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.

456. Satori, Moseley

 Birmingham gourmands, epicures, gourmets, ‘foodies’ - call them what you may -  and others will recognise the address 27 Warstone Lane in the Jewellery Quarter as the home of Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness. And those who go back a bit will also know that prior to its current existence, the location had been home to Niki Astley’s Two Cats and before that a succession of mostly notable restaurants stretching back to the turn of the millennium - Veda Sampson’s Big Nanny’s Caribbean Restaurant (2011-14), Choloo Nepalese restaurant (2006-11), Didier Philpott’s Toque D’Or (2003-6) and Paul Gilmore’s Restaurant Gilmore from 1997 to 2003. Some buildings are just meant to play an important role in the history of Birmingham and West Midlands cuisine.

  And now, it seems there is another - the location of the recently opened Japanese-style restaurant Satori. This new dining establishment opened in October 2024 in the shop which previously was the home to Carter’s of Moseley at 20C Wake Green Road and on 8 January 2025 Michelin, 44 days after Satori opened, announced that it had added the restaurant to its Guide along with the sister restaurant Baloci (Central Asian cuisine - see Blog 372) in Highfield Road in Edgbaston nest door to Simpsons. The owner, FB Holdings, also include Qavali (Persian cuisine, see Blogs 191) and Mayan (Mexican cuisine, see Blog 334) in its portfolio and all four are characterised by their extravagant, vaguely or perhaps definitely over-the-top decor which makes a good stab at a return to glamorous dining out though the question lurks at the back of one’s mind as to whether or not it’s all somewhat expensively naff. Hence 20C Wake Green Road follows in the footsteps of 27 Warstone Lane as one of those Birmingham locations which historically is home to more than one Michelin-listed restaurant (as well as being painted black).

  The Head Chef is Kin Ho Fung aka Jacky and he and his kitchen staff provide a menu which offers an interesting selection of Japanese dishes -  maki sushi, nigiri, temaki and sashimi - promisingly wide-ranging. After the meal he came to speak to me and he obviously takes his work very seriously and has previously worked in Singapore and Dubai. I enjoyed my chat with this charming, soft-voiced man and he reflected on how he had to shape his menu around the availability of certain ingredients in this country. 

Head Chef Kin Ho Fung

  The restaurant, though it has been  refurbished, is recognisably the location where Carter’s was homed - it retains its open kitchen, the black walls enhanced now by a golden dragon along one wall (though I wondered if that suggested Chinese rather than Japanese cuisine) and the large, illuminated wine cabinet along one wall. Throughout, the Saturday lunchtime, the number of diners not being large, I was served by  Sharath Sundar, Satori’s director, and was again able to have a chat with him as the 10 course tasting menu gradually unfolded. He is man who clearly understands the hospitality industry, and its present grave problems, but clearly he had been uplifted by Michelin’s recent honouring of the restaurant and he was enthusiastic about support from locals and other diners. He was helpful, polite, appropriately friendly and clearly well informed. But these are hard times for hospitality - Starmer’s malign government has ensured that - so we must see how this difficult year will pass. But to the food.

  To start there was a slightly underwhelming sakizuke/amuse bouche of two crackers sandwiching various items which did not ring out the words, ‘fine’ and ‘dining’. Still, it was only an amuse bouche you say but often that morsel speaks volumes about what is to come. Look at the magnificent canopés presented at the start of a meal at Opheem - hauntingly memorable - but then again Opheem has two Michelin stars and the tasting menu costs almost one hundred pounds more. You have to start somewhere. As the meal proceeded subsequently I had the feeling that the will was there to move things along to greater heights if, like other restaurants, the oppression of hospitality does not take its toll.

  There followed the first course proper, a generously portioned sushi and sashimi platter. The dish lacked the finesse expected when the words “fine” and “dining” with its application to sushi and sashimi are used together in that order and the salmon for sure needed the various condiments to anoint it with any element of flavour but the dish was pleasant enough and virtually a meal in itself.

