bateman’s canopé was placed third because it appeared to have too much flavour, “enough for a main course”. Too much, too little, interesting.

David Taylor’s canopé 

Thom Bateman’s canopé

  And so, on to the starters. Here the chefs were obliged to provide a vegan course. David Taylor based his dish, Talking Potatoes on, er, potatoes dedicating it to a trendy 20th century Birmingham poet of Caribbean heritage who apparently grew his own potatoes which he used to make samosas. The potatoes were confited with spiced coconut, onion velouté finished with a variety of roasted nuts and a vegetable samosa. Bateman’s dish was titled Po-tay-toes and inspired, he said by the works of JRR Tolkien. The dish involved confiting pink fir potatoes and then barbecuing them and serving with a plant-based pomme soufflé ‘ring’ (“one ring to rule them all”).

  Sally Abé’s dish was a tribute to Florence Nightingale and saw the obliging David Taylor dressing up in a 19th century nurse’s costume and carrying a lamp for the presentation of the dish. This reflected the wonderful spirit of cooperation and friendliness in which the heat was carried out by all the chefs, for years the Central heat has always been the happiest of the regional heats due to the generous and well-balanced personalities of those who work in the hospitality industry in this geographical area.

  At the judging Andi Oliver expressed the view that this had quite possibly been the strongest start ever to a regional heat and Tommy Banks felt that Taylor’s dish represented what “modern Britain is - on a plate” and that Bateman’s dish’s link to “the brief was bang on the nose”. Banks awarded Taylor’s dish nine points and Bateman’s eight but Sally Abé’s received a remarkable ten points which put her in the lead.

  Next came the fish course. Taylor served a dish titled Perseverance which honoured Dr Samuel Johnson, who, in passing, it is worth nothing was one of the great English gourmands of his time. The dish took the form of poached brill in a herb butter, with a crispy herb stem salad and pickled shallot, and a leek cream sauce with oyster leaf. Bateman meanwhile served The Bard of Avon celebrating of course, William Shakespeare, which was brined halibut dusted in nori powder and poached in brown butter and served with dashi gel and a Stratford upon Avon wine sauce containing leek, fennel, shallot, pink peppercorn, kombu, dill, parsley and finished with smoked butter.

   When the judgement on the course was delivered Andi Oliver stated that they were “standing in the kitchen with four exceptional chefs”. When commenting on David Taylor’s dish Banks said that he would have preferred the poached brill to have been roasted a little more to give it more flavour and texture. Banks felt that the dish “lacked a little bit of oomph and a little bit of seasoning in the overall dish”. He felt that another element might have been included “to bring it together but it certainly had potential”. He awarded the dish 7 points.

  Banks had nothing negative to say about Thom Bateman’s dish and awarded it eight points. 

  When all the points had been delivered it was clear that while Abé was out in the lead, the three other chefs, including the two from the West Midlands, were all tied on the same score and, this being the case, David Taylor was eliminated on the basis of his canopé being judged to have been the least satisfactory. This obviously came as a surprise to all, if not a shock, but Taylor took it well and hopefully he will return in a future season for another attempt to win. Meanwhile Thom Bateman lived to fight another day and battle out the second day of main, predessert and dessert courses.

To be continued ….

234. Oyster Club And The Mount Revisited.

 

  Quick reports on repeat visits to a couple of restaurants which have given me much pleasure in the past, one last September and the other only days after my first fabulous experience there.

  Firstly, lunch at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes. In Blog 181 I reported an excellent meal of fish charcuterie platter followed by a stupendous roast sole on the bone. So much had I enjoyed myself that I could not fight back the need to revisit these two lovely dishes. Alas both courses were shadows of their former selves. The food at the restaurant is far from cheap which is forgivable if the food measures up to the price. The charcuterie, while being as tasty as before, was served with no generosity - as can be seen in the ‘then’ and ‘now’ photographs above - compared with last year the fish was sliced so thinly that flavour was barely discernible. This was appallingly poor value for £15.

  Then the sole with razor clams, grapes and verjus sauce (£34.50). This might be described as a less impressive specimen than that I adored back in 2021 (see ‘then’ and ‘now’ photograph below). The texture of the fish was less firm and the presentation of the dish seemed somewhat disorderly in comparison with the first time I ate it. The fish was certainly tasty and succulent but remarkably unremarkable. There was not the degree of consistency between the two dishes that I should have liked to have enjoyed. My lunch companion and I shared some unremarkable chips which would have been fine had they not cost £2.50p per half dozen and some leeks (with Calcot onion and pancetta) which were ridiculously overpriced for what they were (also £5). Things were not going well.

