437. The End Of Purnell’s.

 At 1000AM on Monday 14 October 2024 Glynn Purnell announced via social media that his restaurant, Purnell’s, in Cornwall Street had served its last diners at close of service on Saturday 12 October and that the restaurant was now permanently closed.

  He was interviewed an hour later on the BBC West Midlands station by Kathryn Stanczyszyn and repeated that which he had stated in the social media and identified a number of reasons for his decision to end the 17 years of fine dining he had been serving up to the citizens of Birmingham and from further afield in Cornwall street. 

  We know well Purnell’s story before opening Jessica’s in Edgbaston with owners Diane and Keith Stevenson and this had included a period of work as Chef de Partie at Andreas Antona’s Simpsons and for Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Ludlow. Jessica’s was opened in 2004 and, with Purnell in the kitchen, it was awarded a Michelin star in 2005, joining Simpsons as one of only two Birmingham restaurants to have been awarded the accolade up until then. Jessica’s closed in 2007 after Purnell decided to open his own restaurant which he did in May 2007, quite reasonably naming it after himself, and Purnell’s was awarded a Michelin star in the 2009 edition of the Michelin Guide (announced in 2008). Purnell’s retained the star until its closure.

  Purnell became a local and national culinary celebrity with numerous appearances on television and in the press and opened, and sometimes closed, other restaurants as he was eventually to do with his flagship fine dining restaurant itself as the gastronomic climate changed, costs rose, and the fall off of diners able to, or prepared to, pay significant prices for tasting menus and their ilk.

  Purnell’s is survived by its younger siblings, Plates By Purnell’s in Edmund Street and the upmarket public house/restaurant The Mount in Henley in Arden.

  A look at Blog 413 (28 June 2024) may provide the reader with at least one reason why Purnell’s finally had to close. It was still very good but it was tired, the menu had lost its thrill, its humour and wit, its flair and imagination, its sense of excitement, its oomph. Restaurants rely on their old, faithful customers coming back time and time again and while they like to see familiar old favourites on the menu, they also want novelty and for me the menu was too repetitive drawing on old glories. I’m not convinced that Glynn Purnell had not lost his interest in it all to some extent. When something’s tired and elderly, it’s time to let it rest with its memories of the glory days of fine, exciting, witty experiences and so to move on.

 And in response to the news I made a reservation to visit Plates by Purnell’s the very next day. Somehow it seemed the decent thing to do.

   I had dined just a month ago at Plates with a regular dining companion and we were very impressed. Our chosen dishes were pleading and represented good value. My only real problem with the restaurant was the general lack of space there which makes it feel just a little unwelcoming though that is certainly not a comment that one could make about the excellent front of house staff there.

  We indeed had little to complain about on this occasion - we enjoyed the platter of embutidos (cured meats) which admittedly was more a matter of curation than of culinary skill; we enjoyed some inoffensive albondigas, some cheese and basil  croquetas, some fine-looking patatas bravas (which to be fair were more patatas than bravas) and some nicely seasoned gambas al ajillo. I chose the pistachio dessert - a pistachio foam with honey and tuiles - though it only served to emphasise how unrewarding are the restaurant’s desserts. Generally we enjoyed ourselves and I felt that I shoukd like to return sooner rather than later.

  Which brings us to my solo visit to Plates one month after my previous dining experience there. In many ways I wish I had not decided to dine there. I repeated my previous order of albondigas and requested chicken thigh with romesco sauce (it was not available), ‘chip  de trufa’ - potato with truffle mayonnaise (I was informed it was a single chip which sounded a little insubstantial for £5 to say the least so I opted for good old patatas bravas, croquetas de queso y albahaca and, in the absence of the chicken, calamares with alioli. First the good news - the croquetas were good - nice and crispy though not bursting with flavour, the patatas bravas were indisputably lacklustre, the albondigas were much as one would expect them to be but the crispy squid was awful - true the coating was pleasingly crispy but the squid inside was vile, decidedly miscooked in a way which truly gave it an unchewable rubber band texture. Oh dear! This was not the standard one expects from a Michelin recommended restaurant. *What is going on at these Purnell restaurants?