   Then, came a quite tasty miso soup with langoustine and shredded spring onion and tofu which is an ingredient which should never have been allowed to leave the Far East where the diversity of mankind’s tastes allows it to be properly appreciated while an Englishman in preference enjoys roast beef and all the trimmings.

  The next dish brought with it ebi (prawns/shrimps) and yasai (vegetables) tempura which looked rather splendid adorned as it was by noodles branched like trees with leaves of rice fixed to them and coated in tempura and deep fried, emerging crispy and crunchy. The tempura was certainly anot light enough to enable one to conjure up a mental picture of elite Japanese fare but again it was all edible enough served with a mooli tempura sauce. Next there was an enjoyable, goodly-sized karaage - Japanese fried chicken  - with nice, crispy batter, accurately cooked chicken which retained some moisture and made delicious by the sweet syrup and salty tobiko (flying fish eggs) served with it. A hit! A palpable hit!

  I moved on to the next course of grilled plump sea scallop - again nicely cooked to my taste - with the surprising hit of preserved lemon and then on to tasty grilled honey and soy duck - which was cooked pretty much as I should like it to be - with an apt plum sauce, mooli, sesame foam (more decorative than a stimulant of the taste buds) and tenderstem broccoli which was anything but tender-stemmed. The greens around this winter, what few there are - and they’re mostly tenderstem broccoli - are awful. The weather of 2024 has certainly taken its toll on our winter greens. I have not yet seen that among the perils of global warming is our lack of Brussels sprouts for Christmas lunch or the sentence to eat untenderstem broccoli but the world should be told and, to a man, we would all be rushing to turn down our thermostat temperature,

  The meal was drawing to a close but there was yet the main main to go - an absolutely delicious grilled pink pepper lamb cutlet served with a yuzu and mint dressing and a somewhat unremarkable carrot. The cutlet would have worked quite well by itself, so enjoyable was it, but the modestly flavoured mint dressing was both apt and pleasing.

  The dessert was the restaurant’s version of Baked Alaska - Baked Mount Fuji - briskly flavoured matcha ice cream encased in a coat of pleasantly peaked Italian meringue with Japanese whisky poured over it and flamed to add a sense of enjoyable drama to it all. The ice cream’s flavour balanced the sweetness of the meringue and the result was a dessert of much pleasure though to be honest, I still not fully convinced that when a dessert involves ice cream, it should not be a moderately sweet ice cream.

  The restaurant is pleasingly decorated though I’m not sure that the blackness of it, whilst suited to the experimental character of Brad Carter’s restaurant, should not have been replaced to bring more light to what is a naturally dark interior and the service is very good. Some of the dishes are lacking in finesse but this is a dining experience bringing with it a lot of pleasure. Perhaps it would be better to stop using the ‘Fine dining’ label and go for a good honest “Upmarket Japanese-style food” (though plainly some of the dishes, possibly the best ones, are basically European with some Japanese elements). Presently Michelin rates Sartori at the same level as ADC and Folium - this is plainly unreasonable - we can only hope that the grading of the two Jewellery Quarter restaurants is raised in the upcoming Michelin awards.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

25 January 2025.

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.

376. Rabbit/RiverineRabbit.

 

  There’s no doubt that when it comes to promising new, if small, restaurants then Stirchley, not withstanding the Jewellery Quarter, is the place to seek them out at present. The latest is what was to be called Riverine Rabbit, but seems now to be plain Rabbit, located in the shopping area along the Pershore Road.

  And to be fair, you can’t blame ambitious young chefs and restaurateurs opening up in Stirchley where they will have a captive audience, heavily hipster, all living within a short walk of what is charmingly described as the High Street. The exterior of Riverine Rabbit is very Stirchley with a small name sign which is rather difficult to spot especially on a dark winter evening. Looking through the window, you can see it is pleasantly bijou, with a well planned interior. Lucy The Labrador and I visited the restaurant soon after it first opened. 

  Having correctly identified the right location, the dog and I walked into a a not over-brightly lit but smart-looking and warm dining area with just 18 seats running along the counter at which the diners sit. There was a pleasingly adequate space in which the dog could relax. There were two people behind the counter - Erin Valenzuala-Heeger, who by the way has a day job as a metallurgist at Birmingham University, and her wife Ash Heeger, the Chef.

