545. Black And Green, Barnt Green.

 

  Barnt Green, an extremely affluent village just over the border from south west Birmingham at the northeast tip of Worcestershire has a remarkably modest high street when one disembarks from the train from Birmingham (or in my case, from Longbridge, just 4 minutes away by locomotive). It’s remarkably unassuming and has two or three coffee shops and mostly independent businesses with the exception of a Tesco Local across the road from the local church. It isn’t hard to find Andrew Sheridan’s Michelin-listed Black and Green as the visiting diner turns out of the station approach and it looks back at you from across the building - a narrow front sandwiched between a charity shop and a private house.

  I was there for Saturday lunch as were just four other people on what was a very pleasant and temperate early summers day. I discovered that Ben Taylor, former Chef Patron of Le Petit Bois in Moseley, had just started work there as its Head Chef having passed what sounded like a very memorable year driving around a large amount of Europe with his partner Zsofia Kisgergely enjoying themselves at leisure as well as visiting places of gastronomic importance and gaining knowledge there. I asked him about a future version of Le Petit Bois and he was noncommittal but it was by no means not on the cards.

  The menu of Black and Green, in its simplest form, was shown on the wall to my left very much in the way that the word of God appeared on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast but with a rather more pleasing message spelt out by the letters. “JERSEY ROYAL TROUT LAMB STRAWBERRY TREACLE” it shone out

 The meal started off with amuses bouches - a delicious, powerfully flavoured mushroom parfait with port jelly and a pleasingly robustly flavoured Cotswold Cruncher cheese mousse  on a delightfully crispy cracker with truffle.

 Then  sourdough, crusty and crunchy on the outside and freshly soft and tasty on the inside, with a gorgeous, lavishly garnished Cornish cruncher flavoured butter.

    The first course was nicely cooked Jersey Royal potato in a verdant pea velouté and this proved to be very toothsome.

   Then there came  trout with whey split with cucumber and coastal herbs oil. I thought perhaps there had been too much whey covering the fish with its delicate texture but the trout was certainly full of flavour.

   The main was  Staffordshire lamb loin and belly - the belly more tasty than the loin I thought, exquisitely tender but there was a lot of unrendered fat - it appeared to have been cooked sous vide and then finished off when Chef took a blow torch to it. It was accompanied by tenderstem broccoli and a pleasing hint of mint which a nice plate of lamb always deserves to be accompanied by.

  The intermediate course highlighted sweet seasonal Cheddar Valley strawberries on a strawberry panna cotta and with basil and black garlic and this led into the dessert proper.

  This ‘treacle tart’, seemed to be somewhat misnamed, it having rather more the texture of a sponge made, it seemed, from bread with treacle and with it was an excellent yogurt ice cream, the acidity of which nicely balanced the sweetness of the rest of the dish.

  At the end a surprise little cheese course of a good sized piece of strongly flavoured English Brie on a fruit bread and honey aptly piped across the top of it all.

  I enjoyed my Saturday lunch at Black and Green and my chat with Ben Taylor and ambled across the road back to Barnt Green station for my train home.

30 May 2026

Rating:- 🌞.

399. Le Petit Bois Adieu!

  In Blog 391 I reported, with a heavy heart, that the delightful Moseley restaurant, Le Petit Bois, was to close on 27 April. It’s a lovely place and I was determined to have one more throw of the dice in this comfortable, bright, perfectly sized French-style culinary establishment, more like dining in someone’s cosy home with its perfectly judged front of house service than a restaurant. Everyone else who had ever known the place, and some who had not, had clearly got the same idea and the diners kept coming on this penultimate evening of service. What an atmosphere and the opportunity to greet one or two diners I had met there before, all wanting to wish good luck to Chef Ben Taylor, Zsofia Kisgergely and their fine staff, made this an evening to look back on with a warm feeling and a smile.

  And so to the food - a pleasing and sensibly limited à la carte menu chalked up on a blackboard, all very tempting and at a very affordable price. 

  From the Specials menu, mounted on the wall opposite the main menu, I chose the warm salmon with a beetroot salad. This was one of the loveliest salmon dishes I can recall eating - at first glance simple and pleasingly uncomplicated - but this was the most toothsome of salmons, the beetroots were nicely cooked and a perfect foil for the salmon and there were little bursts of horseradish working along with the beet. What a great pleasure.

  For the main, I thoroughly enjoyed the, again, beautifully cooked fillet of cod served with an extremely tasty lobster bisque - the dish shouted lobster - and four plump mussels with a side of haricots verts to give some bite to it all.

