557. The Cross At Kenilworth.

 

   It was some time - years - since I had last dined at the one Michelin-starred The Cross at Kenilworth where Adam Bennett has held the ship steady as Chef Director since it was opened by Andreas Antona in 2013. Bennett had joined the staff of Simpsons when it was situated in Kenilworth in 2003 and had moved to work with Antona at the new location of Simpsons in Edgbaston in 2004. Coventry-born, Bennett had trained ar Henley College and subsequently worked under Anton Mossiman at the Dorchester and in France ar Restaurant Gut Lassausaie and Restaurant Marc Meurin before returning to England to work in country house hotels including Mallory Court. When Simpsons opened in Edgbaston he was appointed Head Chef under Luke Tipping who was Executive Chef and he held the post until 2013 when he stepped down to lead the United Kingdom team in the Bocuse D’Or competition held that year. Matt Cheal stepped into the role while Bennett’s team achieved the highest position (4th) ever for a British team. Bennett led the team again in 2015 with Britain coming 6th in the European finals and achieving 10th place overall. Bennett took up his post at The Cross in 2013 and the restaurant was quickly included in the Michelin Guide and then awarded a single star which it has retained ever since.

  Rather like Heaven, as described by Jesus Christ, there are many rooms in The Cross with a large outdoor dining area at the back of the building which has all the outward appearance of being an everyday pub until the interior is viewed and the dining rooms are revealed to the unsuspecting - they are spacious, comfortable, cheerfully decorated, rustic in a smart, high middle class sort of way and … busy.

Adam Bennett at the pass

  I chose to order from the three course à la carte menu (£90). Two canapés in the form of gougères with two types of sauce were served. There was a discernible cheese flavour but not at all intense but the exteriors were pleasingly crispy though slightly oily. I have had far more memorable canapés at Simpsons with much stronger and gorgeous flavours than the pair served at The Cross on this visit.

  Afterwards, some good sourdough was served with a nice Jersey butter and this helped to fill the long gap between the time I placed my order and the time when the first course eventually showed its face. It did seem that food was slow to come out of the kitchen, perhaps the baking hot weather was something to do with it.

  It has to be said that the starter was delicious - Dorset crab with a good pasta in the form of cavatelli and a saffron sauce with the well-judged bite of chilli. There seemed to be plenty of crab meat and the pasta was cooked nicely. There seemed to saffron gave it all a warm, comforting appearance and this was a pleasing dish.

  I chose what proved to be a remarkably good and delicious main course of beautifully tasty and tender sirloin cooked over coals with it being spot on as medium rare and served with some toothsome slow cooked short rib and sweet Roscof onion and 6 very well triple cooked chips with black garlic purée and unctuous red wine sauce. This was an excellent dish, the meat being Hereford beef from Ireland (I expect you understand my meaning) and of high quality and the cuisson just as I would have wished it to be. A lovely dish

  For dessert I chose the fine peanut butter parfait with milk chocolate crémeux, the richness of both being splendidly balanced by banana and lime ice cream. A pleasingly light but satisfying dessert.

In contrast to the previous evening’s dinner at Oscar’s French Steakhouse and Bistro where service was speeded up to a dizzying pace, the meal at The Cross proceeded at a snail pace but it’s hard to argue with saying, “Something worth having is worth waiting for”.

12 August 2026

Rating:- 🌞🌞

122. Tiers For Fears.

   As Birmingham restauranteurs come to terms with the reality of the COVID-19 Regulations Tier 3 designation for the city there are more reactions from local leading names in the industry. In a question put to his customers on his Facebook page Glynn Purnell sought to gain information about the potential success of a takeaway service for his restaurant until the present crisis is over.

  Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness announced the non-reopening of his Jewellery Quarter restaurant by e-mail to his clients and used it is an opportunity to promote a tee shirt the restaurant is selling with the inscription, “It can’t rain all the time”. We hope that is true.

