200. Craft.

 

  As this strange year draws to a close I can not help but muse about the remarkably excellent dishes I have eaten in this end of year period. After recently waxing lyrical about meals at Smoke in Hampton In Arden and in some excellent restaurants in Lichfield (see recent Blogs) I must now celebrate again a truly excellent meal back here in Birmingham at Craft Dining Room prepared by Chef Jake Smith, originally from Herefordshire, along of course with Chef-Patron Andrew Sheridan (see Blog 163).

  Finding our way through a restaurant set up like a motionless dance of the seven veils, see below, my dining companion and I were a little taken aback by the changes to the decor and the seating; the latter now taking the form of backless benches instead of the very attractive gold and silver chairs which made the once spacious restaurant look so very attractive when it was first opened. But Helena, now in charge of front of house it seemed, guided us safely to our benches and low table as though through solid mists which the diaphanous curtains surrounding each table.resembled. We thought the decorations were not too appealing, especially with the dark wall colouring and the absence of normal light. But no matter, it was the food that we were there for.

  We chose the £60 six course meal and the price included a pleasing cherry flavoured cocktail. But the food was what really mattered and each course was an absolute delight. The bread was a very eatable sourdough with a black garlic butter and this was turned into a full first course by serving it with an egg shell containing the elements of a deconstructed Welsh rarebit made from Lincolnshire Poacher cheese served in an egg shell which was clever and very tasty (illustrated above).

  The next course was a delicious goats cheese cream with chive oil, artichoke and artichoke crisps. A delicious dish with a lot of originality and I remarked to my companion how pleasing it was to have a vegetable starter, which are now almost de rigeur, that was not a variation on the carrot theme. Thence to the first main course - a memorable beef tartare with an apt amount of acidity coupled with a tempura coated oyster, hollandaise and lovage oil. I did not really get a lot of flavour from the meaty oyster but it was still a  pleasing dish. 

  Then to the second main course of partridge breast with a very tasty partridge drumstick with parsley oil, pearl barley and partridge sauce with accompanying delightfully crispy tartlets with sweet beetroot and apple. It was apparent, as is usually the case at Craft Dining Room, that Chef had gone the extra mile to produce not just tasty but interesting, exciting and beautiful, often delicate, presentations of the fine, usually local, ingredients used in the meals.  This was a lovely seasonal dish.

  Next, the excellent pre-dessert, an excellent transitional dish, of yogurt cream with a yogurt sorbet and fabulously tasty fennel crumble. A great combination.

  And then to the final pleasure of chocolate mousse in a chocolate mille feuille with a Palma violet-flavoured crunchy element and more Parma violet in the sorbet. Served to those in a state of Bliss who have lead a good life on this Earth, or so it should be.

    What a pleasure it always is to lunch or dine at Craft. The decor and seating may have seemed rather strange to my dining companion and myself - it was mildly claustrophobic being surrounded by the forest of net curtains but the food was very fine and the service attentive and excellent. We admired the efforts put in to put local Midlands food and drink on the menu but such admirable intentions have their weakness - as we found on previous visits long before lockdown, English red wines are just not up to accompanying robust dishes of beef and red meats and the restaurant struggles to provide a dessert wine (I suggested Helena tries Yoxall Ice Dessert Cider which originates from near Lichfield and which I had thoroughly enjoyed on visits to Smoke in Hampton In Arden and Rob Palmer’s pop-up at Thyme Kitchen in Lichfield).

  Apart from the excitement of trying to avoid any possible Minotaur lurking amid the maze of curtains the restaurant’s decor added further interest to dining there by displaying art by the local but Lyons-born artist, Frédéric Daty, obtained from neighbouring Castle Fine Art, including an enjoyable Peaky Blinders piece.

  Food, art and …. literature. On sale in the restaurant. Andrew Sheridan, like a number of other distinguished local chefs has written a beautiful book, not surprisingly perhaps titled 8, which details many of his fine recipes. It is a lavish and richly luxurious book, a literary equivalent of an evening at About 8. A great addition to a library devoted to West Midlands gastronomy. Both Andrew Sheridan and Jake Smith were kind enough to fleetingly leave the kitchen to sign my copy. 

  I was interested to hear that there is a plan for 2022 where Craft will hold a programme of meals, each week the dishes connected to the six counties of the West Midlands (I take it that they will be the traditional counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire and will ignore the modern invention of West Midlands County). I think that is very exciting and I hope to visit all six.

Peaky Binders by Frédéric Daty

Signed by Andrew Sheridan and Jake Smith.

  There was disappointing news from the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals when one of two West Midlands chefs appearing in the programme was eliminated in the quarter finals. Sadly former Chef de Partie at Adam’s restaurant, Yasmine Selwood, failed to get into the semi-finals firstly cooking a paneer curry - paneer cheese cooked in curry oil, chilli curry sauce and peas, green tomatoes, fennel and apricot lime pickle and a cumin flat bread topped with halloumi - as her response to a brief which required a dish showcasing cheese. The judges felt that she could have done more with her dish.