  There’s an interesting background story to the couple. Ash was born in Transkei in South Africa and brought up in Capetown and ran the 70 seater restaurant - also The Riverine Rabbit - with her sister Mandy in that city until it was closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She came to Birmingham with Erin who works in the Midlands Industrial Ceramic Group at the University and worked at Carter’s of Moseley before Brad Carter decided that his restaurant should shift its location. The originally intended name of the new restaurant (and that of the former Capetown restaurant) derives from that of a species of rabbit (they might perhaps have used the Latin name Bunolagus monticularis, though to be fair it doesn’t really have hipster appeal when you think about it) which lives in the Karoo desert in Ash’s homeland  and the choice of name highlights Ash’s and Erin’s efforts to support sustainable farming practices. The Birmingham restaurant’s name seems to have been shortened, probably wisely, to plain and simple Rabbit, which has much more good down-to-Earth Brummie appeal even in a hipster zone such as Stirchley.

  As the first diner of the evening to arrive I was greeted most warmly and Lucy the Labrador no less so. After seating myself in my designated chair at the counter I was given a nice, warming, interestingly flavoured tea of South African origin and shown the drinks on offer which were brought around from Couch next door which seems to work very well for the customer while Rabbit is sans alcohol licence. I ordered a gimlet which was brought round very rapidly andas regards wine, pre-warnedI had brought a half bottle with me.

  The menu looked very exciting - small plates often with South African connections - and while Erin set about preparing my ordered dishes I dived into an excellent plate of fresh salty crisps with accompanying dip. The first dish was an excellent beef tartare with the meat marinated deliciously in rapeseed oil, smoked soy and fava bean miso. This was a generous portion of perfectly tender beef and was accompanied by wafer-sized pieces of nori which powerfully ushered in the flavour of the sea making this a rather clever surf and turf, if you like.

  Next I was served a gorgeous crab muffin; the tasty crab alive with the perfectly balanced citrus of pickled lemon and enhanced by a brown butter mayonnaise. Again this was a sizeable dish  the muffin adding considerable volume to it all and I might in retrospect have not also added fine hash browns served with spiced salt and ponzu mayonnaise to my order. On the other hand, who can resist a well cooked hash brown?

  I had not even then finished as I had ordered quite the most beautifully cooked pork belly I can remember ever having been served, the fat all melted away but all the flavour lying deep inside it from miso and gochujang, served on a triumphantly light and fluffy bao with charred hispi and cucumber. A very fine and delicious dish which, alas, I forgot to photograph, but shall return to when I next visit Rabbit in 3 or 4 weeks time. 

  Despite repletion having long set in, I allowed myself the sole dessert on the menu which was a soothing miso banana cream with the added flavour of crumbled speculoos, otherwise known as biscoff - a Belgian spiced gingerbread biscuit - along with coconut and the sweetness of ‘sprinkles. This was very good and different from most desserts which are often.

  As the minutes passed the denizens of Stirchley gradually came in and took their places at the counter and placed their orders. One irritating young woman, accompanied by lighting equipment and a doubtless expensive phone-camera, oblivious to all the other diners, obsessionally filmed the explanation of each dish given to her and her dining companion by Erin as she served them. I assume she is some sort of ‘influencer’. No matter, it was lovely to sit at the counter chatting with Erin and Ash and enjoying their food. The dog was content to lie back, rather in the way I’m afraid, but causing no trouble and being fussed by some of the diners who, naturally as dog owners do, first enquired about her age and then told me all about their dogs. By the end of my couple of hours in Rabbit, I felt as though I had been visiting and dining at someone’s home rather than having been seated in a restaurant.

  This is a great restaurant and possibly already the most important new restaurant in Birmingham to open in 2024. The opening of Carter’s in Colmore Row of course is of great importance but it is a reopening so I feel justified in giving that accolade, for the present at least, to Rabbit (though you may argue, if you must, that technically Rabbit is also a reopening given its predecessor in Capetown but I would say that that was not the same thing at all).