526. Wilderness Tenth Anniversary Dinner.

  The Wilderness has been located down a side alley off Warstone Lane in the Jewellery Quarter for longer than was ever intended. After its move there, an old former factory and previous home to Two Cats, Big Nanny’s Jamaican Kitchen, Choolo, Toque D’Or and Restaurant Gilmore which first opened in 1997, Alex Claridge had planned to make it a temporary site for his dining establishment before moving it after a short period to somewhere more permanent. Plans fell through and The Wilderness settled in to its present site very comfortably. The restaurant had been born under another name - Nomad - on 15 November 2025 at the Urban Coffee Co. in 1 Dudley Street, close to New Street Station but was necessarily renamed as The Wilderness shortly after opening in April 2016  because of the extraordinary pressure put on Alex by a New York hotel, NoMad, which threatened to take legal action because it claimed that Claridge had taken on the hotel’s name which of course was pure nonsense.

  Right from the word ‘go’, The Wilderness caught the local press’ attention with some of the ingredients used in some of his dishes - ants, for instance, in place of citric fruits because Claridge wished to source hyper-locally and ants were readily available while lemons were not a recognised feature of West Midlands agriculture - it all got rather farcical when a friend I was dining with there asked for some lemon with his glass of tonic and was offered the only source of citrus at hand - ants - which he politely declined. Despite this extreme idiosyncrasy, now long an eccentricity of the past, the food that Claridge was serving in Dudley Street was remarkably good and a sublime lamb dish I had there remains forever in my memory.

  And so, just before Christmas 2025, I wandered through the vaguely festive streets of the Jewellery Quarter in the direction of the alley in Warstone Lane. The welcome was warm and the kitchen alight with activity. This was The Wilderness’ 10th birthday dinner and a worthy celebration it was. The theme of the dinner was old favourites reimagined and there was a surprise in the kitchen with Jonny Mills working there while he waits for his own Sāēl to be open for business. This was a tasting menu costing £150 but rather oddly called Requiem, though unusual and vaguely morbid names never come as a surprise from Alex Claridge. So Requiem it was and the meal began.

Menu signed by Ediz Engin and Alex Claridge

  Firstly, two pleasing amuses bouches - as often at The Wilderness, a croustade and a tartlet. And then Claridge’s Big Mac, a fine beef tartare dating back, according to the menu, to 2019, and delivered by Jonny Mills. Then another ever evolving Wilderness dish, the Carrot 2025, which originated in its first primitive form in 2015 and I presume, may well have been served when The Wilderness was still Nomad and also harked back to when Alex had been a chef until 2013 at the now long closed vegetarian restaurant, the Warehouse Cafe in Digbeth where I remember eating a languid and somewhat glum pak choi (I would be sure that anything so dreary had not been cooked by Alex) and resolved to loath the useless vegetable for the rest of my life. Alex had then moved on to be Development Chef at another vegetarian dining establishment, Bistro 1847 in the Great Western Arcade, before starting to do pop ups of his own food at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath. Presumably by the time Carrot 2015 made its first appearance, Alex had worked out just the right thing to do with a carrot.

  Then came a brilliant dish - witty, hilarious, original, delicious - Trout - Truffle - inspired by the 2016 dish, Trout & Soil. Overlying a piece of finely prepared trout lying on a bed of truffle was a pastry fish one which gave a dish of trout some great visual characterisation and on it, more truffle. This was a highlight dish of 2025.

  Next some very nicely cooked quail with a brilliantly tasty crab curry sauce. This was based on the dish NAFB which dated back to 2018 and afterwards a piece of venison as I like it - a nice pink slice with  a wholly agreeable bite to it - paired with plum and beetroot and based on Alex’s 2015 Venison and beetroot. This worked very well and shows that despite years of cooking vegetarian food by the time 2025 came around he was already a master of meat and the precise matching of ingredients.

