486. Simpsons x Land.

 

  I have dined at Land, where the Chef Patron is Adrian Luck who opened it in the Great Western Arcade in 2019. a couple of times (see Blog 180) and came away on both occasions satisfied enough but with the feeling that something was missing. I wasn’t totally convinced that an all vegetarian meal, especially when it is made up of five or six courses, is the full job.

  Simpsons offers an alternative vegetarian menu which, in the past, has been recognised as one of the best in the country. So the question clearly was, “Will input from Simpsons to Land’s offering convince me that I should be visiting a vegetarian restaurant more often?” And an evening of a Simpsons x Land collaboration might just answer that question. 

  And by the end of the evening I had my answer.

  The evening started with 2 amuses gueules - one was a rather fine pea purée tartlet clearly straight out of Luke Tipping’s kitchen and the second some tasty, spicy, crispy tempura ‘herbs’ with some tempura attached to them, their flavour derived presumably from the furikake condiment and sesame used in their preparation, They looked scruffy and had the appearance of the chef casting around for something to provide as an opening snack at a mildly exotic barbecue.

  After the reassuring and memorable bread and butter that Simpsons provides to its diners on to the starters. Tipping’s contributation was a quite fabulous plate of what on the menu were described as Evesham tomatoes although they were described as Isle Of Wight tomatoes by the waiter. They were accompanied by a herb salad and were full of delightful sweetness. Then Land’s starter which might better have been its main course - a very toothsome and authentic-tasting massaman curry containing salt baked pineapple, peanuts giving it a satay element and nicely cooked jasmine rice.  This was quite delicious and as enjoyable an example of this curry as one might find in an authentic Thai restaurant. The absence of meat mattered not at all and everything was looking grand.

   Sitting by the long window it was easy to look out on to Simpsons’ pleasing garden, refreshed after some much needed rain, and feel that all was well with the world. Simpsons’ contribution to the main course pairing was its familiar, highly enjoyable heritage beetroot dish with its various presentations of the vegetable nicely complemented with a hit of wasabi. It looked as elegant as any beetroot dish might ever look. 

 It has to be said that Land’s main course also looked elegant and promising. The promise was not realised. This was a slab of grilled cauliflower sans the deep cauliflower flavour which for me makes it an exciting item to eat. The cauliflower provided only texture and nothing more though its presentation had been worked on to jazz it up. There was verjuice caviar, the flavour of which was lost in the wild garlic sauce with dashi which itself had little impact on my tastebuds. I felt that you can do all the molecular gastronomy and emulsions you want but a slab of cauliflower is just a slab of cauliflower and it is unlikely to ever be a star in the firmament.

  Simpsons provided a delicious and exciting dessert - two nice mango ravioli tickled by Espelette pepper and a hit of kaffir lime chantilly cream. This was very enjoyable in contrast to the final dessert which was an unremarkable cube of almond cake, a satisfactory sponge with no discernible flavour of almond served with strawberry ice cream and a white chocolate crumb. Regrettably it seemed that this second dessert barely rose above what a competent domestic cook could achieve.

  Luke Tipping has got a grip on producing very fine, delicious vegetarian dishes as part of his repertoire served at Simpsons. It is elegant and tasty and impressive. Land, much loved by the city’s vegetarian/vegan crowd, produces adequate dishes for those who are convinced that fish, meat or fowl are not for them and so Land has its necessary audience though I will not be sitting in the stalls with them.

4 June 2025.

  As a follow up to Blog 485, it’s worth recording that I was invited to join friends for an early evening dinner at the Wildmoor Oak Inn just 4 days after enjoying Sunday lunch there. At the beginning of June the menu has been revised and the pub’s very popular scotch egg has been restored to the list of dishes available. This proved to be a tasty light dish made particularly enjoyable crispy coating around the egg. The accompanying piccalilli was profoundly, addictively piquant and proved impossible not to eat, even that which remained after tge egg itself had been totally consumed.

  Once more, I could not resist the haddock and chips (both of which are some of the finest in the world, I’m sure) which came with an excellent mild tartare sauce, a nice fish and chip shop curry sauce just right for chip dipping and Chef’s very acceptable mushy peas.

  For dessert I chose banoffee parfait which had a good flavour and, I thought, was precisely textured and with it came vanilla ice cream, a salted caramel sauce and dried banana slices which were a little too hard to be enjoyed - better to have used slices of fresh banana.