  The next task was to prepare a two course meal for three critics including Jay Rayner and Tracey MacLeod. She prepared an over-simple starter of green and white asparagus with crispy egg finished with Parmesan, truffle and lemon zest but the egg was severely overcooked with the yolk being almost solid and not at all runny.the main coarse was goat loin cooked in spiced butter with curried carrot purrée, Scotch bonnet Jersey royal potatoes, pickled hispi cabbage, grilled grillotte onion and a red wine jus but the judges felt that the curry element of the dish was largely missing and Marcus Wareing felt that the dish was lacking “energy and power”.

  The result was clear and the outcome inevitable but Selwood remained charming and pleasant throughout.

 

  Michelin Guide Tweet watch.

The latest visits of Michelin Guide inspectors indicated by ‘tweets’ are:-

4 December - Prithvi in Cheltenham. The restaurant already has a Michelin Plate.

  I was interested to read that Andrew Birch who was Head Chef at Forelles in Ludlow, then the Wild Rabbit at Kingham, then at Ellenborough Park outside Cheltenham, all of which I am familiar with, has now left his role at Gordon Ramsay’s Savoy Grill where he had a six month contract after moving there from Lainston House in Winchester. He is planning to open a new venue in the new year along with his wife Rachel who is also a chef. Will he return to the West Midlands?

143. Day By Day, Lockdown’s End Approaches.

Nice packaging.

 

As the days slip away towards the reopening of restaurants, my anticipation grows ever more consuming. You might say I have a consuming anticipation to consume. The weather is really very soothing, warm, sunny, blue-skyed. It’s a sort of gastronomic purgatory with the culinary gates of heaven being oiled so that all we forgiven sinners can flood through them as they swing wide open. No more cook-at-homes, which were one of the circles of hell. No more food boxes delivered to my door which recalled the food parcel gifts generous American sent to English acquaintances during World War II.

  The final stretch. Sitting outside hostelries and cafès glugging coffee and perhaps a pastry. The date of Renaissance is creeping ever closer. But purgatory has a few more weeks to run. Next week I am off for dinner at Craft Dining Room’s outdoor Firepit to celebrate a friend’s birthday and that will be, for me, the first Act of The Apostles. Indoor restaurant dining will recommence not long after that.

   Life is resuming - last week lunch outside at the home of the same friend who reminded me of a true pleasure by feeding me with a Charlie Bigson’s exquisite lasagne, his wife being away on grandchild childcare duties and so not available to render up one of her own equally exquisite lasagnes. How pleasing it was to be reminded of this brand which had drifted outside the increasingly limited boundaries of my memory - there’s a pandemic going on, people are falling down like flies, Boris says you’ve got to stay at home and avoid all human contact (but mercifully the company of dogs is not forbidden) and there you are, there’s something great out there and you’ve forgotten all about it. But this memory of pleasure has now been returned to my locker of happy knowledge and in consequence I have just consumed a plate of Bigson’s chicken jalfrazi, nicely heated up/cooked in the oven in its charming little wooden boxes. The rice was perfect and the chicken was spot on in its spiciness and riven with a delicious butteriness. Having had my memory restored I am now fated to be utterly dedicated in my pursuit of Charlie Bigson meals in these dying embers of this ‘lockdown’. Very good value, wonderfully edible and so much easier than messing around with posh restaurant cook-at-home boxes.

  Meanwhile this year’s Great British Menu travels on its journey around all the regions. This week’s ‘North-east’ heat features four chefs none of whom actually work in the north-east (two of course work in London, one in the Midlands and the other at Winteringham Fields in north-east Lincolnshire (and no, north-east Lincolnshire is not in north-east England unless you have a disordered sense of geography)). What is worse is that it is wholly predictable - every week - as to which chefs will be eliminated at the end of Day 1 and Day 2; it’s almost as though they’ve been selected as cannon-fodder to be blown to metaphorical pieces to make way for the two more prestigious chefs to battle it out in front of Waldorf and Statler and the third judge whose presence remains as superfluous as when she first appeared though no-one actually noticed that she had. Andi Oliver’s commanding presence combining empathy and knowledge is all that makes it worthwhile for the first two nights of the week till W and S turn up.

  Tomorrow is St George’s Day. And Shakespeare’s birthday. And the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Perhaps I should have a celebratory pie (or should it be a pithivier? - no, definitely a pie).

The eating of a very special pie in Titus Andronicus.

103. Planned Reopenings.

  Not all of Birmingham’s leading restaurants plan to reopen at the prescribed hour on the prescribed day when COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed by the government of Boris Johnson.

