536. Blacklock & The Fountain At Clent.

 

  Much hyped and opened fully only the day before I lunched there, despite some initial scepticism on my part, Blacklock, proved to be a totally enjoyable dining experience. At times I was alternately groaning and purring with the pleasure of it all. This is the third branch of this chain which strives to revive the era of the chophouse, the first being in London and the second in Manchester. I felt a little prematurely sniffy about it knowing it was a chain, albeit a rather short one.

  Situated in St Phillip’s Square next to Colmore Row and overlooked by the Grand Hotel, where my dog and I live to stay as often as we may, the spacious dining room is located in a building which was a Georgian vicarage in its first incarnation. Time moved on; at one time Brad Carter was planning to open his new restaurant there after he closed his original Moseley restaurant but the plans fell through and he eventually opened his new dining establishment in the Kings Cross area of London but in return Birmingham gained Blacklock from London and it really was a fair exchange.

 A considerable amount of time and money was spent on renovating the old vicarage and the result was an impressively sized, comfortable sort of space where the residents of Birmingham could relax over a dizzyingly modestly priced, delightfully rustic, brilliantly cooked and unimpeachably delicious meal. The service is friendly but efficient and the food is fabulous. This appears to be the beginning of a new era for dining out in Birmingham.

  I started off with an immaculately tasty crayfish cocktail - a generous helping of nicely textured crayfish with crispy lettuce (surely picked just a couple of minutes before!), creamy avocado lurking in the depths of the dish and surely the worlds most exciting Marie Rose sauce, thick and indulgent and provocatively spicy. Caramba! what a start! 

    But the main course was the real star, and how often that fails to be the case. A very satisfactorily sized pork chop arrived looked golden and tempting and for me it was just the right size. It was perfectly grilled, tender and moist, and the smoky flavour was as memorable as that of ant dish which I have eaten. I coupled it with triple cooked chips. The price seemed mildly deplorable - £5 for a small bucket of them - but as soon as I had tasted one  I realised that these were no ordinary chips - they were the greatest chips on earth - yes, really. The crisps were crunchy and the not overstated flavour caused by their being cooked in beef fat was celestial. This was, though rustic and unpretentious, a trip into the realm of culinary paradise and the chips were unsurpassable.

  And Blacklock had not finished even then. I chose the cheesecake with cherry compôte. It was as indulgent as a dessert could ever be. And it was served from a larger dish which was novel and mildly thrilling. The cheesy cream was gorgeous and the texture of the crunchy element was lovely and the cherry compôte was soothing and tasty.

  This was a very fine meal - one of the best I have had for a long time. In many ways it reminded me of Glynn Purnell’s new restaurant, Trillium, but more spacious and food sold at a fraction of the price and served hot. And this from a chain restaurant. Well, well, well!

Rating:- 🌞

21 April 2026.

 Four days later I enubered myself to Clent. It was a beautiful sunny day, more aestival than vernal, and the pretty, affluent village looked lovely as my Uber man drove through it en route to The Fountain Inn nestled in a quiet leafy road a good distance up one of Clent’s hills. It turned out to be an elongated, white-painted inn of some antiquity and I knew that the previous landlady, Jacqueline Macey, had raised its culinary reputation to a high level although it was never recognised by the restaurant guides. After her death in 2025, The Fountain was taken over by Mike Livesy who recognised its potential as a gastropub and rather smartly snaffled three young men to work there as chefs  - recognisable young fellers late of Simpsons (and for a short time, also of The Wilderness), and two of them Masterchef The Professionals contestants, - Evan Holliday who was appointed Head Chef, Jordan Johnson and Lewis Perks, a talented pastry chef.

  The inn’s interior is spacious, unfussy and comfortable. The service is quiet and unrushed and perhaps just a little too formal for the setting. But I quickly settled in and was given the printed menu and the blackboard specials which included beef Wellington after which I lusted but unfortunately it was only available for sharing by two. There did seem to be room for compromise but I felt I really did not want to cause problems especially as I was lunching quite late. So I ordered Prawn cocktail (for the second time that week), chicken and preordered my dessert.

