165. Adams.

  Professional food critics and Tripadvisers all agree that Adams is the best restaurant in Birmingham and probably the whole of the West Midlands. Two out of three visits there in the past led me to conclude that that statement was probably not the case. Excellent in many ways but too many faults for my liking but who I am to be at odds with Tripadvisers and those that get paid for reviewing food? So, it was time to return and to discover how much I would enjoy lunch there after a break from visiting Waterloo Street.

  Adams as we know, started life as a pop-up in Bennett’s Hill before moving to Waterloo street. I visited the pop-up once and felt that while it was pretty good, it was not quite as exciting as I had been led to expect. Then a very fine lunch after its arrival in Waterloo Street and then something of a calamity on a  follow-up visit which involved a double jeopardy of an excessively salty dish (precisely what it was has been blotted out of my memory) and a dish which involved paying a large extra sum to have some tasteless lobster added to the dish involved with no gain at all to the pleasure the dish gave.

Kieron Stevens, Head Chef at Adam’s

 

Tom Shepherd, Head chef 2017-19

 

  I was consequently lacking any real will to return to Adam Stokes’ much admired (by almost the whole world) restaurant where the head chef is presently Kieron Stevens (he trained under David Everett Matthias at the once two-starred Le Champignon Sauvage, see Blog 160, and took over the role from Tom Shepherd in February 2019) but the time had come.

  The restaurant operates like a well-oiled military machine. The staff look smart, the decor is chic, the restaurant is spacious (apart, perhaps, for the bar area which was full when my lunch companion and I arrived meaning that we were led straight through to our table for our preprandial cocktails (I had a fine, sensibly priced and very quaffable negroni) and everyone goes about their work efficiently, politely and effectively. The pace of service is spot on, not stiff and not relaxed. Professional would be the apt adjective in any business that performs the way Adams does. But I thought it was all a little more clinical than I should have liked. I would have liked a little schmoozing to have crept in at some point during the meal. 

  The food was very accurate and impressive. The dishes were presented perfectly and gorgeously. We chose the £80 à la carte menu (really I don’t need 4 starters, 1 main course, 2 desserts and all the extras at lunch time which the tasting menu would have rendered up to me) and the dishes on offer were more attractive on paper than the cheaper lunch menu. But I think this range of menu choices is perfect and the price of the à la carte menu sensibly pitched to ensure that the meal served was not made up of the cheapest ingredients but food of higher quality. What’s the point of going to somewhere rather smart and being fed dishes made from the cheapest cuts of meat and species of fish just to offer a lunch at a cut price? If you’re somewhere grand then let’s have some grand ingredients treated lovingly by an accomplished chef.

 

I chose the starter of delicious lightly salted cod coated with ‘Thai green curry’ with an included side dish of lobster in a crunchy tempura batter with a pleasing satay sauce. A remarkably good dish which could hardly be bettered anywhere else in the city except it included one of my bêtes noirs - fairly tasteless scorched pak choi (the entire national stock of which should be bundled up and exported immediately to the Far East) included in the dish no doubt because of its link with the cuisine this dish recalls and because there was some texture provided by it.

  This starter had been preceded by some happily enjoyable little appetitisers including a cheeky cheesy little chou pastry, a little squid ink wrap enclosing sublime beef tartare with pickles and two of the most fabulously tasting mussels I have ever had the pleasure to put in my mouth floating on a verdant velouté.

  

  My lunch companion and I both opted for the very fine aged sirloin which I greatly enjoyed. It was a precisely cooked plate, the meat could not have been more spot on. The accompanying vegetables were enjoyable but if they had not been there the two slices of beef by themselves would have made for a lordly main course. Accuracy, precision, modern versions of painstakingly cooked classic dishes - I felt was finally getting the measure of Adams..

 

 A predessert based on pineapple was not so palate cleansing as one might have hoped for (nothing does the job like a briskly lemon-flavoured tidbit) and then on to my dessert proper - I had chosen wild strawberries with a violet sorbet - a gem - and a scattering of perfectly matching, crunchy pistachio - a fine summer dessert. I had missed the option of rum baba (hiding under the headline ‘Apricot’) on the menu but my dining companion pounced on it and judged it, with its accompanying almond elements, to be one of those great pleasures in life.

  It was all over bar the coffee and its accompanying petit fours - this time a macaroon with a chocolate filling and another chou pastry but this time sweet and hence providing a clever little symmetry to the whole meal.

  The visit to Adams had dispelled my previous doubts. It serves very fine food indeed. It has the air of being somewhere very special. It is very highly placed in the firmament of Midlands restaurants.

                                                         ______________________

When I was a child*, I partied like a child, I drank Harvey Wallbangers like a child, I was easily pleased like a child. When I became a man I gave up childish ways and entered the dark lands of much more serious cocktails. When I was an old man I frequently visited Purnell’s Bistro (in the company of other old men - don’t worry I never drank alone) and eventually the excellent head barman put Penicillin on the menu. Dark, warm, autumnal, comforting as only an old bloke can appreciate.

(* here a “child” is a young whippersnapper well above the legal age for consuming alcohol.)

