560. Folium.

 

   Ben Tesh’s Folium remains at the top of my list of my favourite Birmingham and West Midlands restaurants. It remains as comfortable as it ever was, Lucy Hanson remains as perfect in front of house as ever and Ben Tesh continues to serve very fine dishes, meticulously prepared from very fine, seasonal ingredients. For a Friday night dinner, I was pleased to find the restaurant busy and Ben busy in the kitchen working with an accompanying chef while Lucy had front of house support from young waiters who were able to give a good description of each dish brought out as part of the August tasting menu. Let’s waste no time - here there was the signature chicken liver parfait imported from Elysium and served in the familiar crispy, intensely onion flavoured tube; there there was a little crab and brown butter tart - the flavour of crab coming through nicely and injecting some pleasure into life and of course there was Ben Tesh’s magnificent sourdough loaf with his cultured butter, the bread crust so crispy, the interior so soft and fresh and tasty.

  And so to the main dishes - noodles made from Tesh’s signature biodynamic grains in a lovely broth full of umami derived from shitake mushrooms. Then came slow cooked St Ewe’s egg (which for me was the yolk only as I can not bear egg white) coupled with crispy summer brassicas which was exquisite in many ways. The St Ewe’s eggs originate from a Cornwall family business wbich works with farms in Devon, Wales and Northern Ireland and which produces eggs with intensely yellow yolks.

  Then the fish course which brought delightful smoked trout to the table, the richness of the fish balanced by preserved Isle Of Wight tomatoes. Next was beautifully cooked Staffordshire lamb, bringing the true gentle flavour of quality lamb meat and nicely paired with the familiar sweetened chicory which Ben Tesh likes to serve always successfully with these gorgeous meats. The dish was of course finished off with a fine, silky lamb sauce.

  All too soon, the savoury courses were giving way to the desserts - first a clever intermediate dish using beetroot and seasonal plums which was nice as plum crops have not been good this year and then a piece of light, pleasing flaky pastry with apple and the nutty and vanilla flavour of woodruff. Two enjoyable mignardises rounded off the meal and I and my dining companions departed happy with the thought that we had dined well on very fine food created by a very talented, hard working and accomplished chef. Let us hope that Ben and Lucy get their rewards in the pages of the Michelin Guide.

28 August 2026.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞

  For lunch, wishing to eat something tasty but light given that I was visiting Folium for dinner that evening, I took the short walk down Church Street from the Grand Hotel, where Lucy the Labrador and I were staying, to Tiger Bites Pig, and enjoyed a pleasingly moderately spicy roasted Suchuan lamb served on a soft, billowing bao, the meat happily accompanied by slices of pretty scarlet coloured chilli peppers, the whole cooled by soothing cucumber and enlivened by rich, nutty sesame. It’s always a pleasure to visit Tiger Bites Pig and be momentarily whisked away to Taiwan by TBP’s delicious food.

28 August 2026

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

  During my dinner at Folium I was delighted to bump into Sonal Clare, formerly Maître d’hotel at Purnell’s and The Wilderness, who was there with his partner, Laura Kimber, formerly Head Chef at Salt in Stratford-upon-Avon (personally I thought the food served there was never better than when Laura was in charge of the kitchen). Sonal was kind enough to treat me and my companions to a lovely glass of wine and I was able to ask Laura about what she is doing now that Salt is closed. I was delighted to hear that Laura is to open at the beginning of November, her very own restaurant, The Lloyd, in the Shropshire town of Shifnal. I am sure it will be absolutely marvellous and I’m very much looking forward to dining there as autumn quickly marches into winter.

544. Folium. Aiming For A Star.

  In this city we have several restaurants which serve fine food. I put aside the rustic style and the street food type of restaurants - there are several excellent such places in the city which provide delicious and enjoyable food in their own casual styles. But I’m looking for fine food - imaginative, original, seasonal, cooked to perfection, fabulous ingredients, attractively presented but not to the point of style over substance, served in a lovely dining room, the dishes running along the menu all working with each other, drinks on offer which are knowledgable curated. I always find what I am looking for at Folium where Ben Tesh’s sublime cooking and Lucy Hanson’s immaculate service add up to a fine meal indeed.

  It was my birthday though I did not reveal that to the restaurant. But I knew that this dinner was going to be a fine and pleasing birthday gift to myself. So let’s go straight to the food.

  There was of course the irreplaceable chicken liver parfait in a burnt onion tuile. As gorgeous as ever. There was also another lovely snack in the form of a Cornish crab croustade with brown butter. This was the most spectacularly tasty crab dish, if we may call it a dish, that I can ever recall eating. The flavour was powerful and delicious and most importantly it was bursting with the flavour of crab - not every chef can present a crab dish which is so robustly crab - magnificent. There was too, thankfully, Ben Tesh’s own, immediately identifiable and exhaustingly delicious sourdough loaf with his own cultured butter. The bread an absolute peak in bread baking. An irreplaceable part of dining at Folium.

