394. Politics, Film Noir And Shakespeare. (Part 1).

 

  A busy week of local politics, another visit to The Wilderness with a twist and ending with the annual Shakespeare Birthday Lunch in Stratford Upon Avon. What exciting lives we old blokes live.

 Monday. My first visit to the Hockley Social Club, the fast food and events venue on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter which replaced the iconic Digbeth Dining Club and is a mothership to Herbert’s Yard in Longbridge. It is altogether more inviting than Herbert’s Yard in that it’s warm and spacious and reasonably comfortable, none of which adjectives can be applied to the large, wooden barn in the south west of the city where I live (well, I suppose Herbert’s Yard is spacious - I must be accurate in my reporting). It’s shabby and struggling to be hipster-chic and, I suppose, cool (I am still not sure if that word continues to be used by those in the know) and seems ideally suited to the local population of comfortably off hipsters who inhabit the overpriced flats in the nearby Jewellery Quarter.

   In previous Blogs I have expressed a lack of enthusiasm for street food. There should be a context for street food. Ideally it should be eaten in the street, be it on a warm, barmy evening in a bustling south east or southern Asian city or as a gratifying scoff at some event here in England, be it a fair or a football match or a concert or somewhere else where crowds meet and are feeling a collective peckishness. Street food is almost by definition not something to be eaten in a heated, dimly lit building with tables and chairs and the paraphernalia of cosy modern British hipster living. Street food should also be reasonably priced and not sold at the bloated prices many of our street food traders charges. The prices alone exclude a lot of the population and reinforce this as a dining scene for negroni-swigging, well-off, self-satisfied hipsters who will not visibly blanch when they receive notice of the massive increase in their council tax charges. Well, everyone is entitled to their own environment and the Hockley Social Club, with its mock working class name, is an ideal venue for the Jewellery Quarter socialist with nothing useful to do.

 The Mayoral hustings debate was fascinating with the sitting candidate and present mayor, Andy Street (only fair therefore that I should eat some street food while there), able to demonstrate everything he had done for the region and his plans for the future in a straight forward way while his socialist opponent with a whining, wheedling, sometimes almost inaudible, voice failed to give a straight answer even once but from time to time would suddenly squeak loudly at something Mr Street was saying and then smirk at a tiny cabal of his supporters to his right though his embarrassing ejaculations were something the Hockey Social Club sound system found alarming and incapable of dealing with without assaulting the audience’s hearing.

  The subject of what the Mayor could do for the local hospitality industry was raised by the founder of the Digbeth Dining Club, Jack Brabant, and neither had much in practical terms that they could seriously put forward at this stage - Mayor Street answered the question honestly and directly while the sheep next to him wittered on for a couple of minutes with no useful result. This was the pattern of the evening and unless one were a socialist fanatic, a fair neutral observer would have scored an overwhelming victory to Mayor Street. It will be interesting to see if the ordinary regional voter, removed from the comforts of the hipster lifestyle, will support Mayor Street. I do hope so - his opponent has the charisma of an over grilled snail (not that there were any escargots on sale at the Hockley Social Club) which enables me to segue into the food.

  Only two stalls were open -  giving a choice of ‘jerk’ fried  chicken and, er, ‘jerk’ fried chicken. It was disappointing that Dan Lee’s east Asian food stall was not selling its wares that evening - I am keen to see just what he has on offer. I chose the ‘Mango box’ from Only Jerkin’ Fried Chicken priced at £14. This offered 4 strips of nicely flavoured, crispy coated, pleasingly moist and well cooked chicken together with a very edible coleslaw and agreeable sweet potato chips which, like the chicken, were well cooked. 

  But this was fried chicken with a mildly spicy taste. Had I missed something? My Caribbean food knowledge is. I’ll be the first to acknowledge, very limited though I think the repertoire needed to present Caribbean-style is fairly limited. But shouldn’t this chicken have some punch to it? Shouldn’t I have been hit by the bite of spice and the tang of smoke? Well, I wasn’t. This was just deep fried chicken, not grilled, not barbecued, cautiously spiced - ideal for the audience it was being served to, I suppose. Where was the adventure in it?