  Next there was a small but delightful version of his 2019 white chocolate banana filled with mango which, to the best of my recall, he first served at his then other restaurant, Nocturnal Animals in Bennetts Hill (what an ingenious and fantastic surprise it was when it first made an appearance) although the menu dates it to the dish Banana 2023 which suggests that Tom Shepherd served a version of it first on The Great British Menu which is not correct. This remained a clever, meticulously prepared and delicious item to boost anyone’s spirits, even Alex’s.

  We were in the home straight. The predessert was titled sorrel and jalapeño ”cheesecake”, inspired by Claridge’s White chocolate and wasabi from 2017. The hit of heat from the jalapeño was fun though I think the description of a cheesecake even in quotes was stretching things a bit - it mildly scruffy and removed from Claridge’s usual meticulously arranged plates. But we went on and arrived at the dessert proper of Chocolate-cherry-cep inspired by the 2016 Cherry and mushroom.

This was a reflection of a former more radical Alex Claridge and was very edible though very filling and it took some to get to the end of it but the process of ingesting had been very pleasurable.

  I took my petit fours home with me, bid my Christmas farewells and happy new years and, of course, happy birthdays, enubered and was whisked home while I wondered what Alex Claridge would be presenting us with in the next 10 years.

Rating:- 🌞🌞

20 December 2025.

  Meanwhile the faces in the kitchens of Birmingham’s fine restaurants continue to shift around like tectonic plates. No sooner than they were first spotted in the kitchens of The Wilderness a few months ago, Messrs Lewis Perks, the talented pastry chef, Jordan Johnson and Evan Holliday, all late of Simpsons where the latter two were working when they appeared on Masterchef The Professionals and before they worked at Claridge’s restaurant, are now to be found working at The Fountain gastropub in Clent. That should be interesting.

Perks, Holliday and Johnson at The Fountain.

  Meanwhile at Simpsons, where a friend dines regularly, I am told by him that the restaurant manager, Steve Locklin, has now left his post there after about a year and we have already reported that the sommelier, Thomas Moore, has moved from Simpsons to Glynn Purnell’s new glitzy restaurant in Snowhill, Trillium. All of this makes it more difficult for Luke Tipping to deliver the high standard of food we have come to expect at Simpsons in recent years. Presumably many of these departures are linked to the proposed sale of Simpsons which so far does not seem to have advanced to any degree. But for now, at least, Luke Tipping ploughs on and Simpsons remains.

510. Sāēl At Verbena.

 

  Jonny Mills has met with some delays in opening his much anticipated 8 seater new restaurant, Sāēl, in the Goods Yard at the heart of the Jewellery Quarter and so is continuing to do ‘pop ups’ in various spots including Chancer’s Cafe in restaurant-heavy Stirchley (see Blog 497) and this time, just down the road at tiny Verbena on the corner of the Pershore Road as it serves its role as Stirchley’s High Street and Ivy Road.

  Unusually, rather than serving a tasting menu, the chef chose to present an à la carte traditionalist Sunday lunch in three courses.

  To start I chose a very tasty chicken liver parfait, nicely smooth and not aggressively over-rich with small pieces of perhaps over-crispy duck (though there was a nice crunchinesss about it), more crunch from nuts and a soothing elderberry hoisin which while being nice and sweet succeeded in eliminating any potential problem of excess richness from the parfait.

   The Sunday roast followed. While roast sirloin of beef was temptingly on offer, I opted for Packington porchetta which was served stuffed with a tasty farce, a small and successful Yorkshire pudding and a generous supply of the ‘trimmings’ including the inevitable cauliflower cheese which was very good though, as so often happens the flavour of cauliflower was lost to the sauce, crunchy roast potatoes, sweet slices of roasted onion, very nicely cooked carrot, a small amount of red cabbage and cabbage. The crackling for which Chef had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare was good but some parts of it were too hard and potentially problematical for some dentitions. Overall though, the course was very edible.

  I chose cheese to finish though I may have gone for the panna cotta which usually lures me to order it. This dish was made up of a good slice of Tomme (wheel) du Javernac, from the Charente Limousin region, anointed with honey and served deliciously on a thrilling little slice of malt loaf. The firm white cheese was an interesting choice and made a change from some of the current trendy cheeses on offer in  upmarket restaurants (Baron Bigod comes to mind though I do like it very much especially with honey and crackers).