  However we battled on, choosing with a certain amount of thrilled anticipation, to share a tarte tatin served with vanilla ice cream (£24). I failed to photograph the dessert but it was not a happy creation. Instead of slices of apple a large lump was placed in the centre of the pastry which was a little flabby and the whole had not the unctuous stickiness to which I had so looked forward.

  There’s little more to say. This had been a meal riven through with disappointment for which we paid a not inconsiderable sum.

  As a footnote it’s worth noting that a couple of days afterwards there was a rare tweet from the West Midlands by a Michelin inspector who must have lost his way to Dublin where you would normally expect Michelin inspectors to be enjoying themselves and that individual had clearly been at the Oyster Club shortly after us. From the comment, I must conclude that I chose the wrong dishes. To be fair, my companion had thoroughly enjoyed his starter of whole roasted king prawns with spiced lobster bisque (£18.50).

  The next day, again with pleasurable anticipation, I returned to Henley-in-Arden to pay a second visit to Glynn Purnell’s new country version of his former bistro in Newhall Street which is labelled ‘a pub’ but is really a very nice, quite large modern restaurant off a small olde worlde bar (see Blog 230).

  While quaffing a couple of the old Ginger’s Bar classic cocktails, I studied the menu and badly needed to relive the joy of consuming the Cheddar custard and sweet and sour tomatoes followed by the Wiltshire pork cutlet but girding up my inner strength I decided I really must try some other dishes and therefore chose a pleasing starter of Atlantic prawns with caviar, little cubes of apple and croutons. Then I chose perhaps slightly over-cooked but generously portioned roast chicken with a lovely side dish of tubetti pasta with a generous covering of pecorino, wild garlic and a deliciously sweet scorched pickled lettuce. Chicken is chicken and this was not the most exciting of chicken dishes I have had but it was very pleasing.

  I requested crème caramel for dessert but I was informed that chef was not happy with how they had turned out that evening and with time running short before the next hourly train back to Birmingham I thought it best regretfully to pass on the course and head uphill to Henley Station.

  Henley has a lovely old station and is a bit of tourist sight in its own right. It presently has a series of posters on display, one for every station on the line, and the Small Heath Station poster is fun depicting as it does the theme of Peaky Blinders.

  The present series of the BBC television programme Great British Menu 2022 has finally come to an end with chefs from Wales, London, Scotland and Northern Ireland winning to cook dishes at the banquet which was this year mainly to indulge a number of BBC luvvies on the occasion of the Corporation’s centenary. 

  The new panel of judges has been disastrous with the chef Tom Kerridge dominating the other judges with his opinions which are of course a chef’s opinion which, as we know from previous years, is a completely different viewpoint from that of the people who eat the food. While Nisha Katona has made some useful contributions that is something that can not be said of the ninny who is there to tell jokes (and little more of him is expected) and who should go the way of the previous comedian who hosted the programme and was seen for one season and never seen again. Andi Oliver on the other hand has been an excellent host and it was warming to see her great the two previous long-running judges, Oliver Peyton and Matthew Forte, who knew what they were talking about and made watching the programme worthwhile.

  It is pleasing to note that the Central region finalist (though an East Midlander), Sally Abé, as runner-up, did prepare food at the banquet in the food of the canapés and pre-desserts and rather good they looked too. She carried out her tasks calmly, charmingly and pleasantly and was it a delight to watch her work surrounded as she was by the broiling gallons of competitive testosterone put out by the male competitors.

Sally Abé.

