460. Dan Lee At Eat Vietnam.

 

  Dan Lee was the winner of the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals competition programme in 2021. Subsequently he has been working at the Digbeth Dining Club and the Hockley Social Club where he has recently ended a long term residency. He has also worked at a number of pop up collaborations at various restaurants, most recently, I think, with Kray Tredwell at the latter’s 670 Grams. I had not thus far managed to be free on any of the evenings for which these collaborations were advertised and Hockley Social Club is just too much of a pain to get to from where I live in the evening. Hence I had not yet had the opportunity to experience Dan Lee’s food though I did once sit two tables away from him at a Kray Tredwell/Le Petit Bois collaboration in Moseley one evening (Blog 295) where he, like myself, were enjoying what was being served from the kitchens there. 

Dan Lee at Le Petit Bois, January 2023.

  Recently, however, it seemed at last that my long wait to eat his food was to end when a Sunday lunch collaboration with Eat Vietnam in Stirchley was announced and I hurried to make a reservation. I was irritated to find that it was impossible to make a reservation for a single diner but I made a reservation for two and a good friend was happy to join me to see what Lee had on offer. It was also an opportunity to revisit Ming Nham’s Eat Vietnam (Blog 270) as more time had elapsed since I had last eaten there than I had intended.

Dan Lee, Masterchef winner in 2021.

  Lee’s website notes that he trained at University College, Birmingham and he has also gained culinary experience working in his aunt’s takeaway shop. He travelled to various parts of Asia as well as Greece, France and New Zealand and this coupled with his English, Irish and Cantonese heritage enabled him, he felt, to develop his own multicultural fusion cuisine which led to him winning Masterchef and now forms the basis of the dishes he serves.

  The frontage of Eat Vietnam remains odd and still bears the name of Munchies, the greasy spoon café which had been located the as well as the large red and yellow poster with the sphinx-like inscription, “FISH SAUCE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE”, neither of which is helpful with locating the restaurant if one is a stranger to the area. But inside it was warm on a chilly, miserable damp day and the welcome was even warmer from a front of house staff member who had previously worked at The Wilderness. I spotted Ming Nham beavering away in the kitchen and then Dan Lee at the pass, the restaurant was filling up rapidly and the steam was rising in the kitchen. It was really quite thrilling though a tasty Saigon Gimlet proved to be a pleasingly soothing libation to counter the increasingly building anticipation of it all.

  This was to be a six course menu - a Sunday ‘Family Feast’, though this was more service à la Française than service à la Russe. The opening act of three dishes was served as one, then the two mains with accompanying plates together and finally the dessert. It was to be hearty, beautifully cooked and delicious. But I run ahead of myself.

  First came a platter of lettuce cups with pork ends, a completely delicious sandwich with lettuce substituting for bread, with brilliantly cooked pieces of pork belly, admirably crispy and tasty, possibly the most successfully cooked example of that meat I can recall being served to me, wrapped in a lettuce leaf (surely, the only useful thing you can do with a lettuce leaf apart from shredding it to use as part of a base of prawn cocktail or just feeding it to the pet rabbit), magnificent crispy butterflied prawns - such stuff as dreams are made on - and a scintillating papaya and pomelo salad. Who could ask for anything more? Well there was more to come, and no-one was sad about that.

  

  The highlight must have been the supremely perfectly cooked whole battered sea bass served with a delightful sweet and sour sauce. The fish was lovely - its beautiful white flesh exhilaratingly moist and tasty - and with it came individual dishes of plump, unctious slow cooked short rib, enhanced with fish sauce, caramel and coconut water with a perfectly cooked quail’s egg alongside it. In addition to these gems were dishes of lap cheong fried rice (with its tasty slivers of pork sausage) and a tofu skin salad which for the first time in my life, made me feel there there might be some use for tofu after all.

  These had been generously portioned dishes but there was still good reason to make room in my abdomen for the intriguingly flavoured dessert of mango and pandan cheesecake. The cheesecake was very well made - nice and smooth and just on the right side of the borderline of sweetness with, er, non-sweetness (I wouldn’t say savoury). The smallest flies in the ointment were the tiny cubes of unripe mango garnishing the cheesecake - they were flavourless and while their extreme firmness may have given a degree of texture to the dishes, it was not a particularly nice one. How I should have liked a real full-bodied hit of sweet, soft mango to seal the deal. Still, this was a small fly in the ointment and in the great, grand sweep of a very fine south east-style meal, it mattered but little.

  This had been a memorable meal with some very fine dishes - rustic but triumphant. The combination of Dan Lee and Ming Namh would appear to be a culinary marriage made in heaven.

Rating:- 🌞

9 February 2025.

400. Events, Dear Boy, Events. 2024 Part 1 January To June.

 

 The four hundredth blog. 

 This seems like an excellent opportunity to highlight the most important Birmingham and West Midlands dining out events of 2024 - what has happened so far and then a rolling diary of what else occurs during 2024 providing a complete West Midlands dining out history of what occurs during the year up to 31 December. New, notable events will be added as 2024 progresses. Already, on 29 April, there is much to record….