  Various notifications have come through:-

Purnells. 4 July 2020. The restaurant is planning 2 special dinners to celebrate reopening as well as the 13th anniversary of its first opening but at a time like this is the thirteenth anniversary really one to go to? I’d like to make a reservation but I am superstitious. We old blokes must be careful you know.

Folium. 5 August 2020.

The Wilderness. 7 September 2020.

Simpsons. No date of opening yet announced.

Adam’s. August, date unspecified.

Opheem - 2 July 2020

The 11 June 2020 edition of the Birmingham Post published a detailed article by Sanjeeta Bains on the plans various restaurants were making for their reopening including the news that Craft Dining Rooms had spent £3000 on a thermal imaging camera to help to detect any customers or staff with a raised body temperature. I’m not sure whether that was money well-spent as people with COVID-19 might not have raised temperatures and yet be just as infectious as if they did, so the camera might easily provide a false sense of security. But no-one can deny that the restaurant is doing its best to help diners feel comfortable when returning there.

86. Pulperia Fails To Open As Planned. Lunch At Maribel Instead.

  Not so much Buenos Aires as Venice. At least that’s what you’d think when you first see the building in Brindley Place in which Aktar Islam’s much awaited and much hyped, newly opened Argentine restaurant, Pulperia, is located.

  I had a reservation to give it a try and so I duly turned up a few minutes before the appointed hour only to be told that due to problems food was not being served for lunch at present. The restaurant manager had tried to get hold of me but the message seemed not to have arrived. Well it all looked very nice but I shall have to wait for another day to give the food a try. The entrance itself is very swish and classy-looking. What a great location.

  But there I was. I’d braved the public transport wincing every time someone on the train or tram gave a cough and I had meticulously tried to avoid touching anything where infected hands may have been first but my Coronavirus-threatened journey seemed to have been all in vain,

.Then I remembered that just across the square was that very decent restaurant Maribel formerly Edmund’s and then Edmunds Bistro de Luxe (see Blogs 59 and 81). It wasn’t busy and I was given a table. The decor style looks as chic as it did on my visit there last year but the choice of carpet colour was plainly disastrous as it shows up the multiple marks of a wet and muddy winter and leaves the poor carpet screaming, “Clean me!”. The lunchtime menu represents very good value and gives a remarkably good amount of choice.

  It’s easy to take the bread for granted but I loved the little sweetish beer and malt loaf with yeast butter. It went down very nicely with my Hendricks and Schweppes tonic. There’s nothing wrong with Schweppes’ products even though Fever Tree has risen to trendy popularity for the present.

  To the starter. I chose ‘pork, langoustine, ginger’. A pleasing dish was served - well-cooked pork belly (I know I never miss the opportunity to complain about being served yet another dish of pork belly but this was tasty and nicely coloured and completely lacking the anaemic pallor that is bestowed on anything that’s been lying around in a water bath for an hour or two) with some tasty little langoustines and an excellent bisque with some apt slices of leek.The spices placed it all in south east Asia which is never a bad place for food to hail from.

  The main course was an amiable piece of halibut tasting just as it should on a bed of puy lentils which are usually pretty horrible things but here worked very well, little tasty florets of grilled cauliflower and a champagne sauce. A fine little dish.

  Finally to the dessert of a crispy wafer-thin pastry with balls of apple, apple ice cream, little dots of a parsnip-flavoured cream (very good) and underneath it all Calvados-soaked golden raisins adding to the pleasure of the dish.

  It is 6 months or so since the young Head Chef, Harvey Perttola, took over the reins of Maribal from  the hoary, now-retired Richard Turner and he has established a good solid menu of pleasing well-cooked food. Maribel is not the best-situated quality restaurant in the city centre area. It’s a distance from the main hub of the city though now that the tram travels up to Centenary Square it is more easily arrived at by public transport. There’s a lot of competition in the immediate area with a number of chain restaurants and the pending opening of Pulperia places another quality restaurant within a few yards of it. Also on the way back to the tram stop there’s the lure of Craft Dining Room. 

  Everywhere you look there’s growing competition for quality restaurants in Birmingham and we may be on the point of seeing people stop going out to dine as the Coronavirus epidemic starts to bite. Spring is just starting. I wonder which restaurants will be around when autumn is drawing to a close here in Birmingham and the West Midlands. The Michelin Star 2021 revelation ceremony will take place on 19 October 2020 at the Camden Roundhouse (in London naturally) (there will also be a separate Bib Gourmand ceremony for the first time at a venue yet to be announced) and one wonders which of the 2020 winners will still be in business if the virus outbreak really takes grip. We must wait and see.

  On the way to the tram stop from my lunch at Maribel I did indeed pass Craft Dining Room and took the opportunity to photograph its dining pods. Interesting I think.