  But Purnell’s Bistro is no more and I ask myself where can I get myself my next shot of Penicillin when I need it? Now I rather like the hedonistic luxury of Madeleine at The Grand. Actually I have cravings to be there from time to time, not, I assure you for the alcohol (though that is an added bonus) but for the sheer pleasure of being there. It really is very nice, a few negronis and antique negronis have passed my lips in that very pleasant environment and now I have gone one step further and entered the land of the Boulevardier and one further step has taken me to making this dark drink myself, Satanic in its deliciousness, positioned I’m sure somewhere strategic in one of the Circles of Hell, and rather pleased I am with my Frankenstein creation. I have not quaffed a Penicillin yet since the reopening but I’m quite happy sitting around with my Boulevardier and letting the tormented world sail on by.

160. Wild Mushroom In Gloucestershire

 

  Quite where the West Midlands ends and where the West Country begins is debatable. The big question to ask is “Is Gloucestershire in The Midlands or the South West?” I claim the northern-most two thirds of the county for The Midlands, certainly it was an important part of the Kingdom of Mercia, and allow what is the fairly recently invented administrative area of South Gloucestershire to be placed in the West Country. This gives a lover of West Midlands food the bulk of the highly thought of restaurants in Gloucestershire to add to his list of places to visit - nowhere more so than the fine and extremely affluent town of Cheltenham, location for a long time of what was the West Midlands only two Michelin starred restaurant, Le Champignon Sauvage.

  So, on a fine June day with Lucy The Labrador necessarily resting in the coolness of the house, I set off for Birmingham city centre and to take the 40 minute train journey from New Street to Cheltenham and lunch at David Everett Matthias’ now one starred restaurant. I had lunched there twice before, both times when it had still held two stars. On the first visit the meal had been fine but not enough, I thought, to hold two stars and the second visit, not long before it lost its second star, was verging on the catastrophic with some fine, beautifully cooked little pieces of plaice near enough submerged in an unpleasantly bitter beurre noisette and under a monstrous pile of broad beans, rendered inedible by their sheer number. If any Michelin inspector had a similar experience then it is hardly surprising that the second star had been lost.

  Still that was then and this is now ....

 

 My most recent visit to Le Champignon Sauvage was an altogether happier experience. A lunch of great pleasure. The food served was immaculate and it was clear why the Michelin inspectors still favour this place. Finely judged, accurate, precise cooking where the ingredients indisputably completed each other; this was the work of a doyen, no gimmicks but still fresh and modern, I could wax lyrical about the meal for some time.

  There was, as well, a doyenne in front of house, one who knows how to interact perfectly with her diners - Helen Everett Matthias, chef’s wife and she had excellent and charming support. The dining room looked fresh, bright and spacious and the several paintings on the walls added to the air of good taste matched with comfort and one felt one had permission to sit back and relax and enjoy what was to come. 

  And it was indeed hard not to enjoy what was to come. My dining companion had the set lunchtime menu which was extraordinarily good value with some excellent dishes which, though he is often a curmudgeonly sort, left him singing the restaurant’s praises and unable to find any faults.

  I opted for the more expensive à la carte menu which was rather more than three courses. To start two delicious appetisers - a splendidly powerfully cheesy one and a “Please Sir I want more!” fishy one. Then there was a charming little bowl of savoury but not even vaguely wobbly pannacotta, the lack of wobble was not an issue, and a choice of four excellent-looking breads - we both chose a generously-sized onion-flavoured brioche. I was by then we’ll set on a course that told me that if I had not particularly enjoyed myself in the past, I was certainly going to do so that day.

  And so to the dishes mentioned on the menu. A sumptuous starter of finely cooked, ‘lightly poached’ hake which emphasised Everett Matthias’ reputation for precise and perfectly judged cooking. It was a beautiful plate, bridal in its lovely whiteness, enhanced by the white asparagus and textured with the hazelnut bon bons. A scattering of sea herbs made their contribution to flavour and texture and their greenness added little contrasts of colour to add to the visual pleasure of the dish. What a memorable picture it makes and what a joyous memory the taste and texture leave with the diner lucky enough to have been served it.

  For the main course I embarked on the dish of Highfield Farm poussin, Chef’s expertise shining through in its cooking, with poussin cream and and finely flavoured slowly roasted onion and seasonal asparagus, every dish should have one at this time of year. Another picture on the plate and a delight in the mouth.

 

 The dessert alas was a disappointment to me. I chose ‘roasted white chocolate and apricot mousse’, apricot and basil sorbet and almond. What appeared was not what I was expecting - the mousse was served in cannelloni - fair enough though I did not pick up the flavour of apricot and this was served with a bitter chocolate sorbet sitting on a bed of crushed nuts and raspberries scattered around. The raspberries were a fine foil to the mousse but the bitter chocolate, which would have been a dream to the connoisseur of extravagantly dark chocolate, was far too bitter for the mousse and overwhelmed it. If there had been a problem with the apricot and basil sorbet then it would have been best to omit the sorbet altogether than to assault the mousse with the very bitter chocolate.

  My happiness with the meal bounced back with the astonishingly excellent six different petit fours served with the coffee.

  Apart from the dessert turning out to be different from what I was expecting and, I thought, the chocolate sorbet proving to be far too aggressive in flavour for the other ingredients of the dessert to bear, this was an excellent meal by, as I wrote above, one of the West Midlands’ doyens of restaurant cuisine.