400. Events, Dear Boy, Events. 2024 Part 1 January To June.

 

 The four hundredth blog. 

 This seems like an excellent opportunity to highlight the most important Birmingham and West Midlands dining out events of 2024 - what has happened so far and then a rolling diary of what else occurs during 2024 providing a complete West Midlands dining out history of what occurs during the year up to 31 December. New, notable events will be added as 2024 progresses. Already, on 29 April, there is much to record….

5 January - Chef Ash Heeger and Erin Valenzuala-Heeger open the remarkable Rabbit, initially also known as Riverine Rabbit, in Stirchley.

20 January - The Bower House in Shipston on Stour announces that it has appointed Leo Kattou as its new Head Chef. Kattou had previously been Chef st Simpsons in Edgbaston and at Laghi’s at Five Ways In Birmingham.

29 January - Michelin announces its 20 new Bib Gourmand restaurants - there are no West Midlands restaurants featured in it.  In the previous year’s list of 116 Bib winners only one West Midlands restaurant was recognised with the award - the Charlton Arms in Ludlow which retained the award in 2024.

30 January - Good Food Guide announces its awards for 2024. Two West Midlands restaurants are rated Exceptional - Grace and Savour and Harborne Kitchen. Very good awards are made to The Wilderness, Purnell’s, Tropea, Opheem, Adam’s, Folium, Smoke, Yikouchi at Chancer’s Cafe, Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, Le Champignon Sauvage and The Walrus (Shrewsbury).

31 January - First episode of the Central region heats of the BBC’s Great British Menu features four chefs who do not work in a Midlands restaurant. There are two West Midlands-born chefs, Sam Ashton-Booth originally from Worcester and who works at Muse restaurant in London, and who is eliminated at the end of the first round and Birmingham-born Adam Smith, Chef Patron at Woven by Adam Smith in Ascot, who eventually goes on to be chosen to cook the fish course at the banquet.

January - Baloci, a “Silk Road” cuisine opens in Highfield Road in Edgbaston.

5 February - Aktar Islam’s Opheem is awarded TWO stars at the annual Michelin awards ceremony. Birmingham, as a result, has three ONE Michelin star restaurants - Simpsons, Purnell’s and Adam’s. At the ceremony, Salt in Stratford upon Avon loses its single Michelin star while other West Midlands restaurants - Grace and Savour (Hampton in Arden), Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (Lichfield), Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumiere (both in Cheltenham), The Cross in Kenilworth and The Royal Oak in Whatcote all retain their’s. Hence, at the start of 2024, the West Midlands has 10 Michelin-starred restaurants.

10 February - Dan Sweet opens Cuubo on Harborne High Street at the same location as his former ‘fine dining takeaway’ establishment. 

11 February - Chef Brad and partner Holly Carter open their pop-up restaurant Carter’s at 18 on the eighteenth floor of 103 Colmore Row. This is to remain open until the end of April.

27 February - Chef Andrew Sheridan, previously Chef Patron at the now closed Craft and About 8, who reopened the latter in Liverpool in 2023, participates in BBC’s Great British Menu North West regional heats but is eliminated at the end of the first day.

12 March - While retaining his Chef Director role at Smoke Stuart Deeley also takes on the role of Executive Chef at Laghi’s at Five Ways. Patrick Hukins becomes Head Chef at Laghi’s.

15 March - Adam Bateman leaves his post as Executive Chef at the Grand Hotel. On 15 April 2024 it was announced that Bateman had been appointed Executive Chef at the Pan Pacific London Hotel in Shoreditch.

2 April - It is announced that the former Pensons near Tenbury Wells will reopen on 22 May as Native at Pensons with Ivan Tisdall-Downes as Executive Chef.

6 April - Glynn Purnell announces that he has appointed a diarchy of Head Chefs at Purnell’s  - Sam Luck and Tom Blakemore, both with long records of working in the Purnell’s kitchen.

7 April - The Observer publishes a review by critic Jay Rayner of Cuubo in Harborne. He pronounces that Cuubo is, ‘as exciting a restaurant as I’ve encountered in a long time”.

15 April - The Hockley Dining Club serves as host to the West Midlands Mayoral election hustings where the present Mayor, Andy Street, takes on his Labour opponent. Two fast food stalls are serving food - both fried chicken producers.

20 April - The annual Shakespeare Birthday Lunch is held in Stratford upon Avon and celrbrities attending include Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Armstrong and Dame Floella Benjamin. Dishes served are - burrata and beetroot salad, roast chicken and Wye Valley asparagus and deconstructed Pavlova.

21 April - Chef Rob Palmer announces that his Solihull restaurant Toffs will close on 2 May and relocate to Hogarth’s Hotel in Dorridge.

25 April - Michelin includes Rabbit in the Michelin Guide.

27 April - Chef Patron Ben Taylor and his partner Zsofia Kisgergely close the much-loved Le Petit Bois in Moseley.

20 May - It is announced that Niall Keating left his role as Chef director of Stoke on Trent’s Lunar on 19 May by “mutual agreement” with Craig Wilkinson, the restaurant’s co-founder. It had previously been announced that Keating would take up a new role in a Manchester hotel in June. A few days previously, Head Chef Craig Lunn had left his post at Lunar.

Craig Lunn & Niall Keating

23 May - It is announced that Carl Riley, formerly Head Chef at the George in Alstonefield, Michelin-listed from 2011 to 2023, has been appointed to a similar role at Lunar.

May - Phil Kerry, Head Chef at Forelles in Ludlow, departs his job there following Fishmore Hotel being taken over by a West Bromwich-based hotel chain which places the emphasis very much on cost cutting. Subsequently, a previously Cayman Islands-based chef, Joshua (Nicky) Hull-Saldhana is appointed Head Chef in June 2024 but is moved to work in the hotel chain’s Droitwich hotel in late June. Two Romanian chefs are appointed to take charge of the kitchens at Forelles.

Nicky Hull-Saldhana

May - Michelin’s May list of newly recommended restaurants includes Cuubo in Harborne. 

15 June -Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult opens to paying customers in Newhall Square.The restaurant serves 14 diners around its wide metallic counter, mostly sea food with a Japanese-style emphasis. 

26 June - Michelin announces its June list of newly recommended restaurants and among the eight named is 1919 at The Cottage in the Woods in Malvern Wells.

27 June - After the change of ownership of Fishmore Hall and departure of Head Chef Phil Kerry, Forelles restaurant ceases to be included in the Good Food Guide.

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:-🌞🌞.