  What else can one say? Fried chicken is everywhere. I eat it rarely and would not go out of my way to do so though Greidy’s fried chicken which I’ve had a couple of times at Herbert’s Yard is particularly enjoyable. As for Only Jerkin, it reminded me of the Labour Mayor candidate - quite nice but otherwise unremarkable.

Rating:- 🌛.

  

376. Rabbit/RiverineRabbit.

 

  There’s no doubt that when it comes to promising new, if small, restaurants then Stirchley, not withstanding the Jewellery Quarter, is the place to seek them out at present. The latest is what was to be called Riverine Rabbit, but seems now to be plain Rabbit, located in the shopping area along the Pershore Road.

  And to be fair, you can’t blame ambitious young chefs and restaurateurs opening up in Stirchley where they will have a captive audience, heavily hipster, all living within a short walk of what is charmingly described as the High Street. The exterior of Riverine Rabbit is very Stirchley with a small name sign which is rather difficult to spot especially on a dark winter evening. Looking through the window, you can see it is pleasantly bijou, with a well planned interior. Lucy The Labrador and I visited the restaurant soon after it first opened. 

  Having correctly identified the right location, the dog and I walked into a a not over-brightly lit but smart-looking and warm dining area with just 18 seats running along the counter at which the diners sit. There was a pleasingly adequate space in which the dog could relax. There were two people behind the counter - Erin Valenzuala-Heeger, who by the way has a day job as a metallurgist at Birmingham University, and her wife Ash Heeger, the Chef.

  There’s an interesting background story to the couple. Ash was born in Transkei in South Africa and brought up in Capetown and ran the 70 seater restaurant - also The Riverine Rabbit - with her sister Mandy in that city until it was closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. She came to Birmingham with Erin who works in the Midlands Industrial Ceramic Group at the University and worked at Carter’s of Moseley before Brad Carter decided that his restaurant should shift its location. The originally intended name of the new restaurant (and that of the former Capetown restaurant) derives from that of a species of rabbit (they might perhaps have used the Latin name Bunolagus monticularis, though to be fair it doesn’t really have hipster appeal when you think about it) which lives in the Karoo desert in Ash’s homeland  and the choice of name highlights Ash’s and Erin’s efforts to support sustainable farming practices. The Birmingham restaurant’s name seems to have been shortened, probably wisely, to plain and simple Rabbit, which has much more good down-to-Earth Brummie appeal even in a hipster zone such as Stirchley.

  As the first diner of the evening to arrive I was greeted most warmly and Lucy the Labrador no less so. After seating myself in my designated chair at the counter I was given a nice, warming, interestingly flavoured tea of South African origin and shown the drinks on offer which were brought around from Couch next door which seems to work very well for the customer while Rabbit is sans alcohol licence. I ordered a gimlet which was brought round very rapidly andas regards wine, pre-warnedI had brought a half bottle with me.

  The menu looked very exciting - small plates often with South African connections - and while Erin set about preparing my ordered dishes I dived into an excellent plate of fresh salty crisps with accompanying dip. The first dish was an excellent beef tartare with the meat marinated deliciously in rapeseed oil, smoked soy and fava bean miso. This was a generous portion of perfectly tender beef and was accompanied by wafer-sized pieces of nori which powerfully ushered in the flavour of the sea making this a rather clever surf and turf, if you like.

  Next I was served a gorgeous crab muffin; the tasty crab alive with the perfectly balanced citrus of pickled lemon and enhanced by a brown butter mayonnaise. Again this was a sizeable dish  the muffin adding considerable volume to it all and I might in retrospect have not also added fine hash browns served with spiced salt and ponzu mayonnaise to my order. On the other hand, who can resist a well cooked hash brown?

