256. Café De Paris by Didier.

  The dog and I have committed ourselves to touring the West Midlands in easy bite-sized journeys. Over the decades I’ve experienced the horrors of international travel to 115 countries, visited some wonderful places, stayed in some remarkable hotels and dined rather well but on the other hand I have also endured trips to pretty awful spots on this globe, stayed in cockroach infested hotels, been offered food to eat that the dog would most assuredly have turned her nose up at, been in a city where a coup was taking place, been in Kuwait just before the Iraqi invasion, been given rides in lorries along roads on sheer cliff faces where the road has been half washed away, been close to being arrested in Eritrea for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, stuck in Athens for days on end when I needed to get home because of that wretched Icelandic volcano … the list goes on. Frankly I can’t do it any more. So touring the West Midlands in bite-sized chunks of journeys is just up our street. 

  And we’ve covered a lot of ground. So where to go next? Well I hadn’t been to Stourbridge for about fifty years. So Stourbridge it was. And what did I discover there quite by accident? The newly opened Café de Paris by Didier. Didier, I thought, could that be Didier Philpott whose Toque D’Or was listed by Michelin 20 years ago and who was also chef patron at Edmund’s? A quick google revealed that yes it was - it was the legendary Didier Philpott, now 44 years in the business. So there was nothing to do but reserve a table and head back to Stourbridge for dinner to see how this chef was faring in his new venture.

  Serendipity had resulted in my discovering the Café de Paris’ existence and sometimes the best things happen as a result of serendipity. Firstly there was the fun and bemusement caused by Stourbridge’s own, probably unique, rail service which involves travelling by a normal train to a station called Stourbridge Junction and then boarding a strange little one carriage train on a single track which dawdles backwards and forwards pleasantly and uneventfully to Stourbridge Town.

  And so to the restaurant. Bright, modern decor and a pleasant welcome awaited me and I rapidly settled into feeling comfortable and relaxed. Chef and his kitchen staff could be glimpsed through a large window which gave him as good a view of the diners as they got of him. The menu was simple, broadly French and appetising.

  A pleasingly fresh and crusty baton was served with butter from Netherend Farm, the origin of it being indicated by the foil paper containing it (probably best served without I’d have thought though all very honest in this era of cultured butters with various additions inserted in them). Personally I like good honest salted butter. Then the starter of Coquilles St Jacques - very spot-on cooking of the gorgeous scallops served here with pea purée and nicely salty bacon and a herb butter sauce. Rustic, less simple than it looked and enjoyable.

  For my main course I chose boudin noir - delicious blood sausage - with pork shoulder steak which was a little more chewy than I might have wanted, and caramelised apple, 3 little mounds of lovely mashed potato and excellent mustard sauce. Then, for dessert, a finally crafted tarte Parisienne with summer berries. 

  Chef came out of the kitchen and spoke to all his diners. It was interesting to talk to him about the Toque D’Or and Edmund’s and hear his thoughts about where restaurants are now.

  This was a relaxed and satisfying meal. None of the mad scramble we’ve got used to with multiple tiny dishes flying out of the kitchen, front of house staff reciting inaudibly a string of ingredients making up each course, an excess of glasses of wine ushered in as a ‘flight’. It did feel very French. And unpretentious in a well-judged sort of way. It was as though Chef had decided this was his approach, it suited him regardless of the daft madnesses of modern fine dining and if it didn’t suit a Gallic shoulder shrug was the answer. The food looked like it should do - basically it looked like food rather than a post modern piece of art. Happy recognisable flavours. I think that Didier Philpott might just be on to something with his Café de Paris.

249. Black Cod.

 

  After a second visit to Lulu Wild in Brindley Place it’s hard not to conclude that this is one of my favourite restaurants in the city. Lunching with a companion, we were very rapidly made comfortable and at ease in this splendidly exciting modern East Asian restaurant with impeccable front of house service. I had previously visited the restaurant by myself and enjoyed enormously a range of dim sum and we therefore chose the Wild platter, eight different pieces of dim sum, randomly picking four pieces each and both of us enthusing about every mouthful.

  My companion was delighted with his delicious-looking prawn stir fry but I was overwhelmed by my astonishingly superbly cooked miso marinated black cod which was devised by the chef, Nobu Matsuhisa - it was not a second over or under - and thoroughly delicious. A luxurious pairing with accurately cooked asparagus made this one of my favourite, probably the favourite, fish dish of the year so far. We also enjoyed sharing a bowl of egg fried rice.

  For dessert I chose matcha and passion fruit sponge - an excellent light and tasty piece of pleasure - sitting on lime infused vanilla crumble and served with honey and raspberry compote and vanilla sorbet. It was a pleasing end to the meal especially consumed as it was with a paired Yozushu Kodakara (a liquor made with yuzu from Kodakara prefecture) with soda which was pleasingly refreshing.