   The squid was the single most unpleasant piece of food I have put in my mouth in a restaurant since a trip to China in, if I remember rightly, 1993 when I wrestled with a ghastly, grey piece of sea cucumber which had been served as a delicacy. The stuff that nightmares are made on. I pointed out the extreme chewiness of the squid to the waiter and no charge was quite rightly made for the dish and there the matter should end except that one is bound to wonder how the Michelin grade kitchen could let such a horror escape from it.

  The squid had rather knocked me back and I did not feel I could risk a dessert. Glynn Purnell needs to get a grip on this. Hopefully it’s a one off.

Rating - 🌛🌛.

  More bad news. The friend .with whom I dined on the first of my reported visit to Plates usually joins me for a ‘3 and half ounces of pleasure’ at The Alchemist prior to our sauntering off to some worthy dining establishment for our regular lunch. He was not with me on my second visit but having 45 minutes to pass prior to my reservation time it seemed like a very good idea to pop into the Alchemist and renew my acquaintance with that very soothing cocktail. Alas! I was informed that 3 and half oz was no longer being made. An instant state of crestfallenness set in. But it was suggested I substitute the Pleasure with a June Bug, the ingredients of which included gin and banana and coconut. This was good - who can resist gin with some of the ingredients of a Planter’s punch? But the embracing rum of the Pleasure would have been a nice soother on a grim, cool English mid-autumn afternoon. Perhaps June is the best month for glugging a June Bug unless you’re in Jamaica where, I guess, the weather makes any time fine. 

  We like to close with good news. A near neighbour location of Plates, the now closed Urban Coffee where Ben Tesh staged pop ups in 2016 prior to opening Folium has posters in the windows which indicate that Tiger Bites Pig will be moving in - just what the restaurant needs -a lot more space.

229. Butchers Social

 

  By way of introduction to the Butchers Social it’s worth taking a, er, butcher’s at Blog 211 which reports a visit to Harborne Kitchen located in the old Walter Smith’s butcher’s shop where the first incarnation of the Butcher’s Social Club was founded by present Chef Patron Mike Bullard and Harborne Kitchen’s Jamie Desogus.

  Subsequently, in 2018, Bullard moved the BSB to the building in Henley in Arden where Glynn Purnell has just opened his first venture into pubs, The Mount (where I’m lunching tomorrow), and then, his family purchasing the The Forest Hotel in Dorridge, moved the BSB from Henley to the hotel in 2021. Sometimes it seems you can tell the history of West Midlands dining by mentioning just about ten buildings.

  Dorridge itself is an unremarkable, rather twee 1930s suburb for the comfortably off and it’s clear that Bullard was remarkably canny in opening his new restaurant there. The town is not a place you really take much notice of; the number of times I’ve sailed through Dorridge on the train journey from Birmingham to Stratford without lifting my head to take a look at it are countless. But it is exquisitely conveniently located close to Birmingham on the railway line and it is a matter of a few minutes journey from Moor Streetjcbzck or Snow Hill stations. And The Butcher’s Social can not be more than 20 yards distant from Dorridge Station - a brilliant location. 

  Here’s an interesting point which needs to be considered. Suddenly, apart from Kray Tredwell’s opening of his excellent but rather diminutive 670 Grams, all the major developments in West Midlands dining out are taking place not in the city itself but in villages/towns around it. Thus Tom Shepherd opened his new restaurant in Lichfield and just a few months later was awarded a Michelin star, the starred Peel’s restaurant is located in Hampton in Arden and has now been joined there at Hampton Manor by Stuart Deeley’s Smoke and the remarkable Grace And Savour. Based on his recent pop-up in Lichfield I tip Rob Palmer to be the next starred West Midlands Michelin-starred chef for his newly opened Toff’s in Solihull. And Glynn Purnell himself is extending out into the surrounding West Midlands with his highly publicised The Mount in Henley (did I mention I shall be lunching there tomorrow?) situated across the road from Matt Cheal’s fabulous Cheal’s of Henley which has surely been wrongly overlooked when it comes to the handing out of Michelin glitter.

  And what’s happening in Birmingham city centre itself with its failing trams, its tyrannical Council, its filthy streets and catchpenny’Clean Air Zone’? Nothing new to report. And that’s bad news for the city for all the great new chefs and some of the great older ones have sensed the direction the wind is blowing and that direction is straight out of the city. In fact we may be witnessing the closing days of Birmingham’s gastronomic golden age. 