  Finally, a magnificent - in size and quality - crème brûlée served with a delightful walnut biscuit. This was an exceptional dessert. Undoubtedly Chef Ben Taylor and Le Petit Bois was going out on a high.

Ben Taylor

Zsofia Kisgergely 

  And so Adieu! to Le Petit Bois. We shall not see its like again though we hope we will. 

391. The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes; Le Petit Bois - Adieu!

 

  If you have an upper echelon restaurant in Birmingham and you want a captive audience, it’s quite a good idea to open on Sunday as so few of your rivals are usually open for service then, closed possibly until Thursday, and there actually are potential diners out there who want to go out (or need to go out because they’re visiting the city) to dine at a good restaurant in the city centre.

  Adam Stokes has long got the message and therefore he has opened The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes on Sundays, including the evenings, for some time now. It’s true, I have never been there on a early Sunday evening when they have had to fight off hungry potential diners all demanding a stool at the oyster bar or a table in the restaurant downstairs, but there is a decent trickle of customers coming through the doors and they all seem to enjoy their Sunday dining experience there. 

  As reported in Blog 380, I had a visitor from the distant Antipodes and given the central location I had put him up at the Grand Hotel (and used his visit as an excuse for myself and the dog to take a room there ourselves for three pleasing nights) and Sunday dinner was needed. About a minute’s walk away from the hotel is The Oyster Club and I had no hesitation in resolving to take my visitor there to assuage his hunger. It was either there (he deserved an English Sunday roast in the restaurant’s grand Chateaubriand style) or perhaps as an alternative, good old fashioned Birmingham Indian food in the stylish setting of Itihaas - in the end, the Sunday roast won out. 

  We were not disappointed. The ‘roast’ is usually so filling that I normally eschew a starter but my guest, still young enough to have an admirably robust appetite, mentioned, somewhat longingly I thought, the new scallop dish on the menu, and so I thought it only polite to let him order it, especially after it had been somewhat lovingly described by the waiter,  He was disappointed and neither was I by my choice of excellent tempura prawns - tasty, meaty and lightly crispy coated. The accompanying dip was appropriate and pleasing.

    I have reported on the Sunday roast more than once before in this Blog. Suffice it to say that the Chateaubriand was generously portioned, cooked perfectly, exquisitely tender and full of flavour. It was difficult to criticise any of the accompanying vegetables and extras though I note that restaurants in recent times do not seem to consider that horseradish sauce should have a good kick to it - I suppose it’s arguable that the diner’s tastebuds should not be rendered instantly paralysed as the horseradish enters the mouth especially when the beef is so sublime but still, I do like a good punch from the stuff. Enjoying a full bodied horseradish sauce is one of those things that makes an Englishman.

  My New Zealand friend enjoyed his meal, as I did mine. Here’s to many more at The Oyster Club where the lights are on on a Sunday evening when the lights others are out and their doors are locked. 

  Rating:- 🌞

  Sad news was delivered this past week that Le Petit Bois in Moseley will close permanently on 27 April. It is a charming and delightful small restaurant which I have visited several times. How lovely to have an unpretentious, rustic French dining establishment available to enjoy - rather like The French Pantry in Ludlow where I had lunch recently - and how sad to have to say Adieu! The owners, Ben Taylor and Zsofia Kisgergely, have stated that the closure is necessary because of the present high price of ingredients  but it may also be related to the decline of Moseley which looks a little sad and dilapidated and of course list Carter’s of Moseley last year.

  As the tweet says, perhaps some ambitious chef might consider keeping rustic France in Birmingham by opening a bouchon serving Lyonais dishes especially as Birmingham is twinned with Lyon. Bouchons are catching on in London and who knows? may become all the rage. Consider, chefs, setting up in the south west of the city, where there is no real competition - increasingly trendy Kings Norton with its medieval church and buildings and village green or even booming Longbridge town. You may well find you’ve got ready customers in the area.

See Blog 260.

316. Richard Turner And Le Petit Bois Collaboration.

 

  “Chef, does this mean you will be coming back to serving the public?”, not a smile but a fleetingly temporary lightening of facial expression and, “Ask me that at midnight”. Of course, I wasn’t round late when service ended at Le Petit Bois to ask former Michelin star holder Richard Turner, now bearded and shaven headed, whether midnight had provided him with the answer to the question I had raised but I rather hoped that the answer that had come to him was, “Yes”. Time dulls memory and one forgets just how special are some chefs but the food he cooked that evening during his collaboration with Ben Taylor, Chef Patron of Moseley’s Le Petit Bois, brought happy memories flooding back and showed just why Turner had achieved such recognition during his time as Chef Patron of Turner’s in Harborne.