   One of my fellow diners chose a main course of cheese burger which also came with the pub’s superb chips and pronounced themself well satisfied with their meal apart from the slight feeling that the burger was just a little too salty for their taste.

A lovely location, excellent food and at a very good price. Surely the Wildmoor Inn deserves a Bib Gourmand.

Rating:- 🌞.

5 June 2025.

461. Return To Albatross Death Cult; 2025 Michelin Awards Ceremony.

 

  I had very real expectations that Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult would be awarded a Michelin Star in the 2025 Awards Ceremony held in Glasgow on 10 February and so, in anticipation of being present at the first service after a notable recognition, I reserved a table at ADC to scent the sweet smell of success at first hand. It was not to be, unlike last year when I had reserved a table at Opheem the first service after the award of two stars to Aktar Islam’s very fine restaurant. Alas, Michelin is a law onto itself and one should never assume that one knows what they are thinking. 

  Not that the news was all bad. The wonderful Ash Valenzuela-Heeger of Riverine Rabbit almost opened the proceedings by being awarded the Young Chef Award and her and Erin, her partner’s, restaurant was deservedly awarded a Bib Gourmand, the first seen in the city in many a year (though Rabbit was joined by Tropea in receiving the Bib).

  And further afield in the West Midlands, both Native in Tenbury Wells and Wild Shropshire in Whitchurch were awarded Green Michelin stars.

  Regardless of what did or did not come to pass, I was back at Albatross Death Cult, seated at the shiny counter and not sorry to be there. I was happy to chat to my neighbours - one on a visit to Birmingham from Chicago, interested very much in dining out especially at seafood restaurants and drawn to the ADC by its sphinxian full name. He felt that people dressed more nicely to go out and eat in England than back home in Chicago but then he hadn’t visited a Weatherspoons so he wasn’t fully in possession of the facts. My other neighbour was a young woman who had settled in Birmingham and now had more time to go out and visit our fine eateries and was gradually working her way through the Birmingham section of the Michelin Guide. She was enjoying herself and, like our visitor from the Windy City, was very impressed by ADC and all the dishes as they came out.

  Head Chef Piotr Szpak was in reassuringly good form with a slightly revised coiffure and an opening gambit of his familiar greeting, “Long time no see” although it had only been a couple of weeks since my last visit. It was also a pleasure to see the remarkably talented young senior sous chef, Oliver Grieve, back at his station and to have my drinks needs admirably addressed by sommelier Camilla Bonnannini.

  I have detailed a number of the dishes which were presented this evening and which were familiar from previous visits and I will not cover old ground save to say that each dish was as immaculate as ever and as deserving of a Michelin star as ever. The usual little snacks which started off the meal were gems in miniature of the culinary art in themselves - I have described them in previous Blogs - and then came a top rate dish of delicious smoked trout roe mousse with the orange pearls of trout roe and the joyous kick of wasabi. A real star, beyond a doubt.

 The tuna nigiri was beautifully textured and had all the characteristics of a beignet topped by tuna though of course it was rice rather than dough - delicious. Then came another dish to me - finally cut sea bass with umami tare sauce which could not help but be riven through with flavour. The apple with crab is a familiar favourite - the crab shone through which, elsewhere, is not always the case and the apple provides a perfect companion to it. Then accurately cooked opalescent cod wrapped in nori with the sun-gold yolk of a quail’s egg - again absolutely spot on cooking with the yolk still runny inside. Such delicacy of preparation - the cheerfulness and lightheartedness of the chefs does not prepare the diner for the precision and obsessional care with which they prepare the dishes.

  The mussel-black pepper-Iberico must be one of the very best dishes on offer in the region at the moment - the mussels tender and pepper-spicy and the Iberico adds an almost overwhelming saltiness as well as little spicules of comforting texture. But there were still jewels to come - the red prawn with its punchy prawn head sauce and then the delicious hamachi with the bracing flavour of sesame.

   There was just the divine pleasure of the sushi rice ice cream to come and a happy petit four jelly and it was time to go. Star or no star - ADC remains truly remarkable. I have little doubt that if it had been located in London and only been a fraction as good as it is, then Albatross Death Cult would have been celebrating the award of a star. But, Michelin is a law onto itself though, as Mr Bumble is quoted as saying, “The law is an ass”.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞

  Back to the Michelin Awards ceremony - it was overblown, preposterous, pretentious, arrogant, full of hubris and really quite silly. It had a big organ, a piper, a plethora of overwrought Scottish politicians, a Frenchman with an ‘Allo ‘Allo accent in charge of it all and long drawn out promotions of its sponsors including the repeated and time consuming disrobing of the award winning chefs in order that they may put on chefs’ jackets produced by one of the ceremony’s sponsors. A video promoting the advance of women in the restaurant industry was shown and included appearances by Ash and Erin Valenzuela-Heeger filmed inside a rather poorly lit Riverine Rabbit but Michelin’s presumably well-intentioned presentation brought more criticism than praise afterwards. 