  This was a very enjoyable Sunday lunch prepared by an enthusiastic - indeed passionate - and talented young chef eaten in a relaxed atmosphere and prepared with care and respectfulness.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

21 September 2025

497. Summer - Sāēl At Chancers Cafe.

 

    Jonny Mills, who had been Director at the Tame Hare in Leamington Spa from March 2016 until the restaurant closed following the COVID-19 pandemic and before that had been Head Chef at the Ebrington Arms from February 2014 to March 2016, Head Chef at Andreas Antona’s The Church in Kenilworth and had also worked at Mallory Court near Leamington and the Arden Hotel in Stratford upon Avon, has been making a name for himself over the past one or two years with his pop-up brand, Sāēl. 

  These pop ups have sometimes been solo efforts and at other times have taken the form of collaborations with other notable chefs in Birmingham. They are usually very well received and have a keen and enthusiastic band of diners who will go out of their way to attend his appearances in various locations in the city. Given his pedigree this is hardly surprising. Mills has been holding a monthly pop up at Chancer’s Cafe in Stirchley for some time and all this has been a preparation for opening his own restaurant in The Goods Yard, next to the Jewellery Quarter railway station, in the autumn of this year.

  I have been unable to attend even a single Sael pop-up thus far but this week the opportunity arose to finally get to find out what Jonny Mills’ cooking is really like when I was able to go to Chancer’s Cafe for dinner.

  This was to be a surprise meal with no written menu available to diners prior to being served but it was intended to make the most of seasonal ingredients and, given the startling heat over the previous few days, to try to use some cold dishes to keep the diners cool.

  The first course, the amusement gueule I suppose, was a tasty blue cheese gougère which was quite pleasant.

   They there was a deeply flavoured broth with a brunoise of seasonal vegetables which gave a pleasing texture. I was disappointed only because, having been promised cold dishes, this was a warm, comfortable soup apt for a dark chilly autumn evening rather than a burning hot midsummer nd of dy. is there no-one out there ready to serve me a zingy, chillingly cold gazpacho to calm me?

   There followed a very pleasant savoury scone, light and fresh, made with wholemeal flour and delicious Grove Wood Farm butter. This was excellent.

  Following on there was an excellent beef tartare with nicely sized pieces of beef, tender and tasty bound by egg yolk and with onion and walnut. This was a very enjoyable beef tartare.

Next came a dish of summer green vegetables - peas, beans and nasturtium. It would be hard for a dish to be more seasonal.

    Sliced green and yellow courgette looked very attractive atop some very pleasingly textured monkfish with the summer addition of gooseberry.

  The main was a plate of perfectly cooked retired dairy cow beef served with a variety of brassicas and kohlrabi including little slices of sweet pickled kohlrabi and the same vegetable barbecued. The brassicas did very little for me and I really don’t like to be served stems which are uncuttable and bad for my digestion, all in the cause of ‘wasting nothing’. Some things, I fear, need to be wasted. Nevertheless the beef was as well cooked as one could hope for and enhanced by a fine sauce which used gooseberry to once more remind the diner of summer.

  There were two desserts, the first Chef’s take on gooseberry cheesecake and the second another nod to ‘the season of  ‘courgettes and strawberries’ and a play on strawberries and cream - a delightful bowl of strawberry jelly, lusciously sweet macerated strawberries topped by a delicious meadowsweet cream which did£ overwhelm the flavour of strawberry, all served with cleverly spicy strawberry ice cream which recalled the great companionship of strawberries with the heat of black pepper. Excellent.

  Jonny Mills is a highly experienced chef who has worked in several important West Midlands restaurants as well as the late and greatly lamented Tame Hare. I look forward to enjoying his highly mature, skilled and inventive dishes he will undoubtedly present when he opens Sāēl later this year.

473. Folium.

 

  These are difficult times for the hospitality industry. Starmer’s government’s taxation measures have made things even worse.