  I had not even then finished as I had ordered quite the most beautifully cooked pork belly I can remember ever having been served, the fat all melted away but all the flavour lying deep inside it from miso and gochujang, served on a triumphantly light and fluffy bao with charred hispi and cucumber. A very fine and delicious dish which, alas, I forgot to photograph, but shall return to when I next visit Rabbit in 3 or 4 weeks time. 

  Despite repletion having long set in, I allowed myself the sole dessert on the menu which was a soothing miso banana cream with the added flavour of crumbled speculoos, otherwise known as biscoff - a Belgian spiced gingerbread biscuit - along with coconut and the sweetness of ‘sprinkles. This was very good and different from most desserts which are often.

  As the minutes passed the denizens of Stirchley gradually came in and took their places at the counter and placed their orders. One irritating young woman, accompanied by lighting equipment and a doubtless expensive phone-camera, oblivious to all the other diners, obsessionally filmed the explanation of each dish given to her and her dining companion by Erin as she served them. I assume she is some sort of ‘influencer’. No matter, it was lovely to sit at the counter chatting with Erin and Ash and enjoying their food. The dog was content to lie back, rather in the way I’m afraid, but causing no trouble and being fussed by some of the diners who, naturally as dog owners do, first enquired about her age and then told me all about their dogs. By the end of my couple of hours in Rabbit, I felt as though I had been visiting and dining at someone’s home rather than having been seated in a restaurant.

  This is a great restaurant and possibly already the most important new restaurant in Birmingham to open in 2024. The opening of Carter’s in Colmore Row of course is of great importance but it is a reopening so I feel justified in giving that accolade, for the present at least, to Rabbit (though you may argue, if you must, that technically Rabbit is also a reopening given its predecessor in Capetown but I would say that that was not the same thing at all).

272. Diners.

 

  Dining out is a great pleasure - in the main - chefs crucify themselves to invent, design, prepare, present and come up with excuses such as sustainability and “respecting the entire animal” for using ever cheaper ingredients in their dishes in order to keep themselves solvent to provide dishes to customers; Maîtres  D’Hotel - the very best at least - schmooze and smarm charmingly and convincingly (who doesn’t want to feel loved by the maître d’, feel picked out for special attention and to be congratulated that the dish or wine just chosen was “an excellent choice”?); the usually young front of house staff, soft voiced and often not fully conversant in English, struggle to remember the detailed descriptions of what they’re bringing out to their diners and to enable old blokes like me to understand what they’re whispering and precisely what is on the plate set before one  ….. aaah! the pleasures of dining out. There are many more.

  But then there are the other diners who are generally horrible. And not one of the pleasures of dining out. The problem is that the younger middle classes now just have too much money and while being useless to society and self absorbed, they are able to make themselves seen in decent restaurants though it would be better that they were never seen by anyone apart from their fellow self-admirers and ‘selfie’-takers.

  This diatribe, not yet finished, was set off by a recent visit to Weston super Mare’s The Ginger Pig Kitchen (which really does deserve a mention in The Good Food Guide given the guide’s new approach to sites of dining out that caused it to allow hipster neighbourhood restaurants such as Eat Vietnam in the Stirchley Socialist Republic to be admitted to its august pages). I was pleased (and surprised) to see how busy the restaurant was at 6PM on a Thursday evening but I noticed that there had been a paradigm shift in the clientele dining there - the Brummie and West Midlands elderly holidaymakers had made way for a younger, scruffier (sorry, more casual) collection of diners with middle class West Country accents. And a lot of them spoke very loudly.

  My table was unfortunately positioned next to that of the loudest man in the room where he sat with his three dining companions. One of the females had a loud repetitive inauthentic laugh - ha ha ha - which advertised her presence to everyone else in the restaurant and filled in for the periods of a few seconds when the male, a large man of about 40, unsuccessfully doing his best to look cool and admirable, gave his tongue a rest. The group behaved as though they were entitled to ignore the presence of any other diners in the room or, conversely, to inflict their dull conversation on the other diners whose presence they were treating with indifference. In truth it is likely that they were indeed unaware of all the other diners except that they provided an audience for them.