  Perhaps it would be best if Michelin allowed the British to stage their own version of the Awards ceremony in future years without too much interference from France. After all, the French are hardly known for being able to put on a good show, at least not since the days of Toulouse-Lautrec and Fin de Siècle Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère  and all that sort of stuff. The Michelin Awards ceremonies, since they commenced in recent times have always been, at best, discomforting and, at worst , toe-curlingly embarrassing but every year that goes by, they are taking longer and longer to do what they are there for - that is - present awards to a tip-of-the-iceberg selection of some of Britain’s best chefs and thereby devolving into a tedious two hours lost from one’s life that one will never recover. No matter, it’s good to see our accomplished chefs rewarded for making dining out a pleasure, even if it’s not always affordable.

  At the end of it all, the West Midlands region now has 75 restaurants mentioned in the Michelin Guide which is far too few but an increase on this time last year.

379. West Midlands Restaurants Ignored (Again) In Bib Gourmand Awards And GBM.

 

  Once more West Midlands restaurants are ignored by the BBC in the 2024 Central heat of its Great British Menu series with the chefs chosen to represent the ‘Central region’ working in London, Ascot, Norwich (to be fair the ‘Central region’ includes East Anglia) and as a private chef in the East Midlands. True, there are two West Midlands-born chefs - Sam Ashton-Booth, originally from Worcester, and Adam Smith, born in Birmingham - but the first works at Muse in London (and has never worked in the Midlands) and Adam Smith works at Woven by Adam Smith in Ascot and has also never worked in the Midlands.

  What I want to see is not only West Midlands chefs who originally hail from the area but also those who work here and to get a glimpse of the local establishments in which they work. This is another way in which the BBC is choosing to ignore the West Midlands. I expect to be less than interested in this year’s Central heats, especially with the Judge’s episode involving an unbearable, unfunny, facetious, puerile  ‘comedian’ and dominated by a chef who guides the voting.

  Meanwhile Michelin published its list of new Bibs Gourmands for 2024 on Monday 29 January. There were 116 dining establishments accorded a Bib in 2023 of which just a single restaurant was located in the West Midlands - the Charlton Arms in Ludlow on Ludford Bridge with a grand view of the river Teme below - and twenty new Bib holders were named for 2024 and absolutely none of them are located in the West Midlands. Logic dictates that there must be more than one West Midlands restaurant worthy of the award of a Bib but apparently not.

The Charlton Arms, Ludlow, The West Midlands only Bib Gourmand holder.

  It remains to be seen how the dining establishments of the West Midlands region will be treated in next week’s star awards ceremony which ironically is to take place in Birmingham’s rival city, Manchester (for long a Michelin star desert). I am looking to Opheem becoming our first two star restaurant and The Wilderness being finally rewarded with one star but I say that every year and Alex Claridge (with, now, Marius Gedminas) has always been passed over.

  To return to the iniquities of the BBC, I should note for the record that of the 28 young chefs featured in the most recent series of Masterchef The Professionals, not one was a West Midlander. With so much talent in the region one must draw one’s own conclusions about why that should be. Perhaps, the West Midlands culinary industry will get more of a look in when filming of Masterchef begins in Birmingham. But I won’t hold my breath.

305. From Apprentices To Michelin Stars.

 

  Somehow it seemed quite appropriate to be out dining at the restaurant associated with University College Birmingham where possibly the West Midlands’ Michelin star winners of the future may be at this very moment undergoing the training which will lead eventually to that dazzling culinary achievement, on the evening that the Michelin Guide star revelation was taking place in a ceremony in the far south east of the Midlands at Silverstone Race track.