  The prawn cocktail was excellent and the helping of prawns in it was remarkably generous though perhaps I should have liked at least one more salad element to make the dish more interesting. The lettuce was undoubtedly pleasingly fresh and crispy and theccroutons I suppose were an added textural element and the mildly spicy Marie Rose was delicious. This was an enjoyable dish though it had hard competition from the magnificent crayfish cocktail I had cooed over a few days earlier at Blacklock

  My main of roast chicken with confit thigh, ‘cabbage compôte’,  crispy hen of the woods and a remarkably delicious sauce supreme was excellent. The sauce was silky and full of flavour and the chicken was perfectly cooked, beautifully moist and tender. My only disappointment was the absence of any root vegetable prepared in whichever way the Chef preferred - I think it would have rounded the dish off.

  Then to the dessert - an excellent banana soufflé served with a delicious quenelle of banana and lime ice cream. The lime provided an excellent balance with the sweetness of the soufflé and all things considered, this was an enjoyable fine dessert to find in a country pub.

  Of course, the dishes in general and the soufflé in particular had the ring of Simpsons about them and there is a clear reason why that is the case - the former Simpsons young men who had been recruited to thrill the diners at The Fountain.

Rating:- 🌞

25 April 2025.

481. Riverine Rabbit.

 

  I was delighted to receive an invitation from Erin Valenzuela-Heeger, best described as ‘Front of House’ (though in reality no more Front of House than Ash, her partner, the Michelin ‘Best Young Chef of 2025’), to reserve a spot at the counter of Riverine Rabbit, for dinner as it is remarkably difficult to get a place there and it had been a while since I had last dined there where things have now moved on to, perhaps surprisingly for this tiny, casual and very relaxed restaurant, diners being offered the choice of one of two tasting menus, one of five courses, the other of seven. Rabbit is clearly getting serious.

  Arriving a full half hour early, I cocktailed in Couch, Rabbit’s next door neighbour which is a perfectly matched spot to start the evening before moving next door to explore Ash’s stream of edible delights. and inwardly enthused at my delicious. Despite it being highly regarded and having been the recipient of several awards, I had never visited Couch before but was pleased that I did. It was busy at the start of this particular Friday evening and the service was excellent and the gimlet variant cocktail enjoyable.

 Then, on to Riverine Rabbit where I was the first diner to arrive and was therefore able to have a little chat with Ash and Erin including asking some questions about their experiences at the Michelin awards in Glasgow earlier in the year. I decided to choose the eight course menu - after all what’s the point of missing the full experience when the opportunity comes so rarely?

    I was first offered a cup of Seychellois vanilla tea which I had had before having visited the islands several times in the past and bringing packets of the very pleasant beverage back with me. The reason for offering vanilla tea as a starter was related to Ash’s family having a hotel in Seychelles and she had recently returned from there. It is, it has to be said, a soothing drinking. 

  It was followed by ‘kitchen snacks’ - pretty amuses gueules - and very tasty they were too. Next, the ungenerously named ‘spring peas’ which was more a symphony of things pisine and more summer than spring. 

  Delicious Chalkstream trout tartare with sea herbs moved the meal forward demonstrating Ash’s flair and inventiveness and then, from the longer menu ‘fried chickenn& caviar’ which reminded me of the chicken oyster previously served at Carter’s of Moseley where Ash had worked previously. The crispy coated  chicken was moist and succulent and nicely complemented by the generous portion of Oscietra caviar - this was a course of turf and surf, or perhaps, chicken coop and seabed, which made it essential to lash out on the longer menu.

  Via a happy course of adequately al dente Wye Valley asparagus, finely flavoured and served not with a Hollandaise but a cream fraiche-based sauce I arrived at the lovely slice of accurately cooked, for me, Wagyu which gave much pleasure and then the two desserts, a clever play on another seasonal favourite, strawberries and cream, though being early in the season Ash had sweetened them too heighten the enjoyment of them. Finally, an excellent chocolate dessert which rounded the meal off nicely.

 This was an excellent meal, kindly priced given the work and ingenuity and skill on display, and emphasise Ash Valuenzuela-Heeger’s remarkable brilliance as well the astonishing business good sense she and Erin have shown in picking their location and type of prospective clientele, the food to be served and the price the diner was likely prepared to pay.