  So, to where the action is …. Dorridge.

  The Butchers Social, located at one side of the Forest Hotel, with a nice outdoor seating area, is a pleasure to enter, spacious, attractive modern decor, a smart bar, an open kitchen where the smartly turned out chefs are beavering away. The front of house staff are excellent, knowledgeable and welcoming. And isn’t it nice to have a simple three course menu with a good but not excessive range of gastronomically titillating dishes on it. I was comfortable and entering into the spirit of things and a glass of Hendricks and  tonic was getting air into the sails.

  For my starter, after a consultation with my very wise and charming waitress, I opted for three beautifully pan-seared scallops with miso, hazelnuts (which seem very in vogue at the moment) and watercress salad though I am bound to say that the watercress was more of a garnish than a full blown part of the dish (pleasingly, after my recent excursion to Weston super Mare (see Blog 228) it at least was not a peashoot garnish). This was a delicious start and I really felt that I was enjoying myself.

  In our deliberations, my waitress and myself had agreed that I should have a dish of stone bass (sublime, am I bad person for wishing that chefs would dump the turbot and serve more stone bass? - yes, I know turbot is far too expensive to ‘dump’ but still ….) served with punchy lobster ravioli, three charming seaweed, dumplings, a pot of enjoyable greens (kale, leeks, hispi cabbage and broccoli) and a highly enjoyable slice of dauphinois. Every element of the dish was excellent and I consumed it like a trencherman. 

  By now quite euphoric, I studied the dessert menu and concluded that these were my sort of desserts. Eventually I settled, again in learned consultation, for ‘pinky winky’ cherry parfait, decently flavoured, with tiny peaks of mango purée and coriander and mixed berry ice cream which was bursting with sweet sharpness. I’m a little bored with granola but I could see the point of it. Eschewing coffee per se, I chose another item from the dessert list - affogato with which I am currently obsessed - served with Kahlua, something which I may now consume on a twice daily basis.

  How lovely it is to really enjoy a meal. Butchers Social is now up there in my pantheon of West Midlands restaurants I most want to eat in.

212. Michelin Star Revelation In February.

 

 

 This evening multiple chefs’ and restaurant owners’ hearts are pumping away a little more briskly than they were after they got up this morning with the news tweeted this afternoon that the Michelin Guide Great Britain And Ireland will announce its ‘Star revelation’ in a few days time. The 2022 Bibs Gourmands will be revealed on 11 February, the ‘Special awards’ will be disclosed on 15 February and the new stars on 16 February. Michelin certainly is milking the publicity for every drop it can get by spreading what used to be a simple announcement into a 5 day extravaganza.

  Here in the West Midlands we might be looking out to see if The Wilderness finally achieves a star, to see if Lichfield’s Upstairs by Tom Shepherd is also awarded a star so soon after it opened, to see if Birmingham’s star total is also added to by Kray Tredwell’s 670 Grams and if it is just possible that Opheem will become Birmingham’s first two star restaurant. Will Simpsons lose its star? (probably not) and which restaurants will find their places for the first time on the list of Michelin recommendations? - a quick new entry for Stoke on Trent’s Lunar perhaps (I shall be visiting there next week).

  Pure theatre and clever marketing.

  More recent tweets confirm that Glynn Purnell is soon to open his new pub in Henley In Arden - The Mount - in the premises previously occupied by the Butcher’s Social Club (see previous Blog) and another confirming that Adrien Garnier, presently the restaurant’s sommelier, has been appointed Purnell’s’ Restaurant manager as was expected.

    Finally, social media also revealed that Dan Lee, recent winner of the BBC’s 2021 Masterchef The Professionals competition, is to team up for a one-day event with former Masterchef champion Stuart Deeley of Smoke. Sounds interesting. Busy, busy, busy.

211. Harborne Kitchen.

 

  Having girded up my loins recently to visit Moseley with the extremely pleasing result that I had my first meal at Carter’s Of Moseley for an excessively long time, it was time, I decided, to finally head in the opposite direction to Harborne and set out for Harborne Kitchen. Both districts are home to the well-heeled and therefore, along with Edgbaston, the most likely suburban locations (though none of them are really all that far from the city centre) to be able to support expensive, highly rated restaurants (Harborne was formerly home to Turner’s - see Blogs 13 and 18) which is a description aptly applied to Harborne Kitchen and Carter’s Of Moseley.