  Then a new dish. ‘Biodynamic’ noodles with lusty shitake mushrooms, the flavour enhanced by a stupendous full-bodied sauce.it seemed chef was on fire this evening. Next, white asparagus, cooked with a bite to them with a sunflower sauce. Excellent.

  Next a generously sized piece of turbot, the cooking spot on, with brassica tuiles and a powerfully flavoured kohlrabi sauce. The brassica was noticeably salty and together with the sauce made a heavy attack on the flavour of the turbot which was rendered flavourless by the accompaniments. This was a great pity and Chef was good enough to allow me to give my opinion on this dish and accept it with good grace. Really, it’s too sad to let turbot to be sunk beneath the waterline by an assault from its accompaniments.

  Balance was restored to the universe by the fabulous next course which brought with it memorably and deliciously sublime Staffordshire lamb with a remarkable lamb sauce. The gorgeous flavour of lamb was as wonderful as I can remember being served and the accompanying chicory matched its natural bitterness with a a lovely sweetness brought to it in its preparation. I wondered if a neat little slab of Dauphinoise might round it all off but the dish was superb as it was

  And the savouries were done with save that I added the cheese course which was made up of four English cheeses, nicely chosen and in good condition, and included an excellent Lincolnshire Poacher and Stinking Bishop, plus Ben’s very own split pea crackers, delicious malt loaf, cube of Brambley apple preserve jelly and green tomato chutney. The first dessert was a delightful celebration of strawberries for now is their time - finely sliced New Forest strawberry with strawberry cream and elderberry. Best described as “lovely”.

 Finally there was an enjoyable Yorkshire curd tart which was very much like a cheesecake. It had a pleasing texture and its accompanying birch syrup ice cream was interesting and enjoyable. To wind there were two mignardises - a beautifully textured bee pollen financier and a fine manjari chocolate and woodruff pleasure.

  Folium had certainly made my birthday something special and as it was a fairly quiet evening I was able to have a little conversation with them both and they signed my menu which was very kind. Ben is working hard to achieve a higher level of recognition than he has already. He’s aiming for the stars and in my opinion the food at Folium has long been deserving of one.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞

22 May 2026

529. Folium New Menu In 2026. Then It Snowed.

 

  Ben Tesh’s Folium remains my favourite restaurant in Birmingham. Somehow it seems like a refuge. A refuge from the madding crowd. A refuge where I feel like I am among friends and where the food served is not bettered anywhere else in Birmingham. A restaurant which is included in the Michelin Guide but which has so far been denied a macaron - a star - which says more about the Michelin inspectors than it does about Folium. Ben Tesh’s cooking is meticulous and inventive and totally consistent and Lucy Hanson’s front of house management is deceptively relaxed but as spot on as the number of knives, forks and spoons nestled in the wooden utensil holder.

  A good friend who had recently moved from the fleshpots of Birmingham (well, Four Oaks actually) to the elysium of Saffron Walden, already nostalgically panting for a good curry and a fine dining meal, had returned for a two day stay at The Grand Hotel where myself and the dog were also taking up residence for a couple of nights. His, and therefore my, timing was not good. As the day of our reunion drew near, growing threats of one of those tiresomely named storms, and then the increasingly menacing neologism of a ‘snow bomb’, featured more and more in the weather reports for Birmingham. And the snow bomb landed as we enjoyed our very fine dinner at Folium.

  New year, new Folium. Ben Tesh had changed his menu to make it somewhat more affordable - to some extent - and introduced new, interesting, even exciting, new dishes while retaining a few old friends which never fail to give the greatest pleasure.

  There was a new amuse gueule - a supremely crispy and delicious Pink Fir potato rosti with three delightful tiny blobs of smoked cod roe sitting on it. Also new was a tartlet of spot on Marie Rose acting as a little home to lobster and of course, to my great relief, retained and still there, the signature chicken liver parfait served in a burnt onion pastry which must be what is served to those chosen few who have just arrived in Heaven, having bypassed Purgatory, their earthbound gastronomic life at an end.

  And so to the starters on this new menu. Tesh’s uniquely admirable homemade sourdough with his cultured butter was served first. Again this would be what is served in Paradise on one’s arrival there. Give us this day our daily Ben Tesh sourdough bread, O Lord. Then a bowl of toothsome noodles made from biodynamic grain in a gorgeous broth prepared using aged beef fat and mushroom with nice firm textures provided by Merit mushrooms (Merit is a brand of mushroom suppliers not a species of fungus) and puffed grains with added flavour from mildly pickled shitake followed by possibly my least favourite dish (on the grounds that I do not like poached egg rather than because of any failure on chef’s part), slow cooked hen’s egg in sauerkraut beurre blanc with textures provided by pickled kohlrabi, chicken skin and a range of dehydrated winter brassicas which were rather good and made a case that in the hands of a talented chef, brassicas can indeed be something rather special.