Rating, undoubtedly:- 🌝🌝🌝.

As a footnote, Brad Carter, Ash’s former employer at Carter’s of Moseley, announced that he would be opening his new restaurant,  Island, at Kings Cross in London in cooperation with Chef Tom Brown. It will take the form of a surf and turf establishment with Carter handling the meat side of the menu and Brown concentrating on the fish and seafood. No early return to Birmingham, then, for Carter.

454. The Wildmoor Oak Inn.

  Living close to the south west edge of Birmingham, visits to Bromsgrove and north east Worcestershire ought to be easy and, true, there’s a train to Bromsgrove or Redditch via Barnt Green and Alvechurch but if one wishes to visit the villages some distance from the stations and one is not driving a car then things become more problematical because public transport is very poor and local taxi services do not necessarily respond to one’s needs in any convenient way.

 That is why I had not yet visited Wildmoor Oak Inn located between Catshill and Fairfield located along a country lane off the road to Stourbridge. Fortunately I had a friend who wished to join me for lunch and who was prepared to drive me there and so my opportunity to eat at this self-declared gastropub was seized upon with much positive anticipation. The Head Chef there is Peter Jackson, brother of Holly Jackson, partner of Brad Carter, who was Head Chef of Carter’s of Moseley before Carter decamped from Moseley (the restaurant is now home to Sartori, listed by the Michelin Guide just six weeks after opening and serving Japanese-style cuisine - a report to follow shortly). 

  Peter Jackson had studied at University College and his training had included stages at Purnell’s and Simpsons and Bank and a period at the Hotel Intercontinental Hotel Dieu in Marseilles under Lionel Levy before going to work firstly at the Fat Cat in Solihull and then with Brad Carter when he opened the Moseley restaurant in 2010.

  The Wildmoor Oak was reopened on 20 May 2024 after an eighteen month refurbishment carried out by its new owners, Bex Wilkins and her wife, Sarah Robinson, who had both previously worked at Peach Pubs which runs a number of gastropubs in the West Midlands region including The Highfield  in Edgbaston, The One Elm in Stratford upon Avon and The Rose and Crown in the Marketplace in Warwick, and further afield.

Peter Jackson, Head Chef, Wildmoor Oak Inn.

Wildmoor Oak Inn

A pub with a postbox, what could be better?

  There’s little doubt that The Wildmoor Oak is charming, located as it is at the end of a country lane so typical of this corner of north west Worcestershire. A tiny babbling brook runs through its grounds and the large car park has a public footpath running through it and walkers can have a pleasing walk across the lovely, green, rolling Worcestershire countryside before settling in at the delightfully warm and cosy inn. And the inn has been designed accurately to bring a homeliness to it - glowing fires, print covered walls, patterned banquettes, comfortable, non-shabby, old furniture, even an eclectic range of traditional style plates and ceramics from which to eat. 

  The welcome was fine and my lunch companion and I were shown to our table. This was a crowded part of the room and some of the lunchers already there had loud voices and a tendency to shreek or cackle when laughing which one or two did quite frequently and so we requested a slightly more isolated table where we could enjoy the atmosphere without being persecuted by gaggling - this was duly allocated to us.

  The closeness of neighbouring tables was probably the only problem we encountered during our visit to the Wildmoor Oak. Bex Wilkins and Sarah Robinson clearly learned a lot during their time with Peach Pubs and have put their experience to good use in the way they have paid attention to every detail in setting up the excellent gastropub. But what about the gastro- part of it all?

  Carter’s it isn’t. This is extravagantly rustic English fayre prepared with intense care and humorously clever quirks of deliciousness. This is not just delicious, comforting English food but it’s all that but prepared by a top chef. This is irresistible top of the range pub food at a sensible price which leaves one not only more than satiated but glowing with intense pleasure. We made a good fist of the menu. For starters, I chose brown onion soup with cheese on toast. I had visions of thin brown soup heavily populated by shreds of sweet onion and a massive cheesy crouton à la Française but my expectations could not have been more wrong. Peter Jackson was clearly making no concessions to Frankish tastes - this was a bowl of thick, warming, perhaps not so brown, potage and the crouton was good old cheese on toast served separately and none the worse for that. Jane Grigson would have admired this fine serving of English - and not European - food which shouted out that culinary Brexit was indeed a reality!