   The previous Conservative governments had been more helpful to hospitality businesses than those who ran them chose to accept. In particular, when Chancellor of the Exchequer and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rishi Sunak had introduced a scheme - furlough - whereby the government paid 80% of a worker’s salary and this greatly enabled businesses to retain their staff during the periods of lockdown thus avoiding mass unemployment and a vast number of businesses collapsing. After the lockdowns he furthmore reduced Value added tax for hospitality businesses for a twelve month period and also introduced an ‘Eat out to help out scheme’ whereby the government subsided the price of  meals when eaten out at restaurants and other dining establishments, all to stimulate the post COVID hospitality industry’s trade. 

  Nevertheless when the government necessarily returned the rate of Value added tax to its prepandemic level, many in the hospitality industry were enraged and felt the maintenance of the lower rate would continue to stimulate their businesses in the face of additional problems which included the rise in energy and commodity prices caused by the war in Ukraine. The Conservative government maintained the higher rate and many in the hospitality industry thought that by voting for a Labour government in the general election held on 4 July 2024 they would get a government more sympathetic to their plight and their wishes.

  They were to be sorely disappointed. Not only did the new Labour government maintain the VAT rate but in a budget delivered on 30 October 2024, the new Labour chancellor of the exchequer, Reeves, announced painful new measures which would add severe added crippling burdens to those trying to run businesses, including restaurateurs. 

  Far from favouring hospitality businesses, Reeves was hell bound on squeezing them through a mangle. Reeves’ measures included raising employers’ national insurance contributions by 1.2%, taking it to 15% and lowering the threshold at which it was to be paid from £9100 per annum to £5000 pa (this clearly affected the numbers of staff members restaurant owners could employ thus threatening unemployment in the industry), reduction of the business rates relief for hospitality businesses from 75% to 40% (thus increasing business costs) and raising the minimum wage from £11.41 per hour to £12.21 which again affected the costs of employing staff).

  As these changes only came into effect from 1 April, the potentially calamitous outcomes of Reeves’ budget are yet to unravel themselves and those hospitality industry figures who thought that voting Labour would be a good thing may well experience the same sort of buyer’s remorse as a diner in one of their restaurants who is served something on a tasting menu that they don’t want but which they’re paying for anyway.

  But that is only one side of the coin for potential customers who might be thinking of coming to eat at restaurants may be held back by a simmering cost of living crisis which has manifested itself under the Labour regime. Energy costs are exorbitant and raised artificially because of government measures attached to its green agenda. Transport costs, postal charges, water rates and inflation have all soared since Labour came to power and the result is that only those public sector employees to whom it has given enormous pay rises (junior doctors and train drivers to prevent them striking as well as members of Parliament of course) may be in a position to consider eating out at expensive restaurants. In short, the hospitality industry is tottering on the brink and disaster is just round the corner.

  On 27 April 2023, the then Mayor of the West Midlands, the much admired Andy Street, appointed Alex Claridge, Chef Patron of the Wilderness, to be his Nighttime Economy Advisor in a bid to have an expert in hospitality supporting the local industry in the region and advising the Mayor on how this support could be given. Claridge fitted perfectly into this role and it was particularly useful for the dining out industry to be represented at such a high regional level. Claridge tried to steer clear of party politics though he was not shy to let it be known that Sunak’s Conservative government needed to do more to support hospitality. The government was largely unresponsive to this after its years of going out of its way to see the industry through the COVID-19 crisis. 

  Street lost the Mayoral election to the Labour candidate, Parker, on 2 May 2024 and the Conservative government was heavily defeated by Labour in the general election of 4 July 2024. Those in the hospitality industry who had believed these changes of regime would lead to them receiving a more sympathetic and generous approach to their problems were soon disappraised of this illusion as the new Chancellor, Reeves, delivered her first budget which included the measures noted above and the new West Midlands Mayor revealed himself to be ineffectual and inconsequential. The region’s hospitality industry it seemed, had willingly, even enthusiastically, jumped out of the frying pan into the fire and had now to face the consequences. It has to be noted however that some of the leading chefs in the city had shown their keen support for Andy Street in the run up to the Mayoral election and not everyone in the dining out industry had any enthusiasm for a Labour government.