177. Great British Menu - Waldorf And Statler Axed.

 

  For me, the real highlight of BBC’s Great British Menu television series has never been the chance to see notable (some of them at any rate) British chefs showing off their gastronomic skills and discovering what food the people who matter (as they see themselves) have elevated to the height of current British culinary fashion, rather it has been the delightful relationship based almost entirely on the art of squabbling which only older British men can do so well, similar to that of Waldorf and Statler of the Muppet show, of Oliver Peyton, the restauranteur, and the splendid Matthew Fort. And now it is all over. As can be seen from the headlines of The Caterer depicted above, the BBC, glorying in its wokeness and so hateful towards older white men, mainly on the basis that they have committed the triple crimes of being older and male and white, have axed the pair of them and substituted the admittedly renowned chef, Tom Kerridge, who by the way is male and getting on a bit and even white, but whom I find to be very irritating if only because of his sheer niceness and the young Asian woman restauranteuse, Nisha Katona and the young comedian Ed Gamble (who likes to think of himself as a food expert – he has an irritating podcast). Why did the producers of the program feel it is necessary to have comedians in prominent positions in in this program? Why? After the experience of the totally unhilarious Susan Calman acting as the programme’s host a couple of years ago we must now endure this frightful young man.

  I have always enjoyed moaning about the great British menu but now it appears about to be plumbing new depths. As the Frankie Howard character, Lurcio, used to say in Up Pompei, “Woe, woe, three times woe“. Or as Hamlet once said holding the skull of another bowdlerised BBC programme in his hands, “Alas poor Great British Menu, I knew it, Horatio”.

  One small port in the storm - Andi Oliver, who made such a success of hosting the programme this year, is retained to host the programme for the next series.

Andi Oliver survives but Peyton and Fort are axed.

  The shopping streets in Stratford-upon-Avon have lost a large number of businesses as the town emerges scarred from the pandemic. A number of familiar restaurants, some much-loved, have closed for good (see Blog 153) and it is necessary to experiment a little and visit some of the more recently opened dining establishments if one is to find anywhere satisfactory to eat. The line of bistros, some of which have the same owner and serve very similar menus and even look the same, in Sheep Street are an unattractive prospect even though one of them has a Michelin Plate and though the restaurant at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre has reopened and has been likewise recognised by Michelin I have never thought it lived up to its promise. Generally I am not a chain restaurant fan though many brands serve up perfectly edible fayre.

  So on a scorching day in which Lucy The Labrador could do little but rest in our usual shady room in the Shakespeare Hotel and having breakfasted several hours earlier in the dining room which served for a while as a not terribly good Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant (another pandemic victim) which was full of very, very old people who were dressed like they were on a Mediterranean cruise but were actually a coach tour party (never have I seen so many varicose veins in one short session), I chose to go Turkish by having lunch at the fairly recently opened Turquoise Kitchen Turkish restaurant in Wood Street.

  It has a smart, tastefully decorated, modern interior with memorable deep blue lights hanging from the ceiling and is pleasingly spacious. Service was efficient though the waiter who took my order did not have a fluency in English of sufficient ability to enable him to explain some of the dishes to me which was unfortunate as my experience of Turkish food is as limited as the waiter’s grasp of English. In the end, after a good study of the large menu I settled on houmous as a starter. The dish was generously portioned with lots of accompanying flatbread and the houmous itself was studded with delightful glistening little jewels in the form of pomegranate seeds and accompanied by a spicy tomato sauce and yoghurt. The flavour of the houmous was precise - not too much lemon or garlic. It looked attractive with a slice of cucumber stabbed into the houmous reminding one of a pen in a inkwell and delivered in flavour.

 

 Generous portions were the order of the day when it came to the main course too. I chose the Mixed kebab and this was made up of three nicely cooked kebabs - chicken, minced lamb and pieces of lamb served with some disappointing undercooked rice and a pretty salad with vibrant sliced red cabbage forming the headline. The main problem was that there was too much meat - it’s good that a restaurant does not allow its diners to leave hungry but at my stage of old blokeness excess brings its own problems.   Again the dish looked beautifully colourful and was presented prettily in a rustic Turkish style. Good stuff.

  Too full for pudding, I rounded off the meal with a happy cup of Turkish coffee and a splendidly gooey cube of Turkish Delight presented on a pretty little dish which I should have liked to own.

  Finally, Birmingham news media were kept busy in the past few weeks covering the stay of the Hollywood movie star, Tom Cruise, in the city while he had been filming another instalment in the Mission Impossible series of films. Rather awkwardly, his extremely valuable car was stolen from outside the Grand Hotel while he was staying there but more positively, he appeared to have enjoyed dining out at the Michelin-platted Asha’s not far from The Grand Hotel and he was so enthused about the chicken tikka he was served there that he ordered a second helping - an action which has now established him firmly in Birmingham Food folklore.

  He seems to have enjoyed his meal at Asha’s rather more than I did on my recent visit there (see Blog 161).