  From the West Midlands point of view, things had not started well with the announcement of the Bibs Gourmands, made several days before, revealing that the region had received nul points at that particular level of award. In contrast the Michelin inspectors had been having a whale of a time in the West Country and the the south west (well, they wouldn’t they?) with Bristol, a city populated now almost entirely by hipsters, where not a single man will shave his beard or do anything useful for society, achieving three Bibs out of eight for the region (almost 50% of the twenty new Bibs), The Bibs were also awarded to, inevitably, Brighton (one), the least useful town in England, and London  (3). The East Midlands did make an appearance on the list (2) and the Michelin inspectors ventured into The North with a Bib going to an establishment in Manchester. The remaining Bibs were distributed to Wales (1), Northern Ireland (2) and the Irish Republic (1). 

  Still, stars are everything so what really mattered was what would happen at 6PM Monday 27 March. The awards reflected just how irrelevant the Michelin awards are across broad sections of England, never more so than here in the West Midlands with only Grace and Savour at Hampton in Arden and Lumière in Cheltenham being awarded new stars. The award to Grace and Savour replaces that was lost by Peel’s Restaurant at Hampton (because the restaurant has closed) and Lumière’s is a recognition at last of twenty three years of continuing service. It is pleasing to see this pair of the region’s fine establishments being deservedly recognised for their fine cuisine but disappointing to see that a number of our excellent restaurants continue to be ignored, which I suspect would not have been the case if they had been located in London. Michelin provides a useful overview of what’s happening in dining out but in other respects it has little relevance outside London. Birmingham retains its five stars so there’s no loss of face for our leading chefs but The Good Food Guide editors have shown that they are far more aware of the cutting edge of dining out as the 2020s move along than those who edit Michelin and as such, if we need respectable indications of where to eat good food away from London then The Good Food Guide is by far the more reliable source of information. 

Luke Tipping, Head Chef at Simpsons with Bibendum, at the 2023 Reveal ceremony, celebrating Simpsons’ retention of its star - 

  And so, after watching the excruciatingly embarrassingly presented ‘star revelation ceremony’ on social media, I and a dining companion moved on to dinner at The Restaurant at University College Birmingham, the well spring of the city’s future hospitality workers. It is a large and attractively decorated dining space. Given that the students are the front of house workers it is naturally well-staffed. The students working there that evening were first year students - their course, they told me, is four years in length and I suppose they must have been studying at UCB for about six months - early days therefore.

  Our ‘waiters’ clearly had some distance to travel to gain the self-confidence that an accomplished front-of-house hospitality worker needs to bring a roundness to the performance of serving food which contributes to making a meal memorable. But these were, after all, early days and the waiters were polite and charming if not slick and polished. There was an amuse guele which are waiter had not been schooled to explain to the diner and indeed coukd not say what exactly she was serving. We did not wish to embarrass her and so naturally did not press her on the issue. It was really very good - a sizeable crisp topped by a goats cheese mousse, I think, with little ball# of apple and sweet pickles. Good stuff,Chef!

  The young chef had nicely prepared an attractive muted-yellow risotto with three small cheese-filled arancini with girolles and tasty flakes of Parmesan. This was very well cooked though the young chef had been far too heavy with the salt which was a great pity. For the main course I chose what turned out to be a finely cooked pan-fried sea beam, with good crispy skin - and some very passable dauphinois potatoes though the slices of grilled orange and other intrusions of the same fruit did not work at all well with the fish - I appreciate the use of citrus with fish but not sweet citrus as this was. Well, these young people are honing their skills and the matching of flavours is one of them so again one could hardly be disappointed by what was served if they have not yet perfected that skill. My dining companion, having thoroughly enjoyed a beautifully seared scallop starter, was also very satisfied with his main course of duck.

  Finally, we were both unable to resist ordering a rather smart pineapple tarte tatin. This was very good, perhaps the base of the pastry was a little undercooked but on the whole it was very good and nicely balanced with a coconut ice cream. The supervisor approached us at the end of the meal, asking if we had enjoyed the meal which we said we had done but the supervisor was a little defensive when my companion mentioned that the waiters were a little adrift in their knowledge of what they were serving. He need not have been - we fully understood that the work was being carried out by young people in the very earliest stages of their training, but it did seem to us that if no feedback is given then teachers and student will never know how the customer thinks the trainees are doing. Perhaps the restaurant should offer the diners a chance to comment in the form of a questionnaire

  This had been a fascinating evening. At one end all the nonsense of the Michelin ‘Reveal’ had been going on when chefs at the peak of their careers were hoping for recognition and at the other end, young people, embarking on their careers, were being given the chance to showcase to the ordinary dining public their growing experience and expertise. A pleasing symmetry.