  And now April 2025 has arrived and the consequences of Reeves’ budget will begin to reveal themselves. Who will survive and who will go under? Or will things turn out to be not quite as bad as one would logically predict? Alex Claridge tweeted on X on 4 April 2025, “Previous Mayoral advisor on hospitality ….” Which was a somewhat opaque phrasing which can be interpreted either as he was the previous advisor or he was the advisor of the previous mayor while still occupying the post under the present Mayor, Parker. There has certainly been no resignation publicised as far as I can see but it is noteworthy that the rest of the tweet says, ”… Labour have created the worst possible environment for all the named uses below and de facto gone to war with the industries they claim to support. The dangerous net inflation of costs to create jobs means opening later is moot”. This was a response to a tweet by the Labour Deputy prime minister, Rayner, saying, “Our pubs, restaurants & live music venues are the beating heart of our cultural life, so it’s vital they’re given every chance to survive and thrive.That’s why new trial powers for London will back the capital’s pubs and clubs - boosting the nighttime economy and driving growth”. 

  Two days later, on 6 April, Alex Claridge again commented on another tweet put out by a government department featuring a video of Rayner’s comments on the nighttime economy industry and the rather underwhelming measures she was taking with the simple message, “Gaslighters”.

  Claridge had long recognised the dangers to his industry which had arisen in the previous five years and not hesitated to speak about them and now he appeared unimpressed by what the new government was doing to help it survive. Is he right to be as worried as he is?

  One of my most favourite restaurants in the city is Ben Tesh’s Folium - it could be the nicest place in Birmingham to relax and eat remarkably delightful food prepared meticulously to look beautiful and to taste perfectly delicious. On 9 April 2025, a tweet was posted saying, “A slow week this week. We would appreciate your support, as always. Thursday - Saturday dinner Friday/Saturday lunch”. Apart from the reason that Folium is such an excellent place to dine, it seemed right that I should also go there to give Ben Tesh and Lucy Hanson my support and so off I trooped to the Jewellery Quarter a couple of days later. 

  It was a bright, sunny mid-spring day,quite warm, and I was happy to walk through the doors again to be warmly greeted by Lucy and seated comfortably but I was sorry to see, and hear that I was to be the only diner that lunchtime though things were looking better that evening. I have reported on my visits several times before and having only recently visited there and the menu being unchanged from that visit, I shall not repeat myself except to say that this was another very fine meal with every dish completely unimpeachable. 

  I chose the shorter tasting menu if only because experience tells me that my digestive tract now has its limitations but I did add in the selection of cheeses which included Baron Bigod and accompanied by a crab apple jelly, home cooked crackers and a slice of Folium’s own delicious fruit bread. Such pleasures.

  As the only diner, I had the opportunity to talk to Lucy and we exchanged little items of news that we had come across since my last visit. This was very pleasant. I learned, among other things, that Aktar Islam is said to be opening a second restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter and there’s a bit of a buzz about chef Jonny Mills’ plans to open his eight-seater Sael in the GoodsYard next to the tram station in the Jewellery Quarter in the autumn. The front of house will be led by Asher Beardsmore who has worked previously at Couch in Stirchley and at Opheem where he was junior sommelier and most recently as bar manager at the Michelin Bib Gourmanded Tropea in Harborne.

Jonny Mills, his Sael is due to open at the Goods Yard in the Jewellery Quarter in the autumn.

Asher Beardsmore, soon to be in charge of front of house at Sael.

   I departed from Folium back into the bright afternoon knowing how much I had enjoyed myself and looking forward to another visit when Ben Tesh may have brought or two new dishes as I am now rather familiar with the splendid dishes he has been serving. I thought about the gloomy situation for restaurants at the moment and hoped all the great dining establishments in this city will keep going through these hard times despite what Reeves and Starmer are throwing at them at the moment. 

  As I walked through St Paul’s Square heading for Newhall Street I stopped to watch a very handsome song thrush indulging in obtaining his preferred form of fine dining - a luscious worm lurking in the soil beneath him. I wished him good luck, took a photo and moved on.

Folium rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

11 April 2025.