  

And Simpsons and The Cross at Kenilworth:-

 

 Jabbar Khan, the founder of Lasan, made famous by its then head chef Aktar Islam, and other restaurants, meanwhile is planning to open a new restaurant on Harborne High Street in the unit formerly housing a Cafe Rouge though the type of cuisine to be served there is not yet known. The restaurant is being designed by the Spencer Swindon Design group which designed the interior of the Plough Inn which will be opposite Khan’s new eatery. Khan has described it as going to be, “elegant and urban chic”. In the first part of the twentieth century, Brummies usually referred to the area using the derogatory term “Hungry Harborne” because the notoriously snobbish inhabitants liked to give the impression that they had rather more wealth than was actually the case and to maintain this image they would rather miss a meal than not have the items which projected prosperity. Perhaps Khan’s new restaurant may help to prevent the locals from still being ‘hungry’ and with its ‘urban chic’ still project the image of prosperity. I suppose the arbiter of that will be the effect of COVID-19 on jobs in an area where young professionals, unemployed, furloughed or still working, like to think of themselves as cool. Then again, t’was ever so.

9. Purnell's At Ten ... Plus Pigeon.

  On Friday 7 July 2017 a highly important anniversary for food lovers in Birmingham was celebrated. On that very day, 10 years before, Glynn Purnell had opened the doors of his ground-breaking new restaurant to the public and dining out in Birmingham and the West Midlands would never be the same again.

  In his book, "Cracking Yolks and Pig Tales" Glynn recalled how his first experience of cooking was preparing food for his younger siblings when his mother and father were out working and his earliest signature dish being baked beans on toast with some onion and a teaspoon of curry powder added to the beans. The dish would be finished with a covering of cheese. Glynn recalls that he thought he was a genius as did his brother and sister who were the beneficiaries of Glynn's early culinary inventiveness. Those of us who love to dine at his restaurant now know that these early presentiments of genius were completely correct.

  Glynn describes how at the age of 14 he began washing up and preparing salads for a hotel lounge and when he left school he began to work in the hotel kitchen under Peter Wintle and Roger Kendrick. He moved on to work in the hotel restaurant, The Terrace under the Head Chef, Tony Morris, and with Mark Hill, the sous-chef. 

  The next step in his career was to work at Simpson's when it was in Kenilworth and he worked under the chef-patron and father of modern West Midlands cuisine, Andreas Antona. There he worked under Luke Tipping and Andy Walters.

  He worked for a period under Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Ludlow (see Blog 7). During his time at Hibiscus the restaurant increased its single Michelin star to two.

  Leaving Hibiscus he became Head Chef at Keith and Diane Stevenson's newly opened Jessica's in Edgbaston. A Michelin star and the AA Restaurant of the Year title followed soon after.

  After four years at Jessica's Glynn decided that he wished to open his own restaurant and found an old Victorian warehouse in Cornwall Street and, on a very tight budget, opened Purnell's with his wife, Kerry, on 7/7/07 at 7PM. Jessica's closed to business. Purnell's was awarded a Michelin star in 2009 and continues to hold this distinction. The restaurant's first manager was Jean Benoit Burloux and he was succeeded by Sonal Clare in 2014.

  To celebrate the restaurant's tenth anniversary he held a free lottery so that 15 winners and their guests could pass the 10th anniversary evening being indulged with a champagne reception and a 10 course meal. Sadly my entry, one of over a thousand, was not drawn from the hat but you can't always have what you want in life. I have just received a leaflet (illustrated above and below) which is a rather nice souvenir in itself with the rather witty photograph of Chef outside his restaurant and a nonchalant pigeon wandering by oblivious to the presence of one of Birmingham's great celebrities. If it knew what Glynn can do to pigeons it probably wouldn't have got so close.

  Here's to Purnell's' next 10 years and its second Michelin star!

  The leaflet that announced the Grand celebration dinner for the lucky winners:-

  Cracking Yolks & Pig Tales, Glynn Purnell's first book, published 2014 by Kyle Books:-

  Rib Ticklers & Choux-ins, Glynn Purnell's second book, published 2016 by Kyle Books:-

  Both signed copies, of course:-

Happy Diners saying "Here's to another 10 years, Glynn"