  Harborne Kitchen was opened in November 2016 by its Chef Patron, Jamie Desogus, who said at the time that the restaurant would be focusing on “precise modern British cooking”. He said that he had the inspiration for opening the restaurant while dining at The Clove Club in 2013, later awarded a Michelin star, which offered a “new style of unpretentious fine dining to foodies”. Desogus, who was born in Kidderminster, himself in the past had worked in the kitchens of Michelin-starred restaurants including Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus. Prior to opening Harborne Kitchen, Desogus was cofounder of the ‘pop-up’ restaurant in Harborne, the Butchers Social, which centred itself on serving chicken wings and The Harborne Kitchen was then opened in the old Walter Smith butcher’s shop (once so widespread in Birmingham) which had been the home of the Butchers Social. He had also previously worked in Turner’s for a period (how well I remember Richard Turner’s scowling face looking around at the diners in that restaurant as he stood on the dining room side of the door to the kitchen).

  As a footnote to be returned to in the future, the Butcher’s Social under Chef Director Mike Bullard moved to Henley in Arden (in a building across the road from Cheal’s of Henley) in 2018 and reopened in 2021 at The Forest Hotel in Dorridge (the building in Henley in Arden now being taken over by Glynn Purnell for his new pub restaurant - The Mount - which is soon to open. The West Midlands culinary scene - forever evolving.

  But back to The Harborne Kitchen. It was awarded a Michelin Plate in 2018 in the 2019 edition of the Michelin Guide when the restaurant was described as, “Modern British - Neighbourhood. This neighbourhood restaurant is surprisingly spacious - long and narrow, with an open kitchen at its heart; the tiles depicting a bull harking back to its butcher’s shop days. Modern dishes have a Scandic feel and feature some unusual combinations. The seats at the counter are a popular choice”. Now the present online guide summaries the restaurant as, “Deservedly loved by local diners, this contemporary neighbourhood restaurant serves a set menu of interesting modern dishes prepared using excellent ingredients. At its hub is an open kitchen, where you can watch the passionate team at work: the tiles bull is a throwback to its butcher’s shop days”. The tiles bull, a Hereford I think, is one of those sights worth seeing for a Birmingham diner - meaningful, historic art which few other Birmingham restaurants can lay a claim to having as part of their decor. The bull itself gives a visit to the restaurant a sense of occasion. In its way it’s as noteworthy and historic as the twee painting of the street urchin in Roux’s Le Gavroche in London.

  But let’s launch into the food. After a pleasing welcome and a thoroughly delicious gingerbread-flavoured cocktail the amuse gueules came flying to the table one after another, “One, two, three, down the hatch, yum yum” to paraphrase Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited (but he was talking about Alexander cocktails not the fabulous little nibbles which were presented to me). From the word go it was obvious that the theme of the evening would be intense flavour. The first two little nibbles came mounted on crisps, first shockingly delicious Devonshire crab looking a little lost sitting in a scallop shell balanced on top of a large bowl of large pebbles (are pebbles, hay, edible soil  and so on all getting to be a little passé now?, I wonder). Still I get the point, there’s the crab scrabbling over some seaside rocks. 

  Much easier to spot was a wondrous nibble of chicken parfait with glorious sweet incursions of white chocolate, a delight indeed. And then the final nibble, a fine little tartlet of River Wye smoked eel with the flavours of heritage tomato and subtle hints of horseradish. Sometimes I dream of a restaurant which serves a meal just made up of numerous amuses gueules and that it is located in the building next door to where I live. Perhaps such an entity exists in Paradise and these three appetisers are there on its menu.

  Excellent bread, tasty and with perfectly crispy crusts, accompanied by an unusual and successful smoked yeast butter

  Then pasta, Sicilian pasta to be exact in the form of a thoroughly enjoyable dish of malloreddus, mini-armadillos in a creamy, cheesy sauce with a fine covering of 60 month parmesan and truffle and looking like an old man’s beard and fabulously flavoured. And then a truly great dish, the Roscoff onion, a crispy onion-flavoured tuile sitting on a bed of deliciously puréed salt baked potato with blue cheese and all with a little moat of stupendous miso. 