  The previous evening I had dined at an Indian restaurant and again was unfortunate enough to be sat next to a table of excruciatingly loud mid-twenty year old men whose conversations were carried out by what could only be described as shouting with respite only being obtained when they paused, which they frequently did, to pose for ‘selfies’. 

  Diners, especially those from the middle class which feels empowered to use foul and filthy language on social media about anyone who does not share their outlook on life, live self-righteously and sanctimoniously, are relatively well-educated but are often vaguely thick and foolish, adept at manipulative behaviour, seem to be running riot even in fine restaurants. Apart from the question of loud speech there is the question of dressing to dine.

  I found it hard to believe that male diners at Adam’s restaurant thought it appropriate to turn up to dine in shorts when I ate there one evening a few weeks ago on a not particularly warm night. What was the staff to do? Adam’s is not a cheap burger joint and diners should be expected to respect the nature of the restaurant and fellow diners. I really don’t want to have the sight of hairy male legs inflicted on me while I’m dealing with my mackerel ceviche. 

  It’s all about middle class entitlement. This is the section of society that allows its children to rampage around other diners in dining establishments which have embraced the concept of child-friendly restaurants. They speak to their brats in ways designed to broadcast to those unfortunate enough to be around them that they have very bright and forward children. If only they would understand that no-one finds their children to be any where as charming or as interesting as they think they are (though there is usually some old middle class biddy sitting somewhere nearby ready to engage the horrors in a silly question and answer conversation). Advice to restaurateurs - don’t be child friendly (unless you sell burgers and hand out free plastic toys) - be dog friendly instead - dogs cause far fewer problems, are much better behaved and are far less likely to spread disease than human brats do.

  The worst gastronomic product of the new socialist middle class is the blogger/self-proclaimed food expert -  usually aged in the range 25 to 49. These are self-publicists, rapidly approaching, or having already arrived at, a feeling of lost youth and who are unsuccessful in a career that is useful to society. They think that chefs and important restaurant figures love them whereas they are in fact rather disdainful of these sad people, often alcoholics, but humour them just in case a potential diner does take notice of a negative review sparked off by any perceived slight they receive in a restaurant. Notably these people are never offered a job as a food reviewer for a respectable organ of any type and they haunt the internet tweeting like there’s no tomorrow. By the time they arrive at fifty they have run to seed looking prematurely aged, have established alcoholism but have been unsuccessful in overcoming their insecurities and have developed even more severe personality traits than they had one or two decades before.

  Earlier this year, I was dining in a restaurant belonging to a celebrity chef and had the dubious honour of witnessing one of these ‘influencers’ - a woman - preening herself over an expensive plate of fish and chips and self-consciously drawing attention to herself. I had no idea who she was but was interested that chef himself brought her meal out to her - I’m not entirely sure that he wasn’t taking the mickey - but I searched around the internet and found that this individual - her literary skills clearly somewhat limited - had recorded her day visiting this particular restaurant and I was pleased to have identified this particular diner though I have long since forgotten her identity and I doubt that I would recognise her again. Oh, how  short are those fifteen minutes of fame.

  It is remarkable to me that these middle class, so casual, so self-aware, so self-entitled diners are spending hundreds of pounds on consuming expensive meals out while proclaiming the financial distress of the country. It seems that the government they blame for the financial disturbances has not been so disastrous for them. 

  I dislike dining in the presence of the smug diner or the diner who doesn’t understand the privilege they are experiencing when dining out in fine restaurants or why they should have a little consideration for their fellow diners - not just those at their table -  in keeping the sound of their voices down to a level where everyone else is not having to hear their conversations and braying laughter. I dislike the way those who feel self-entitlement are wholly indifferent to those around them. 

  I wonder what old Nathaniel Newnham-Davis would have made of it all? - “Tut tut. None of that sort of behaviour in my day, yer know”.

  By the way, on the day of writing this, I record that it’s Escoffier’s birthday (28 October 1846 - 12 February 1935). Happy birthday to a giant of gastronomy and a failed fraudster.