493. Summer - Colmore Food Festival 2025.

 

   Summer Heat. The Colmore Food Festival (Friday 4 July and Saturday 5 July) was once more up and running and baking in the bright, burning sunshine and it was all looking rather good with a large number of stalls all serving food and drink with the attending crowd was clearly ‘up for it’. I turned up on both days with my new Labrador pup (I had not realised that the day was going to get so hot so quickly but I kept her cool, don’t worry) late morning and the numbers of people in town seemed unprecedented - not only was the Food Festival taking place but there were thousands from home and abroad there to attend the farewell concert of the veteran Birmingham music, Black Sabbath.

  There was no time to lose. It would clearly be too hot to hang around for too long in the heat and so, on the first morning, I did a quick turn around the stalls and decided to sample the wonderful Fish and Chips’ from the Adam’s and Oyster Club stand. This was the best street food I could ever remember eating. There were four supremely well-cooked giant prawns in the lightest of tempura and served with a nicely minted pea purée and string chips. It was delicious. The prawns had a perfect texture and contentment settled on me.

  The dog and I did another turn around the stalls and I eventually alighted at the Isaac’s stall and opted for a whole Yorkshire pudding stuffed with braised beef and garnished with chives. This was not as delicious as I was expecting- the meat was very well cooked and approaching a pleasing unctiousness but the Yorkshire pudding was too dampened by the soft meat. Probably it wasn’t the right dish to choose on such a hot day and that may have cooled my ardour for it.

  It was clearly by then too hot to expect Lucy to tolerate any more of it so we headed back home and returned at much the same time to find the crowds even bigger and keen to sample the fare. Firstly, to the Asha’s stand where I enjoyed very much a gorgeously lamb kebab with soothing mint sauce and a lovely fresh salad of various leaves. A very fine dish.

  Afterwards to the Pasture stand. This is a well thought of steak restaurant at the end of Colmore Row. I had not yet got around to dining there but clearly I must. I chose the ‘Pastureburger’ which as burgers go was very good and that coming from someone who is not top of the list of burger lovers. This was nicely cooked, the meat succulent and well seasoned. There was a good slice of cheese and it was a burger I would happily eat again and especially when seated in a comfortable, smart, spacious restaurant as Pasture appears to be.

  It was again becoming too hot to expect the dog to hang around in the full glare of the sun raining down on Victoria Square but I did want to see a couple of food demonstrations so we walked the short distance to Chamberlain Square and Lucy seemed happy enough in this location. A mobile kitchen served as a demonstration stand and Glynn Purnell was already speaking demonstrating in his usual and easy style the preparation of pan-fried stone bass on an ajo blanco topped with buttered grapes, butter beans and rocket and then moving on to a dish of crispy aubergine in a spiced tempura batter with a honey-truffle soy dressing. Lucy and I sat on the steps to listen and found ourselves next to a mildly grumpy, very tiny chihuahua in the company of a woman who introduced us to both the dog and to herself, she being Glynn Purnell’s partner and we had a nice chat about the upcoming opening of Purnell’s new restaurant at Snow Hill as well as having the chance to sample the excellent tempura dish. I also managed to eat most of my Pastureburger though it was eventually seized by my lusting canine and she got her first taste of that particular form of beef. She too seemed to be be impressed.

  Purnell was followed by Matt Powell, the Group Director of Hotel du Vin hotels including Birmingham’s branch of the upmarket chain, and he gave an excellent demonstration of how to prepare a Mont Blanc soufflé with a Parmesan sauce and Rich Juragel.

  Back in Victoria Square, Lucy and I paused to listen to a wonderful three man trombone band, Keep Off the Grass, and I visited the Alchemist stand and self-indulgently ordered myself a second Red Zombie. By then there were hundreds of people in Victoria Square and Birminghamseemed to be having its very best day in quite a long time.

The remaining demonstrations were:-

  Finally, it’s worth mentioning that visitors to the Festival were handed a free ‘Colmore Cookbook’ which was very nicely produced and certainly on my part, received with gratitude as a splendid souvenir of a memorable event. The book included recipes from chefs at La Bellezza in Chamberlain Square (giant raviolo carbonara), Dishoom in Chamberlain Square (‘The Kejriwal’ - cheese and egg, spiced up, on toast), Hotel du VIn in Church Street (Côte de porc - pork chop, creamed cabbage and red wine jus), Orelle Colmore Row (Strawberry gazpacho and Cucumber and Granny Smith apple granita with basil), recently opened Regina’s in Newhall Street where Purnell’s Bistro and The Asquith were once located (Saltimbocca monkfish roulade) and Tiger Bites Pig in Church Street (Beef shin with chilli and black vinegar). The cover is depicted at the head of this Blog.

331. Summer Rain (3 - Vines With A View; Colmore Food Festival).

 

  During the course of my many decades on this earth I have never before been to the top floor of the Rotunda. I remember the excitement surrounding its construction in the 1960s. The new Bullring seemed like one of the modern wonders of the world to we provincial suburbanites and there, towering above it all, was The Rotunda, magnificent, rampant, dominant. My darling grandmother who entered this world in 1900 came home one day to say that she had now seen the completed behemoth and that it was so tall you had to lie on your back to see the top of it! How perceptions change. 

  Now dwarfed by much around it, the old Bullring long bulldozed away - just as its predecessor had been in the 1960s - the Rotunda stands still as the finest and most memorable, and most loved, remnant of Birmingham City Council’s mid 20th century assault on the fine old city as glorious Victorian and Edwardian buildings were pulled down to make way for the philistine brutalism which replaced them. The Rotunda, and the neighbouring Smallbrook Queensway, which a new generation of philistine councillors is lining up to be demolished, were the only really tolerable products of the 1960s Birmingham architectural revolution that it was ever a pleasure to look at.