 

  As her starter, my lunch companion chose to order from the list of snacks - ‘pigs not in blankets with Paxo mayo’. This was exactly what the menu said - three fine English sausages (not encased in bacon), well cooked and humorously enhanced by the Paxo mayonnaise - all the flavours of that grand old English packet dried stuffing mix. We both felt we wanted to rush out and buy a packet of Paxo and add it to some mayonnaise and serve it to friends and pretend we invented it.  Great stuff! I had rather expected these to be short cocktail sausages but these were the real thing that would under other circumstances make fine hot dogs (I much more prefer hot dogs using good English sausages over frankfurters to which I am not very partial).

  Neither of us could resist the lure of the haddock and chips served with mushy peas and curry sauce. We have both lived through decades of fish and chips and while peas are always the perfect accompaniment neither of us feel the need to add curry though we appreciate that may not be the case with the young and the less experienced (in my time I ate battered ‘hard’ cod’s roe out of tins - and loved it (but I was quite young), ate battered haggis when the local chip shop tried putting it on the menu (I was still quite young), gratefully accepted the bags of batter bits which chip shop owners were happy to give away (I was still quite young) and always had a giant pickled onion to accompany my cod, chips and bread and butter (or sometimes pickled red cabbage or pickled sliced beetroot - oh, those were the days but curry sauce was never on my horizon). But full marks to Peter Jackson for moving with the times.

  The haddock and chips were perfect, they were fabulous, they were divine. Harry Ramsden could have taken lessons from Peter Jackson, The batter was crispy and gorgeously golden and not too thick and the haddock was divine - white, meaty, delicious. The chips were perfect - unimpeachable. The peas were a little bit of an afterthought and the curry sauce was not too exciting but there was a very good tartare sauce. Again, just fish and chips, you might think, but English culinary artistry at its best.

  We were both too full for desserts but we had one anyway. My companion wanted a light dessert and the meringue with winter fruits seemed to fit the bill - it did, though when it turned up it looked generously portioned by any stretch of the imagination - but she thought the meringue was excellent and of a pleasing consistency and nicely balanced by the berries. I had seen the apple and pear crumble with custard on the menu and formed an irresistible urge to try it. It was very good - the crumble light and infiltrated by clever occasional bursts of sea salt which seemed to me very innovative and successful and the custard was made beautifully - again, light and suffused with as much vanilla as one would hope for.

  We departed feeling mellow and well fed. This had been top flight pub food in an excellent setting. ‘Pub food’ does not do it justice but as I say, it was not Carter’s - but it didn’t need to be.

  Rating:- 🌞 

16 January 2025.

384. Carter’s Is Back In Town - Year Of The Dragon Collaboration With Lap Fai Lee & Carter’s Eighteen Experience.

 

  My first opportunity to dine at Carter’s’s (late of Moseley) new pop-up at 103 Colmore Row, in Club 18 on the eighteenth floor, came soon after the lovely restaurant opened (on 11 February 204) when Brad Carter staged a collaboration with the highly regarded Birmingham chef Lap-Fai Lee to celebrate the Chinese New Year which in this case was the Year of the Dragon.

  Prior to being taken to the long shared table, I had the chance to wonder around the large outdoor balcony area with the city all lit up in the winter evening darkness and fireworks exploding in the direction of Chinatown. What a view.

  The meal starting with tasty and quite solid lobster prawn crackers with an excellent shrimp tartare which served in the role of a dip. Then ‘Mouthwatering chicken’ as a starter followed by one of my favourite dishes, the fiercely tasty and beautifully executed ‘Paté en croute Chinois’.

   Next was ‘Orkney scallop Fish fragrant’ - a well-executed preparation of Orkney scallop - and afterwards I purred with pleasure at ‘Dragons beard carbonara’, which I doubt is a regular visitor to a standard Chinese restaurant table - it was a lovely play on carbonara with well-cooked noodles to render it vaguely Oriental but given full-bodied flavour by its punchy cheese element and cheeky slices of crispy bacon. 

  The main course - ‘Drunken phoenix’ substituted Anjou pigeon, cooked in sweet wine, for mythical beast and was very successful, accompanied as it was with a spot on bowl of rice.

