204. Chakana.

 

  I wish I could energise myself to visit Moseley a little more often - at least once a year - if only to lunch or dine at Carter’s Of Moseley, the only Birmingham Michelin-starred restaurant I failed to eat at during 2021 but it’s hard to get there by public transport from my part of the city and frankly I really do not like the WWSS (Wealthy, Woke and Self-satisfied) area very much. But after the Chakanita fast food wagon had turned up at Herbert’s Yard in Longbridge and sold me some Peruvian temptations I could not resist taking advantage of the mass cancelling of reservations taking place everywhere at the behest of the government advisor who was warning of the expected Omicron mass doom and make a reservation for the Michelin-plated Chakana situated in that Fourth Circle of Hell otherwise known as Moseley. 

  Actually on arrival, I decided that perhaps I had whipped myself up into an unnecessarily exaggerated dislike of Moseley, finding it to be nothing worse than a rather twee, socialist, upper-middle class suburb, exactly the sort of place in which socialist restaurant critic Jay Rayner, well-fed and red, would feel at home.

  I mention Mr Rayner because he wrote recently an ecstatic review of Chakana so my expectations were high as he seems to know what he’s writing about - when it comes to food at any rate. And he is right. It is a lovely relaxed, fresh-looking restaurant, comfortable and with friendly, informed front of house staff.

  Lunch took the form of the three course Christmas menu which had at least 4 choices for each course. That’s the way to please the customers especially when every dish on the menu looks so attractive on paper at least that the punter feels spoiled for choice. First I had one of the cocktails - Traditional Pisco sour - which brought a new experience to the flavours I have tasted in my life being made from Pisco, a Peruvian grape brandy, citrus, egg white, sugar and Peruvian bitters. Purple corn bread, soft and very tasty, was served with a spicy tiger milk yogurt dip and an utterly delicious little tuna tartare tart served as a delightful, much appreciated amuse gueule. 

  For my starter I chose a vibrant, funky-looking dish of citrus-cured salmon with a blancmange-pink beetroot tigers milk, nasturtium oil, squid ink tuile and puffed barley. A great dish apart, I think, from the puffed barley which had too soft a texture for my taste. But in all it was a memorable dish full of flavour and who would forget its visual appearance?

  Then my main course - a plate of rustic deliciousness - shockingly tasty slow cooked suckling pig with crunchy, unctuous crackling, romanesco cabbage two tiny yellow explosively hot chillis which I was warned to be careful with, baby sweet corn (for once not all uninteresting), a wilted pak choi-like leaf and what was called eucalyptus, rosemary and thyme potato tart. A rustic, full-on indulgence rather perhaps like an exotic Sunday lunch and none the worse for that. 

  Then a highly enjoyable dessert - limon de cielo - a very appealing soft, creamy lime and lemon curd meringue tart on which was perched a pisco-poached physalis.  

And it looked very pretty too.

  

  The Head Chef of Chakana is Robert Ortiz who had worked as Head Chef at Michelin-starred Lima restaurant in London until 2019. This present Moseley restaurant gets its name from the ancient Incan cross which was used by indigenous Peruvian cultures. The chakana is said to represent the sun, sea and land (oh yes! that’s Moseley alright) and it promotes the concept of people of living in harmony with each other and their environment. After a visit to Chakana I very much felt that I was living in harmony with … Moseley.

201. Peruvian Street Food in Longbridge.

 

  I have expressed in previous Blogs my lack of excitement when faced with the threat of having to consume Street Food. I have had one or two overpriced stinkers in my time and all eaten uncomfortably seated on some stray street bench somewhere or the other with a gale whipping around me, drizzle in the air and the dog looking utterly miserable.

  Digbeth Dining Club made consuming street food in Birmingham somewhat more comfortable and, more importantly, cool, (or whatever word is now used to denote cool) and eventually sent out little satellites on a regular basis so that street food was not just confined to the inner city (by which I mean Digbeth and, lattetly, the Jewellery Quarter) but also suburban neighbourhoods and notably distant, near-rural Longbridge. 

  On 19 November 2021 St Modwen, the company which redeveloped Longbridge, with Digbeth Dining Club, opened Herbert’s Yard, named after Herbert Austin who founded the Longbridge motor factory, to house diners buying street food from stalls set up by regular stall holders of Digbeth Dining Club. There are dozens of tables which from the first day attracted hundreds of people local to south west Birmingham and northern Worcestershire - families, the young, the old and … their dogs. At last - street food at Longbridge in dry, spacious, wind-free surroundings (and Longbridge can be so wondrously windy that any denizen of Digbeth would believe that they had been transported to another planet by gastronomic aliens). 

  South west Birmingham has no restaurant to thrill the gourmand and so Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Herbert’s Yard is an opportunity not to be missed with approximately six Digbeth Dining Club stall holders turning up every week to sell their wares; the vendors changing every week. On the opening day I ate Taiwanese style with a delicious spicy jackfruit bao and in contrast then turned my attention to a hot dog but the size of the ‘jumbo’ sausage’ was far too excessive for my taste and Lucy The Labrador came to my aid and polished it off. The accompanying crispy onions were also no substitute for sweet gently fried onions which are traditional accompaniments with hot dog - sometimes change is not always for the better.

  I was unable to revisit Herbert’s Yard for a couple of weeks being away in Ludlow and Lichfield dining very well as previously reported. However on a return visit I was delighted to find that there was a stall there named Chakanita, run by those behind the Michelin-plated Chakana Peruvian-style restaurant situated in Moseley (and which was recently gushingly reviewed by Jay Rayner in a swooning ecstasy after visiting Chakana). There was no competition for my interest this week. It had to be Chakanita. It had to be Peruvian. After all, how often can you eat food prepared by a Michelin-listed establishment in these distant outer reaches of the city?

  We must remember that this was street food, prepared on relatively primitive cooking devices in a wooden shack. Not a smart Michelin-listed, food critic-pleasing, restaurant in a wealthy, Champagne- socialist, inner suburb of the city. I had long viewed Chakana as a restaurant I really must visit but I have an aversion to Moseley which I find hard to overcome and I still had not summoned up the moral fortitude to head to Moseley to enable me to eat at Chakana. But here was Chakana, or its smaller wayward sibling at least, plying its trade in modest Longbridge. 

 I chose a chicken tomale with an excellent, fresh spicy salsa which proved to be very edible indeed. The chicken was nicely cooked and the slickness was perfect. The pork in a blue corn bun - not a lot to say about it except that it gave a lot of pleasure.

  These few minutes of pleasure at Herbert’s Yard were the spur I needed and when I returned home I reserved a table at Chakana for a few days time. It was time to overcome my Moseleyphobia and set off to see if I could also experience Jay Rayner’s ecstasy at Birmingham’s mothership of Peruvian cuisine. The excitement of anticipation is growing already.