  And now, I was finally going to visit the top of the Rotunda myself - how exciting - to spend a couple of very enjoyable hours quaffing wine nicely selected by the maestro, sommelier at the Wilderness, Sonal Clare and nibbling nibbles under the watchful eye of Alex Claridge. There were some particularly delicious crostini on offer and some pleasant people to speak to. Aptly named ‘Vine with a view’, Clare had selected four very pleasing wines to sample and enjoy and the weather was behaving in a sympathetic way so that standing on the balcony of the twentieth floor, an excellent view of various aspects of the city could be taken in.

  Messrs Claridge and Clare, an excellent name combination to add to their other fine points, had amusingly chosen to serve their guests in hotel bathrobes though fortunately the same apparel was not expected to be worn by those being entertained. Birmingham has such clever leaders in the hospitality business presently but they also have their serious side. I was glad to have a couple of minutes chatting to Alex Claridge about his recent appointment by Mayor Andy Street as nighttime economy tsar for the West Midlands. The local hospitality industry has a fine - and realistic - representative in the form of Alex Claridge.

  How nice it was, too, to have a goodie bag to take home afterwards and inside a can of Rotunda Pale. The question is, should this work of art be opened or the ale left untouched with the art intact? To be or not to be, that is the question.

  The summer rains continued. Three days after the trip to the Rotunda, I took Lucy the Labrador along to the 2023 Colmore Food Festival. It was a day of constant deluge and it was so diluvian that the dog, for once, assented to wearing a waterproof coat to keep her back dry. Effort had been put in to the arrangements for the festival and a number of local food and drink businesses were represented there in St Phillip’s churchyard. And when they built it they did come - that is - a respectable number of members of the public were there to support the event given the nastiness of the weather.

  I don’t think they’ve quite got it right. It is a ‘food festival’ with mostly better class street food and entertainment but much of the entertainment has nothing to do with food, being made up mostly of local school choirs and bands - as charming and talented as they were plus a tragically camp host who, one must admit, worked hard to invigorate the proceedings and only very occasional references to food on the stage. Perhaps one of the organisers should visit Ludlow this September to see what a real ‘food festival’ should be like.

  I sampled food from the recently opened Bundobust - I thoroughly enjoyed the spicy chickpea curry though the onion bhajis I also chose were less pleasing - their contents seemed to have become infected with strips of moderately tough spinach. Don’t do it - if your cooking onion bhajis make them full of sweet, delicious onions, adding spinach will make little difference to the healthiness of a splendidly deep fried pleasure such as the onion bhaji and will detract from the pleasure of it.

  The Purnell’s stall served up a somewhat esoteric ‘Glynn’s sausage roll’ which, though having pleasing pastry, did not really contain sausage, the contents having the appearance, both visually and gustatorially, of pulled meat and in the end it was not really all that enjoyable especially at £5 for a small slice. There was an accompanying crunchy coleslaw which was more enjoyable texturally rather than by way of flavour.

  Finally an excellent, hot and tangy Thai red curry from the Zen Metro stall. It was full of tasty, lean, tender beef and a delicious sauce helped it down in a most enjoyable way. A good way to wrap up a wet by happy lunchtime.

  By the way, the organisers, Colmore Bid, looked after their canine guests very well, with free biscuits and chews being generously offered and bowls of water at hand.

25. Colmore Food Festival 2018.

  In burning sun, the 8th Colmore Food Festival opened today in Victoria Square. As Lucy The Labrador and I walked up to the square, keeping in the shade as much as possible, we heard the sound of a steel drum band. We entered the square at the Town Hall side where two stages were set up - one for cookery demonstrations and the other for other entertainments. After the necessary opening speech by the rather dreary Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council (politicians so lacking in charisma really shouldn't be seen at such fun public events) the show got underway with a fine cocktail-making demonstration by one of the excellent bar men from Purnell's Bistro but the dog and I had to move away after a few minutes because the scorching sun to which the audience, accommodated appropriately in deckchairs, was getting just a little too hot for the Labrador to bear.

  We went in search of food and shade and dealing with the first need we headed for the Asha's stall and bought a helping of some magnificent chilli garlic chicken tikka which was truly delicious. On to the stall belonging to The Old Joint Stock where I selected a fine Mini chicken tikka pie with coconut and coriander served with an excellent mash and red wine gravy. Lucy and I sat in the shade at the end of Waterloo Street sharing the excellent pie - fine pastry indeed - and then we prepared for Round 3. Before we could set off however a man dressed as a large red chicken came along quite unexpectedly and Lucy amused the surrounding crowd by having a sustained loud bark at the strange creature, a performance she was to repeat later when 2 human pigeons strutted along beside us.

  Round 3 proved to be disappointing - I bought a Chinese tapas from Chung Ying Central - the deep fried prawn was satisfactory and the prawn dumpling seemed to be generously stuffed with prawns but the Vietnamese spring roll was quite horrible, the contents tasted quite unpleasant and the surrounding pastry could easily have been constructed from old leather.

  Finally after another sit in the shade, Lucy and I headed for the Zen Metro Thai Restaurant stall and thoroughly enjoyed the generous helping of Spicy wok chicken which indeed was very spicy. I definitely needed to cool my mouth down so we rounded off our visit to the Colmore Food Festival with a visit to Gingers Bar stall and I had a most refreshing Thyme For A Pimms cocktail.

  The Colmore Food Festival, which this year hosted stalls from about 30 Food and drink businesses homed in the Colmore Business District, is now well established as an important feature of the Birmingham food scene - it seems to grow from strength to strength.