5 January - Chef Ash Heeger and Erin Valenzuala-Heeger open the remarkable Rabbit, initially also known as Riverine Rabbit, in Stirchley.

20 January - The Bower House in Shipston on Stour announces that it has appointed Leo Kattou as its new Head Chef. Kattou had previously been Chef st Simpsons in Edgbaston and at Laghi’s at Five Ways In Birmingham.

29 January - Michelin announces its 20 new Bib Gourmand restaurants - there are no West Midlands restaurants featured in it.  In the previous year’s list of 116 Bib winners only one West Midlands restaurant was recognised with the award - the Charlton Arms in Ludlow which retained the award in 2024.

30 January - Good Food Guide announces its awards for 2024. Two West Midlands restaurants are rated Exceptional - Grace and Savour and Harborne Kitchen. Very good awards are made to The Wilderness, Purnell’s, Tropea, Opheem, Adam’s, Folium, Smoke, Yikouchi at Chancer’s Cafe, Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, Le Champignon Sauvage and The Walrus (Shrewsbury).

31 January - First episode of the Central region heats of the BBC’s Great British Menu features four chefs who do not work in a Midlands restaurant. There are two West Midlands-born chefs, Sam Ashton-Booth originally from Worcester and who works at Muse restaurant in London, and who is eliminated at the end of the first round and Birmingham-born Adam Smith, Chef Patron at Woven by Adam Smith in Ascot, who eventually goes on to be chosen to cook the fish course at the banquet.

January - Baloci, a “Silk Road” cuisine opens in Highfield Road in Edgbaston.

5 February - Aktar Islam’s Opheem is awarded TWO stars at the annual Michelin awards ceremony. Birmingham, as a result, has three ONE Michelin star restaurants - Simpsons, Purnell’s and Adam’s. At the ceremony, Salt in Stratford upon Avon loses its single Michelin star while other West Midlands restaurants - Grace and Savour (Hampton in Arden), Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (Lichfield), Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumiere (both in Cheltenham), The Cross in Kenilworth and The Royal Oak in Whatcote all retain their’s. Hence, at the start of 2024, the West Midlands has 10 Michelin-starred restaurants.

10 February - Dan Sweet opens Cuubo on Harborne High Street at the same location as his former ‘fine dining takeaway’ establishment. 

11 February - Chef Brad and partner Holly Carter open their pop-up restaurant Carter’s at 18 on the eighteenth floor of 103 Colmore Row. This is to remain open until the end of April.

27 February - Chef Andrew Sheridan, previously Chef Patron at the now closed Craft and About 8, who reopened the latter in Liverpool in 2023, participates in BBC’s Great British Menu North West regional heats but is eliminated at the end of the first day.

12 March - While retaining his Chef Director role at Smoke Stuart Deeley also takes on the role of Executive Chef at Laghi’s at Five Ways. Patrick Hukins becomes Head Chef at Laghi’s.

15 March - Adam Bateman leaves his post as Executive Chef at the Grand Hotel. On 15 April 2024 it was announced that Bateman had been appointed Executive Chef at the Pan Pacific London Hotel in Shoreditch.

2 April - It is announced that the former Pensons near Tenbury Wells will reopen on 22 May as Native at Pensons with Ivan Tisdall-Downes as Executive Chef.

6 April - Glynn Purnell announces that he has appointed a diarchy of Head Chefs at Purnell’s  - Sam Luck and Tom Blakemore, both with long records of working in the Purnell’s kitchen.

7 April - The Observer publishes a review by critic Jay Rayner of Cuubo in Harborne. He pronounces that Cuubo is, ‘as exciting a restaurant as I’ve encountered in a long time”.

15 April - The Hockley Dining Club serves as host to the West Midlands Mayoral election hustings where the present Mayor, Andy Street, takes on his Labour opponent. Two fast food stalls are serving food - both fried chicken producers.

20 April - The annual Shakespeare Birthday Lunch is held in Stratford upon Avon and celrbrities attending include Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Armstrong and Dame Floella Benjamin. Dishes served are - burrata and beetroot salad, roast chicken and Wye Valley asparagus and deconstructed Pavlova.

21 April - Chef Rob Palmer announces that his Solihull restaurant Toffs will close on 2 May and relocate to Hogarth’s Hotel in Dorridge.

25 April - Michelin includes Rabbit in the Michelin Guide.

27 April - Chef Patron Ben Taylor and his partner Zsofia Kisgergely close the much-loved Le Petit Bois in Moseley.

20 May - It is announced that Niall Keating left his role as Chef director of Stoke on Trent’s Lunar on 19 May by “mutual agreement” with Craig Wilkinson, the restaurant’s co-founder. It had previously been announced that Keating would take up a new role in a Manchester hotel in June. A few days previously, Head Chef Craig Lunn had left his post at Lunar.

Craig Lunn & Niall Keating

23 May - It is announced that Carl Riley, formerly Head Chef at the George in Alstonefield, Michelin-listed from 2011 to 2023, has been appointed to a similar role at Lunar.