    More intense flavour presented itself in the form of sweet seasoned shrimp and kohlrabi tartare with nasturtium leaves. This dish could not be improved on, it’s flavour again makes it a classic. Next, to a dish of beautifully cooked brill - what a noble fish it is with its lovely moist white flesh and a pleasant respite from the ubiquitous halibut - served with sea aster leaves which made a real contribution, and soy and ginger. I wondered at first, was it a little too salt-flavoured? and then decided it was not and that it was the mild ginger flavour that had given me my early doubt. 

  The meat course - a fine piece of venison, cooked exactly how I like it, on a bed of tasty Savoy cabbage enhanced classically with the flavour of bacon and served with roast sliced celeriac and a celeriac purée with a sprinkling of chocolate which made sense but really did not seem to do all that much for me. I did have reservations about this dish - the celeriac two ways. Both of the celeriac offerings were tasty, the purée intensely so, but I could have done with just one of them - perhaps the purée and the roast sliced celeriac substituted by earthy potato instead.

  My least favourite dish was Baron Bigod, which showcases the Suffolk-produced unpasteurised soft Brie-like cheese of that name. My paternal ancestors lived in Suffolk from some time in the 6th century up until the late 19th century and among my ancestors are the Bigods, the original in England being the first Earl of Norfolk, one of William The Bastard’s most loyal henchmen who came across with him from Normandy in 1066. So Baron Bigod cheese, the first batches of which were produced by Jonathan and Dulcie Crickmore in 2013, has a special place in my gourmand heart.

  I do not usually have the (normally optional extra) cheese course with tasting menus - an old bloke’s stomach can only cope with so much - though I am a great cheese lover (it must be the sliver of Norman French in my genes) and it’s good to see a chef attempting to make the cheese course more interesting and using the intensely flavoured Baron Bigod as its centre piece. But the dish looked extremely inelegant and the presence of quince and amaranth though charmingly harking back to an older cuisine was not such a great success as one might have hoped. I think on the whole that the cheese course, if one is to have it,  should mainly keep to its traditional format but perhaps a second visit to Harborne Kitchen and a second indulgence in Baron Bigod may convince me otherwise.

  Then, great happiness. The ice cream trolley was wheeled up to the table in a great piece of restaurant theatre (perhaps not quite as dramatic as Birmingham-born Monsieur Joseph’s carving of the pressed duck at the Savoy - see Blog 146 - but great fun) and the pre-dessert was served - a delightful pairing of soothing bay leaf ice cream and scintillating mandarin sorbet served on a bed of crumbled polenta cake and with toasted almond. Another little gem. 

  I have no idea why it is (cocktails, wine perhaps?) but I frequently forget to photograph the final dessert and so the excruciatingly memorable “70% chocolate, coffee, Jerusalem artichoke” is visually unrecorded here. But no matter, its  memorability is not really visual but its remarkably unpudding-like flavour and squidgy nature of the artichoke and the hyper-crunchy toffee tuile which actually all did come together to make an unusual and enjoyable dessert. Great stuff! A pair of miso caramel-filled sparkly lips rounded off an excellent meal which made me sure that though this was my first visit to The Harborne Kitchen since it opened six years ago, my next visit would be considerably sooner. 

  

    So, I had finally visited the complete 2021 list of Michelin-rated restaurants in Birmingham in the space of the past twelve months. All, admittedly, except Opus which of course has not been open in the past twelve months thanks to the depredations of COVID-19 and Birmingham City Council and its unending roadworks. What a great city Birmingham is, despite its Council, when it comes to dining out and gastronomy. 

  One final thought; I took the opportunity of my Harborne excursion to amble down the High Street to take a look at what had happened at the location of the previous Michelin star-awarded restaurant, the eponymous Turner’s to once more relive in my mind being scowled at by Richard Turner as he surveyed his contented diners from the door to the kitchen. There now is a pleasant looking Asian restaurant, Tiffin.  I don’t expect I will ever get around to eating there, but who knows where the Michelin inspectors will visit and what idiosyncratic conclusions they will reach?