537. Sunday Lunch At Samo.

 

  Chef Elliot Brown opened his restaurant Samo in March 2026 in the Great Western Arcade. The location had previously been home to Land before it moved a short distance along the arcade and prior to Land’s occupation of the site it had been home to Bistro 1847 where once in his salad days Alex Claridge had served vegetarian dishes. Brown has a distinguished curriculum vitae, having trained at the Hotel du Vin and then at Simpsons when Leo Kattou, now at the Bower House in Shipston on Stour, was Head Chef there. Subsequently Brown worked at Aktar Islam’s short-lived Legna and then at Tierra Tacos and Trentina both in the Jewellery Quarter and then he had gained experience with Italian-style food at Tropea in Harborne. Brown is assisted in the kitchen by Greg Shephard, his sous chef.

  Brown’s intended style for his own restaurant was a wise choice - ‘modern bistro’ - with an emphasis on the seasonality of ingredients. My first visit to the new restaurant was for the first Sunday lunch to be served there and it proved to be a very pleasing experience. It really was very good. I was the first diner to arrive for the particular sitting and I received a pleasing welcome and then sat back to enjoy an anis aperitif while the other diners trickled in. The middle class on a Sunday don’t like to hurry themselves.

  As starter I chose an impressive-looking and tasty prawn cocktail surmounted by two king prawns looking accusingly with their dead eyes from the rim of the dish. There was a very generous portion of little shrimps and the Marie Rose was well made.

  But of course I was there for the roast beef and out it came - tender, pink and blushing. There came with it a fine crusty Yorkshire pudding and a banquet of vegetables - very edible beef dripping roast potatoes and slices of roast turnip, gorgeously - yes, gorgeously, that’s the very word, buttery mashed swede with creamed leeks and cabbage and, as an extra, cauliflower in cheese sauce. More vegetables than I could manage but I made a good attempt and there really wasn’t very much left on my plate by the time I surrendered it to be taken to the dish washer, be it machine or human.

    I was kidnapped by the lovely creamy rice pudding with compôte when I read the dessert menu and my choice was fully vindicated by the intense enjoyment it gave. Modern bistro had rendered classic, fine English Sunday lunch. And I had been seated at a window table and what a relaxing time I had watching the Sunday afternoon shoppers pass by. Brilliant!

Elliot Brown & Greg Shephard

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

29 March 2026.

511. Hotel Du Vin, Birmingham.

 

  I attended a dinner at Birmingham’s Hotel du Vin in Church Street, nextdoor neighbour to the Grand Hotel. This was my first visit there although, as reported in several previous blogs, I have dined at the Stratford upon Avon branch on a number of occasions and found the food there to be generally very enjoyable and I had watched a cooking demonstration by the Hotel du Vin’s Group Director, Matt Powell, who prepared a fine looking Mont Blanc at this year’s Colmore Food Festival.

  It has to be said that the entrance area of the hotel, which in a previous life was the Birmingham Eye Hospital, is chic and exciting and has a bit of razzamatazz about it. The dinner was for forty people and those present included the former West Midlands Mayor, Sir Andy Street, and the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mel Stride, interesting people to listen to in this setting when the present government seems to be doing everything in its power to wreck the hospitality industry, miserable visu.

  We started with what was described as a ‘spring vegetable soup’, somewhat displaced in time as autumn is now well advanced. It looked spookily murky and one wondered what lurked beneath the surface but on plunging one’s spoon into the depths what was met was thoroughly enjoyable. There was a brunoise of very nicely cooked vegetables in a light, tasty broth with particularly pleasing bits of fennel and a very nicely judged underlying taste of tarragon. 

Next, for the main, braised ox cheek was served as bouef Bourguignon in luxurious, silky sauce with charming, sweet shallots and button mushrooms. There was also a reasonably successful mash, a little cloying, and some very nicely cooked new potatoes and some almost garishly green beans which were reasonably tender. On the whole this was a satisfactory dish but somewhat unexciting and less than lukewarm. I am pretty tired of ox cheek (I did not choose the menu) but I appreciate that when cooking for forty people, slow cooking cheek like this makes the process pretty simple and it isn’t easy to get forty dishes and keep them as warm as they should be. On the other hand, just because something is not easy it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. If I am going to ear ox cheek repeatedly everytime I attend an organised dinner perhaps chefs could steal an arch from Tom Shepherd and serve it as alive. To annEnglishman the mere word, “pie” has a draw to it.

  

    There was a competent crème brûlée to close - a little ramekin of custard with a crispy top to it will rarely displease anyone unless incompetently handled but this was a crème brûlée not striving to reach the heights (one thinks back to Glynn Purnell’s 10-10-10 egg surprise and is downcast at the demise of Purnell’s). Perhaps chef might have served a neat little sable biscuit to lift this dish up from the level of strictly basic.

  This was standard mass cooking for a large group and was generally quite edible and did what it said on the label (though how much more pleasurable it might have been served warm or even hot and with some extra element to jazz it up a bit.

Rating:- 🌛🌛

26 September 2025.

Former West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street

Shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Mel Stride.