  Lulu Wild is a fine restaurant based on my two visits there. Both the food and the service appear to be consistently excellent. It is currently on my list of favourite Birmingham restaurants. The Executive Chef is Malaysian-born Derrick Chen who worked previously at the Michelin-starred Hakkasan in London.

  Elsewhere in Brindley Place, it seems that the site of the former Michelin-listed Edmund’s where first Andy Waters and then Didier Philpott were head chefs and afterwards Maribel where Richard Turner was Head Chef for twelve months, and which has been closed since the start of the first lockdown is to become  an establishment called The Gorilla Cafe, “the place for lunch, brunch and bicycle repair”. I give it six months.

  Finally, after a visit to Birmingham  a few weeks ago by a Hollywood actor, Tom Cruise, who stayed at The Grand Hotel and famously had his terrifyingly expensive motor car pinched whilst it was parked outside the hotel and also visited Asha’s where, it is claimed, he thought the curry was so good he ordered, like Oliver Twist, a second helping, a second Hollywood film star, Johnny Depp, fresh from winning a £9 million court case against his former wife, stayed in the Grand on the same night as Lucy The Labrador and myself were there. Again, like Cruise, his hosts thought it appropriate to entertain him with ‘a curry’ and, it is reported, a restaurant on Broad Street, Varanasi, hosted him and his entourage at a cost of £50,000 with him leaving staff “a large tip”. Birmingham is certainly beginning to be the place to be seen.

  The staff at The Grand were very discreet about Depp’s presence at the hotel but I became aware of the hotel’s celebrity guest when we were leaving the building only to be greeted by a large group of Depp enthusiasts, mainly young women, waiting for anyone coming out of the building just in case it was their hero. The group told me for whom they were waiting and patted and fussed the dog. Previously I had thoroughly enjoyed my Full English Breakfast served in Isaac’s restaurant which is once again brought out fresh from the kitchen rather than being left for the customer to serve themself from a buffet. Each item on the plate was delicious except that the homemade ketchup was too acidic for my taste. The scrambled egg was particularly fine and the bacon and sausage were, er, grand.

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. 

81. Great British Menu To Return Fronted By A Comedian.

 It was announced recently that BBC2’s annual Great British Menu will return to our television screens this spring for its fifteenth series with some changes made to it. For the first time the programme will be hosted - by the comedian Susan Calman  - which will inject a piece of downmarket triteness (and somewhere no doubt inclusivity with which the BBC is currently obsessed) not previously witnessed in the history of GBM.
  The already rather stretched competitors will also now be expected to deliver 6 courses with an amuse bouche and a pre-dessert being added to the list of their labours. I assume that this gives 6 chefs the chance to present a dish at the final Banquet which this year has a children’s literature theme. Well, that is probably appropriate. Sometimes one wonders if fine dining really is something like a Mad Hatter’s tea party and it’s true that the BBC really is the nearest thing that we British have to a modern-day Wonderland

Andy Waters

  One question I recently realised that I needed to ask myself was “what happened to Andy Waters?”.
  Andy Waters had had links with Birmingham and the West Midlands for a long time. He started work as a commis chef at Chewton Glen in Hampshire and then came to Birmingham to work at The Plough and Harrow in Edgbaston for 8 years. Subsequently he worked under Paul Bocuse in Lyon in France and then returned to the West Midlands to work at Simpsons when it was situated in Kenilworth and where he was working with Glynn Purnell and Luke Tipping and then opened his own restaurant, Edmund’s (named after his late father who had died tragically at the age of 32), firstly in Henley in Arden in 2002 and later, in 2009, moving it to Brindley Place in Birmingham city centre. He also opened a restaurant at The Queen’s in Belbroughton in Worcestershire.
  Waters sold Edmund’s in 2012 - it became Edmunds Bistro de Luxe with Didier Philpott as Head Chef (he had been Head Chef at his own Toque D’Or in the building in the Jewellery Quarter that was subsequently to become the present home to Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness) - and opened a new restaurant, Waters On The Square, at Five Ways in 2012. However he closed this in 2014 after being approached by Genting Group to become Head Chef in a restaurant it was opening at Resort World at the National Exhibition Centre near Birmingham Airport. The new restaurant was named Andy Waters. Waters ended his association with the restaurant in November 2018 and Aaron Darnley became the new Head Chef there, the restaurant’s name being changed to Sky By Waters.

Didier Philpott at the renamed Edmund’s Bistro de Luxe

 Andy Waters took up the post of Head Chef at Pebble Beach restaurant in Barton on Sea in Hampshire in October 2019 where his menu features modern British dishes.