May - Phil Kerry, Head Chef at Forelles in Ludlow, departs his job there following Fishmore Hotel being taken over by a West Bromwich-based hotel chain which places the emphasis very much on cost cutting. Subsequently, a previously Cayman Islands-based chef, Joshua (Nicky) Hull-Saldhana is appointed Head Chef in June 2024 but is moved to work in the hotel chain’s Droitwich hotel in late June. Two Romanian chefs are appointed to take charge of the kitchens at Forelles.

Nicky Hull-Saldhana

May - Michelin’s May list of newly recommended restaurants includes Cuubo in Harborne. 

15 June -Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult opens to paying customers in Newhall Square.The restaurant serves 14 diners around its wide metallic counter, mostly sea food with a Japanese-style emphasis. 

26 June - Michelin announces its June list of newly recommended restaurants and among the eight named is 1919 at The Cottage in the Woods in Malvern Wells.

27 June - After the change of ownership of Fishmore Hall and departure of Head Chef Phil Kerry, Forelles restaurant ceases to be included in the Good Food Guide.

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:- 🌛.

  

139. Street Food In Birmingham. Goodbye Digbeth, Hello Hockley. Goodbye Beefburgers, Hello Venisonburgers.

   I think I have made it clear before that I haven’t been caught up in the lemming-like plunge from cliffs into a sea of expensive, often somewhat unpleasant street food served on nasty cardboard trays that has become inexplicably popular in this city. Much of it just isn’t very nice. There are a couple of recent developments in this aspect of Birmingham dining that are worth mentioning here.

  Firstly Digbeth Dining Club is no more or at least not in the form in which those who like that sort of thing (mostly aged under 40 who have lead a life of whining and who are now prone to long-COVID) have come to know it. It has been based in Lower Trinity Street since it began almost ten years ago in venues such as Mama Roux’s and Spotlight but as the triumph of the government’s vaccination campaign enables the hospitality industry to be reborn imminently the DDC has revealed that it will open a new venue in the Jewellery Quarter in Hockley. DDC does say however that it is looking for its own venue in Digbeth, the charms of which remain lost on me to this day, and that the venue will be, “a place where we can grow, develop, champion independence and incubate the best food traders, musicians, DJs (I don’t think they’re referring to dinner jackets), artists and makers that the region has to offer”. So that’s alright then. The new location in Hockley will be in Great Hampton Street and it is said that the “Hockley Social Club will still feature a line-up of street food and DJs in a 10,000 square feet space” (really you’d think that cool street food-consuming dudes would have converted to metric measurements by now).

  Meanwhile Birmingham’s appalling City Council which is dominated by a Labour Party locked in perpetual civil war between the Corbynistas and Starmer’s Limp Left faction, which in itself does not give much hope for good governance, and made up of a lot of worthless inner city councillors who make no contribution to the progress of the city apart from claiming their £18000 annual ‘expenses’ (they’ve just voted themselves a substantial rise again) and anything else they can get their hands on along with councillors representing privileged members of the wealthy, self-satisfied left leaning-middle class who have swarmed in places like Moseley and Harborne, has taken it on itself to withhold licenses from long established street-traders unless the traders introduce an “innovative approach”to what they offer for sale. 

  In reply the traders have taken the council to court accusing it of wanting to “gentrify” the city centre which one expects is just the vision that the denizens of Moseley and Harborne and their council representatives probably do hope to see happen. In court the lawyer representing the Council was forced to deny that the Council wished to replace current stalls selling beefburgers with those selling chai lattes and Tibetan curries (I had to look up what a Tibetan curry is and had to conclude that it most certainly has a home in Moseley). The lawyer for the Council, one Jonathan Manning, said that an “innovative approach is what the council is looking for”. He continued that traders were not required to sell “something that no-one has ever heard of, that no-one knew existed” (not Tibetan curry then obviously). “if you are burger van (an interesting piece of transformation in itself) you can still innovate within the burger market by selling goods that are perhaps more diverse than you were previously selling,. An example could be perhaps a vegetarian line or a different kind of meat - one could have a venison burger”. Such drivel. Frankly I find most burgers to be pretty unpleasant but I do support the traders who have worked in this city through all sorts of weather over many years and resent the assault on them by those who represent the Tibetan curry-eaters who live in their million pound houses in Moseley and such suburbs. If they want a venison burger then you are bound to find one in B13 or B15 and you can wash it down with an over-priced  Côtes de Rhône at the same time.

What is a Tibetan curry? Well nothing special I wouldn’t think though it is said to be less oily than Indian curries and have a “cleaner, healthier feel” (that figures, I’m surprised Birmingham City Council has not already made it de rigeur in all Birmingham restaurants). Recipes on the internet seem to centre on bright yellow potato curries and while genuine Tibetans (I’m not sure how many there are in Moseley or Harborne) use a yerma peppercorn in their’s, western recipe variants seem to feature a lot of fenugreek. So now we know. I wonder how soon it will be before Birmingham city centre is full of Tibetan curry stalls and if one will find its way to the Hockley Social Club (actually to give myself an easy time I often make a potato curry and like to use a lot of fenugreek so I think I have been several years ahead of the denizens of Moseley on that one). However I haven’t yet made myself a venison burger.