  

  This collaborative event brought, I think it’s fair to see, a not entirely satisfactory combination of deeply rustic Gallic dishes alternating with fine modern British, very much of the moment. This is not to say that the dishes were not enjoyable - indeed, some were very fine and delicious with admirable complexity of flavours. But the meal did jolt a little too much from one style to another. 

  As is often the case, the appetisers were lovely - a wonderfully cheesy ‘gouger’ served in a bowl hiding under a lid on which sat the simplest but most perfectly cooked Jersey Royal topped with crème fraiche and caviar. Then, served by Turner, was a red mullet soup with bottarga (salted, cured grey mullet roe pouch) alongside a tapenade chou - a highly delicious dish. From modern British sophistication to a more robust French peasant’s fare x a chou farci, stuffed cabbage - this was tasty but the cabbage was not adequately tender for me.

  A fine piece of meaty ‘swordfish au poivre’ was next served - again from the rustic side of the menu - the little bursts of pepper were exhilarating and the accompanying ratatouille complemented it all. Richard Turner weighed in with the meat course - finely cooked and tasty hogget with fresh wild garlic (which, he joked, he had been out picking in Cannon Hill Park at 6.30 that morning, though perhaps he was not joking), morels (ideally complementing the hogget), asparagus and Jersey Royal purée (which may have been the only error - both I and the couple at the next table felt that the small potatoes would have been more enjoyable if served whole (perhaps it was because we had already had the vegetable served that way as appetiser and no repeat was wished for or perhaps Turner felt he needed to be cheffy). Regardless, a near immaculate dish.

   Turner’s final contribution was actually the absolute highlight - the summary of ‘sheep’s yogurt, rhubarb, blood orange’ (frozen and scattered overall) hardly did justice to one of the most excitingly delicious desserts I have eaten for a while. And then he accompanied it with a delightful little beignet and choirs of angels sang out.

  Ben Taylor’s dessert was brimming with the flavour of bananas - there was a chocolate cake charged with banana and a fine hazelnut ice cream on a bed of crushed hazelnuts alongside a nicely caramelised chunk of banana. The helping was too generously sized for me and I hate wasting good food, being brought up as a child of those who experienced the vicious rationing of Attlee’s Age of Austerity, but there you have it, you can only eat what your gastric organ will allow you to eat. I took the charming mignardises, including a charming little Madeleine freshly cooked, home with me and they gave me much pleasure.

  So is Richard Turner planning to return to full-time ‘active service’? Given what he produced at Le Petit Bois, the West Midlands diner can only hope so.

295. Kray Tredwell-Ben Taylor Collaboration At Le Petit Bois.

 Taking pride of place at the head of this edition is a photograph of a gorgeous dish - possibly the most delicious I’ve had for ages - looking a little rustic but full of the most pleasing and happy flavours - a plate of wondrously moist and tender pork cheek Bourguignon with delightful duchess potatoes. This was a dish that memories are made of. It was the highlight of an extraordinary collaboration by two great Birmingham chefs - Kray Tredwell of 670 Grams cooking away from home at Le Petit Bois in Moseley where Ben Taylor was leading the home team. They are chefs of very contrasting styles and the outcome was an evening to remember.

  It really is so very nice at Le Petit Bois. It so comfortable and relaxed and yet the service is very good. I started off with a splendidly refreshingly bitter Bicyclette cocktail and then the riders were out of the stalls. The amuses gueules were an absolute hit. They arrived with a tiny little croustade perched in the lid of a dish which when the lid was removed, revealed a very happily tasting savoury Paris Brest, the crust of the choux being beautifully crispy and the interior a combination of gorgeously salty blue cheese and sweet finely chopped grape. A witty and delicious start to the meal.

  Then another exhilarating dish of perfectly seared scallop with celeriac remoulade, apple and the very recognisable and very welcome bursts of truffle on this dark, damp winter evening. To follow was a poached egg yolk with more admirable flavours - little crumbs of crunchy toasted brioche, fois gras and more truffle. It was enjoyable but the egg yolk was overcooked and not runny when cut into and if it had been it may have raised the dish to another level.

