97. West Midlands Mayor Calls For Birmingham To Kick Start Hospitality Industry.

  Diners and food business owners remain full of expectation indulging in optimistic speculation about the imminent reopening of restaurants. Politicians are also keen to see the hospitality industry get restarted given that in the West Midlands alone 135000 jobs are provided by that industry and it contributes £12.6 billion per year to the local economy. Now the Birmingham Post reports that the notable West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, has called on the government to allow the region to become the first area in the country to reopen its public houses and restaurants, “This way, we can lead the way and help strike the right balance between safety and outputs, allowing other regions to follow suit. It’s important for the West Midlands to build on its unique heritage and distinctive strengths and seize the opportunity to reset, rebuild and reinvent our region, and come back even stronger”.

  I have my doubts. Being an old bloke, and much favoured by COVID-19 as potential prey, I don’t really want my first post-lock down fine dining meal to be my last. And COVID certainly has not gone away in these parts and it’s just as nasty and murderous as it was 3 months ago. Some Birmingham restaurants, Craft Dining Rooms and The Wilderness, are making reservations in anticipation of an early July starting gun being fired. They could be right and I have speculatively made bookings at both though for a little while after they open so somebody else can dip their toes in the water before I take the plunge and the table I have reserved at Craft Dining Rooms is outside.
  Craft Dining Rooms has indicated that it will put in a lot of measures to ensure that diners will be as safe as possible when it reopens its doors to them including temperature testing (of the diners not the food) and in the meantime has introduced a takeaway service with a very reasonably priced 2 two course meals for £40.

  Meanwhile Carter’s of Moseley, at the top of trendy people’s favourite Birmingham restaurant list, has been selling extravagant and extravagantly priced ingredients so that the well heeled socialists of Moseley and Harborne and the slightly less well heeled socialists of Kings Heath can cook their own Michelin-starred barbecues. Well done to Brad Carter for his good business sense.

  At The Wilderness Alex Claridge has been offering bespoke 3 hour-long home cooking lessons via the internet and has opened his reservation book to post-Lockdown customer-hopefuls (I’m one of them).

  And Kray Tredwell and Stuart Deeley have been giving a number of interviews about their plans for their new restaurants the openings of which have been necessarily delayed by COVID-19. Kray has a nice byline - Fancy Common Food by Kray Tredwell. Though he also has Modern Abstract Fine Dining from Kray Tredwell which is nicely intriguing.

  Finally we might note a recent Birmingham Post article which reported on an interview with Aktar Islam of the sublime Opheem who gave a gloomy prognosis for the future of Birmingham restaurants as a result of the COVID-19 problem especially as his new Pulperia had only just opened prior to the Lockdown with the result, one assumes, that it was bleeding money. Let’s hope he’s wrong. There are many determined chefs and restaurant owners in the West Midlands whose efforts in the last few weeks may have saved their businesses and our regional Dining scene. This is another chapter in the story of dining out in the West Midlands. Perhaps Andy Street’s intervention may tip the balance in their favour.

Pulperia has recently started a takeaway Sunday lunch service

5. Are Potatoes A First Course Or Just An Accompanying Vegetable?

Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters"

  I had a home for many years in Sheffield and whilst finding Yorkshiremen friendly and straightforward I did manage to get a feeling of how cautious many of them could be when it came to spending money. Thus when you visit them and they are kind enough to serve you a roast beef dinner, they can't resist feeding you with a starter of a large plate of Yorkshire pudding thus rendering you considerably full before you get to the main course and resulting in there being no need to serve you quite as much expensive beef as would have otherwise been the case had you not been laden down with a stomach full of batter.

  Recently I have set about wondering whether Brummies are turning into Yorkshiremen by following a similar strategy - that of filling you with potatoes in the place of a batter pudding as a starter thus reducing the amount of meat or fish that is needed to be served resulting in a lower cost of ingredients used in a main course dish.

  Take Carter's Of Moseley for instance where the cooking is fine enough to earn Brad Carter a Michelin star but where, after a couple of delightful appetisers, a dish of Mayan Gold potatoes, perfectly mashed but perhaps a little less buttery than I should like, is served as the first course of the lunchtime menu with a light bone marrow gravy. The dish is generously sized and its contents not surprisingly filling so that to wish for large dishes of meat to follow would result in abdominal discomfort were those wishes brought to realisation.

  

Mayan Gold potato

  Then there was Glynn Purnell's splendid special Christmas dinner which was tied to the launch of his new book, Rib Ticklers & Choux-Ins, which got off to a fabulous start with champagne and delicious appetisers but then moved on to a potato-based starter - tiny baked potatoes with a slightly underwhelming chorizo mayonnaise - which was, to be honest, not really all that nice. The problem with baked potatoes is that they really are at their best when served with butter and salt and not a lot else - of course nowadays we have the ubiquitous "jackets" filled with cheese, baked beans, chilli and so on but there is nothing like a fair-sized perfectly baked potato stuffed with with a big melting lump of butter sprinkled with salt to one's taste. These mini-potatoes might have looked good to the standard one might have expected from a Michelin chef but they were more style than substance. Still the meal improved considerably after that.

  Chefs! - potatoes are wonderful things. They rank among the highest placed of God's gifts to Man but they are not a basis for a first course. Potatoes are an accompaniment not a starter. 

  Just look at Van Gogh's painting shown above which is called "The Potato Eaters" - the subjects do not really look as though they're enjoying their meal. Now if they had been served with a bit of meat at the same time, perhaps a little gravy as well, think how much more cheerful they might have looked. Of course they are French peasants so that may also explain their facial expressions to some degree. 

  I hope the "Potato starter" is not going to be a trend in 2017. Otherwise I might end up looking like Van Gogh's French peasants. That would be a pity. Brummie chefs - please do not turn into honorary Yorkshiremen.