  Next came exquisitely and excruciatingly accurately prepared smoked trout with an alluring brown crab butter and then to a dish of fine salt marsh lamb, rich with a full flavour of lamb which for a while seemed to be lost to us but which has now come bursting back in great restaurant such as Folium. This was served with a delightful lamb sauce and well cooked grilled chicory which brought with it contrasts of sweetness and bitterness to work successfully with the rich lamb. A lovely dish.

  And then, already, we had arrived at the predessert and the dessert. I rather fancied the cheese selection but my friend did not and in retrospect perhaps that was just as well as the snow started to come down in earnest and smother the city and paralysed transport and if we had dined any longer a half hour’s walk on treacherously slippery pavements would have been necessary, all Uber drivers having wisely headed for home.

  The pre- and definitive desserts brought much pleasure with them - precisely cooked Yorkshire rhubarb with preserved  cherry blossom and slow cooked cox apple with a toasted hay cream (I first encountered dishes using toasted hay at Winteringham Fields in north-east Lincolnshire where Ben Tesh once worked and he usually manages to incorporate the flavour in a dish whenever a new menu comes along) and wafers - a hit a palpable hit!

  As the snow fell, we enjoyed our mignardises, a salted caramel and seed crisp and a cep tart.We thanked Lucy for her as always wonderful service, thanked Chef for his food, thanked God that we had managed to bag ourselves a Uber and with some and sliding, made it back to the Grand Hotel in one piece.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

8 January 2026

516. Folium In Autumn.

 

  Folium remains the most peaceful haven of culinary pleasure in Birmingham. It certainly seems that way whenever I dine there. Even on a grim, dark autumn day the restaurant is full of light as the large window lets in any brightness squeezing through the dense clouds lowering over St Paul’s Square, a few yards down the road. The welcome from Lucy Hanson is relaxed and friendly, the service she gives is spot on and Ben Tesh’s food which she serves is unimpeachable. I have no doubt that if Folium were situated in London then it would have ling been awarded a Michelin star.

  On this occasion there had been tweaks to the menu. 

 

As an amuse gueule, there was now a toothsome croustade with Winterbourne trout and brown butter, a play on potted shrimps. Then, so familiar and excitedly anticipated, the spectacularly delicious homemade sourdough, so tasty and excitingly crispy on the outside, with Folium’s equally delightful cultured butter.

  The first course proper a tartare of Cornish blue fin tuna - tasty in a relaxed sort of way and very happily textured - along with shiso from Westlands in Evesham. There followed line-caught sea bream, cooked just as I like it, and a red pepper espuma with brioche, useful for mopping up the remaining sauce.

  The next course was a Folium old friend - wagyu short rib - on this occasion the texture was exactly spot on for me - with marinated chicory which gave sweetness to the bitterness of the endive. I then had the additional cheeses course which included Lincolnshire Poacher and Northern Blue. The cheeses were served in an excellent state and accompanied by Ben Tesh’s own crackers and heaven-sent fruit loaf as well as a pleasing quince jelly.

  There was a new dessert - a frozen passion fruit and marshmallow tart - very good - and then a triumph of texture - “yesterday’s sourdough” with rye caramel and the crunch of cobnut.  Afterwards the two mignardises - an old friend - the perfect pleated barley Madeleine with Cotswold whisky cream and a sweet little sunflower macaron filled with cep fudge - yet again, I use the word ‘delightful. After a nice chat with Lucy over a glass of port I headed back home, crossing St Paul’s Square, then up Newhall street and through St Philip’s churchyard where the Christmas craft market was underway with a vehicle selling Asha’s dishes at a prominent point near the cathedral.

Rating:- 🌝🌝🌝.

7 November 2025.

  But no time to stop, on through the churchyard, down Temple Street to New Street station to find, as often happens, trains delayed or cancelled. Hospitality businesses are under threat in the city centre for many reasons but having a failed public transport system which should be bringing people in from the suburbs to patronise the fine city centre restaurants does not help at all. Hopeful commuters were standing ten deep waiting on the platform for the severely late trains to arrive. If the city’s hospitality trade is to thrive then good, fast, easy access to the city centre from the suburbs is needed. But the system fails almost on a daily basis. Birmingham needs good political leadership to put it back on its feet and sort out its problems and those in power at present seem to have no idea of how get the city up and running again.