  A mega-hit was the Mandarin and longan black sesame whippy icecream which would prove to be the ideal way to shuffle off this mortal coil were one to be totally submerged in a vat of it. The dessert proper -‘Dragon’s egg’ looked spectacular but gave more pleasure to my eyes than to my taste buds. Finally a ‘Smiley bao’ was boxed up to take home though it was not as light fluffy as I would have liked and wasn’t all that enjoyable.

  So, an enjoyable evening, the dishes a little variable in the pleasure they brought with them but I was glad to have been there for the experience and to see Carter’s back in Birmingham.

   Shortly afterwards I had the pleasure of returning to Carter’s to enjoy dinner as the ‘18 Experience’ which Brad Carter was offering in this remarkable venue. I arrived in town in the late afternoon and walked through the Cathedral churchyard with the gathering evening gradually ushering in the dark but 103 Colmore Row looked impressive as it loomed over its more elderly fellow buildings. On arriving at my destination I was greeted in the main lobby of the building, as I had been on my first visit to the venue, and set on my way to the eighteenth floor. Holly Carter was there to welcome her guests and in her inimitable way make them feel at home in this chic, bright, modern setting. The sky was now grey and the wind was cold and so I did not venture out on to the balcony this time around. Instead, straight to the table and a fine Margarita.

    Three splendid amuses gueules were served while I took in the spacious restaurant. This was the early evening dinner and, rather surprisingly, there was only one other diner, who travelled from Warwick for the experience, to join me at the long table. Several other food lovers were due to come along to the later session. This absence of fellow diners rather subdued the atmosphere but no matter, it was the food I was there for. After a fine Margarita on to the meal proper.

  Firstly accurately cooked truffled Orkney scallop and then razor clams of a nice texture though perhaps a little short in number to appreciate them fully, served with pepper dukes which was unremarkable. Next, a Carter’s signature dish - his full-bodied Birmingham soup 2021, a glistening consommé with beautifully tender pieces of turnip and carrot, several degrees more sophisticated than the original invented by Matthew Boulton to serve the hungry poor of Birmingham at the end of the 18th century, topped off with a crispy tuile in the style of the outside decor of the modern Birmingham central library. A very fine dish. 

  The highlight of the meal was undoubtedly Carter’s ‘Newlyn Hake <240m>’ (the 240m alludes to the height at which the fish was cooked). The fish was perfectly cooked and the sauce delicious. There were little explosions of Exmoor caviar and trout roe which made the texture exquisite and exciting. I thought indeed I was sure, though apparently erroneously, I could taste tarragon in this gorgeous dish - the best fish dish I had had for some time - but I was told that the sauce embraced dill, a more likely suspect I admit. This dish will assuredly be one of my food highlights of the year.

  After that, the meat course - beautifully presented and tender pasture-fed beef - had a lot to live up to. It was served with an excellent, rich punchy sauce though the beef itself did not quite have the full bodied flavour I hoped for. It was accompanied by well cooked leeks but the dish looked more thrilling than the was the depth of flavour it delivered.

  It had been a good meal with an intermediate dish of mascarpone ice cream and the flavour of sea buckthorn delivering a lot of pleasure.The dessert however was not a success being titled ‘Yorkshire rhubarb <red brick>’. This was a rhubarb flavoured mousse on a sable with the pattern of a red brick wall , typical of West Midlands traditional buildings, on top and rhubarb powder scattered over it. It took me a long time to recognise the flavour of rhubarb - it needed to be a lot more punchy and what the dish needed most of all was … rhubarb, the stalks properly poached and of perfect texture. Sadly this was not the case. More a triumph of style over substance.

  However, at the end all was well with a serving of a gorgeous chocolate mignardise. Gorgeous to look at, gorgeous to eat.

  Carter’s will continue to operate from this room with a view until the end of April when the brand will begin to offer home meals similar to those that were sold during the lockdowns. Then in the autumn a new restaurant - a first floor brasserie with a ground floor bar - will be opened in a building further along Colmore Row opening on to St Phillip’s Place and across the road from the Grand Hotel. Birmingham gastronomy never sleeps. 

Rating:-🌞🌞.