  I have already commented on the ecstatic pleasure of the remarkable main course of slow braised pig’s cheek Bourguignon (undoubtedly Ben Taylor’s dish I should think) and so to the fish course which had all the hallmarks of having been prepared by Chef Treadwell. This was a piece of very finely poached pollock served with an exquisite vanilla beurre blanc, fragments of Jersey Royal (I would not have minded a little more potato even though I had also had some with the Bourguignon) and a nice helping of Oscietra caviar. The two main courses - the beef and the fish - both excellent - managed to demonstrate the contrast in the styles of the two chefs and this was also evident in the two desserts. Firstly there was a freshly warm small vanilla Madeleine (perhaps the vanilla flavour was a little too subtle) served with a cheeky vanilla crême fraiche made saucy with a helping of marmalade and then, to round off, a triumphantly gooey tart tatin with calvados caramel and a miso ice Kray (no doubt about which of the chefs made that, I think).

  The evening was further livened up by spotting (not hard, he was only two tables away) Birmingham’s most recent Masterchef The Professionals winner Dan Lee (now working alongside that competition’s previous winner, Stuart Deeley, at Smoke at Hampton Manor) who was one of the diners. So then, three notable Birmingham chefs in the same restaurant all at the same time.

  It was quite an evening.

  The day before,  I had lunched at Orelle with an acquaintance who had travelled from South Yorkshire for the sole purpose of the experience of dining at Orelle to taste the food and take in the view from the 24th floor. It was not a pleasant day and when we stepped out of the lift that had whisked skywards we found that the view had all but disappeared, obscured by fog surrounding the tower. Still there was always the food. As usual the place looked very smart as did the front of house staff and the service was very good; pleasingly, perhaps because only half the tables were taken, service was not rushed and I was able to sip and enjoy my Orelle Sour cocktail in a relaxed and unhurried fashion.

  As it was lunch a three course meal was on offer for an extremely reasonable sum of £42 and comparing the lunch menu with what was on offer from the à la carte choice I felt perfectly satisfied to order from the lunch menu. We were brought an excellent sourdough loaf to share between us and I very much enjoyed it, having as it did, a good crispy crust and a fine interior texture, the flavour of the sourdough being not as brutally strong as some sourdough bread can be. And how lovely to have bread at the start of the meal, available to nibble while the rest is being prepared rather than having it suddenly turn up as a ‘bread course’ almost half way through the meal as seems to be happening with increasing frequency.

  The starter was satisfactory - Saumon - on the menu it was described as “barbecued Loch Duart salmon, pickled kohlrabi, calamansi and sourdough. I thought that fish was very accurately cooked and was nicely complemented by the pickled kohlrabi but the calamansi was the wrong sort of citrus for this dish, bringing in some sweetness which I did not want. My lunch companion in contrast was very pleased with the dish and liked the flavour of the calamansi (a fruit was is obviously now very much in vogue).

  For the main course I chose a very good and pleasingly flavoured and textured ballotine of chicken served with roast parsnips which were not adequately cooked and pear which, while accepting that a chicken-pear combination is an established pairing, did not, for me at least, contribute positively to the dish. There was some exquisitely delicious and perfectly prepared pomme purée with Dijon mustard 

underneath it all and I could have quite gladly eaten with relish at least five times the amount of that element served to me.

  There was something inauthentic about the desserts; they had the air of something that had not been prepared in the kitchens but had been brought in to serve. I chose ‘calamansi’ (yes, calamansi again) described as “calamansi mousseline, strawberry and mint jelly.  Perhaps it was because I was eating from the £42 set menu (and that would be a good enough reason) but the desserts were served on a plate rather than being presented from the wonderful dessert trolley, a pleasing bit of theatre, which had manifested itself on previous visits to Orelle (I do hope it hasn’t disappeared into history after such a happy, if short life. My dessert was not good - I don’t recall being aware of strawberry or mint and the gel was decidedly citric and excessively sharply flavoured to the point of being unpleasant. The body of the dessert was uninteresting and the plate was covered in crumble, a tiresome modern device used by chefs to bring a crunchy texture without having to work to provide a fine crispy pastry. 

  In conclusion, and I will not use the obvious cliché, this meal was good in parts. As an experience it was enjoyable even though the weather was doing its best to thwart one important element of dining at Orelle - the view. Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛

  Michelin has announced that the 2023 edition of the Michelin Guide Great Britain And Northern Ireland will be launched at a live event on Monday 27 March. Already you can feel various chefs’ pulse rates starting to quicken.

  Meanwhile, the Michelin inspectors on one of their apparent rare visits to the West Midlands, have included the vegetarian restaurant, Land (see Blog 180) in its January 2023 Guide update.

  Dishes eaten at Land in September 2021 -