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.

502. Two Country Pubs - The Fuzzy Duck, Armscote And The Wildmoor Oak Inn, Bromsgrove.

    South of Stratford upon Avon, where Worcestershire red brick is starting to give way to Cotswold stone, there is the Michelin-recommended pub with rooms that goes by the name of The Fuzzy Duck. I have been hoping to get there for some time but bus services are difficult and it’s best to take a car and fortunately I had a friend who was pleased to drive me there and join me for lunch.

  The village in which the pub is located is Armscote in a quiet country lane off the main road between Ilmington, home to the Howard Arms, and Shipston on Stour, where one might dine at The Bower House, where Leo Kattou the former Head Chef at Simpsons and the recently closed Laghi’s, now rules the kitchen. The pub was opened in 2013, having been fully renovated and modernised, by siblings Tania and Adrian Slater and first featured in the Michelin Guide in its 2015 edition. The Guide’s description then stated, “Adrian and Tania … took this place from boarded up boozer to welcoming, fashionably attired dining pub. Seasonal British dishes use great quality local and sustainable ingredients…”.

  I had finally achieved my goal of dining at the Fuzzy Duck and first impressions were very positive. There was a pleasing welcome for myself, my guest and my young dog who behaved not far short of impeccably and we were delighted to find the dining room to be delightfully and relaxingly decorated, brightly lit by the natural light coming through the sizeable windows and spacious to ensure that one felt comfortable and able to talk without being overheard. 

 The table was nicely laid even though there was no table cloth and it was not long before I was embibing a Pink Duck cocktail from the drinks menu which featured at a cute fluffy ducking on its cover, made from Chase Rhubarb and apple gin, strawberry purée, lemon juice and lemonade. It was a pleasingly refreshing choice.

  Neither my companion nor myself were able to resist the lovely twice baked cheese soufflé with truffle sauce as our starter. It had a good punchy, cheesy flavour and was splendidly light and airy. We were already clearly in the rarefied atmosphere of fine and refined pub food and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

  For my main, I felt the Quack and Chips demanded my attention and very good it was too. The fairly small but very well cooked honey and soy glazed duck leg was delicious, the meat moist and succulent, and the accompanying truffle and Parmesan chips were equally delightful both in their flavour and their texture - very fine chips indeed.mYes, this was an excellent dish and the salad of thin ribbons of carrot with an Asiatic sesame dressing added a soothing coolness to it all.

  I was very pleasingly satiated and could only manage an affogato served with a shot of amaretto as dessert but it was nicely served and proved to be a nice close to the meal.

  My dining companion (not Lucy The Labrador) gained as much pleasure from her opening cheese soufflé as I had myself and was immensely pleased with her dish of beautifully cooked sea bream and accompaniments along with her rather extravagant dessert of Eton Mess.

  We  departed content and very well fed and with the resolution that the Fuzzy Duck had not seen the last of us.

Rating:- 🌝+

30 July 2025

  The day previous, a dining companion and I revisited the Wildmoor Oak Inn at Wildmoor near Bromsgrove. I have written about this previously but enjoy lunching there so much that I find it hard to stay away for very long. The food served from the kitchen where Peter Jackson, Brad Carter’s brother-in-law, is Head Chef is excellent pub food, delicious and of that standard consistently. as well as being of very good value.

  We were not disappointed on our latest visit. We shared a plate of tasty hummus of good flavour, the amount of garlic in it nicely judged, served with thin slices of beetroot, sweet, softly textured confit garlic cloves and pea shoots, which for once served a real role in the dish rather than being a lazy man’s garnish for everything from breakfast scrambled egg to steak in the evening.

  My plate of haddock and chips was, as ever, excellent. The fish was beautifully cooked with delightful  crispy batter and the chips were about as perfect as chips can be. While I can live without the curry sauce, the mushy peas were delicious - sweet and minty - and the accompanying tartare sauce was a cut above most tartare sauces that one encounters. For dessert I chose the perfectly wobbly vanilla panna cotta which was lovely though the flavour of vanilla might have been stepped up another notch. The pleasingly wobbly panna cotta was accompanied by nicely macerated strawberries and an excellent sable biscuit.

  My lunch companion chose one of the ‘specials of the day’ as her main course - gammon, which though it looked rather overcooked, was judged to be delicious and succulent. This was accompanied by a pot of the much loved chips, peas and a remarkably attractive-looking fried egg. Her dessert was very grand - a magnificent confection made up of a perfectly sweet mango sorbet sitting on a mango and passion fruit pavlova.  No complaints about it were heard.

  The Wildmoor Oak Inn continues to be a very great pleasure to dine at and represents very good value in these times of continually rising ingredients prices.

Rating:- 🌞

29 July 2025.

  Now, a quick mention that I very much enjoyed my pretheatre dinner at Stratford’ s Hotel du Vin where I chose to eat a splendidly sweet and filling bowl of French onion covered by a thick, vigorously tasty cheesy crouton and then, for the second time in two days, a very well cooked, moist and flavourful confit duck, more generously sized than that served at the Fuzzy Duck, and in a rich and highly toothsome sauce. This was excellent and perhaps only held back by being served with a generous helping of sauté potatoes when I rather would have preferred fewer potatoes and some other vegetable to give more contrast to the dish. Nevertheless it was very good. The Stratford Bistro du Vin serves some very good dishes and I especially enjoy the robust, rustic and filling Gallic-style dishes it has on its menu.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

31 July 2025.

  The HdV dinner preceded a trip covering the short distance to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre where a fabulous production of one of the three plays I have never before seen, The Winters Tale, certainly did not give me any indigestion though, the production being so powerful and at times very dark, a stiff post-theatre drink seemed a necessity.

  Finally, during a long walk around Stratford town and along the river bank I spotted two interesting sights relevant to Stratford’s dining out history. Firstly, I espied the ‘floating restaurant’ The Countess which chugs up and down the Avon serving lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. While this is not particularly notable it’s worth noting that in 1978 and 1979 another Stratford floating restaurant, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was included in the Michelin Guide. 

  Further along the river, by the bridge near the theatre, can be found the site of the former Boathouse restaurant and this too was once included in the Michelin Guide in the 1998 to 2000 editions.

  There was also a sad sign of the times - a notice in the window of the Stratford upon Avon branch of Pizza Express announcing that the dining establishment is to close on 2 August. There are now many empty shops in the town and many of them former restaurants and cafes. There are directly caused by the Labour government’s raised taxes for businesses and aggressive raising of the minimum wage which are wreaking havoc with the hospitality industry which continues to also be hit ever rising food prices. Stratford is now a shadow of its former self and Starmer’s crass Labour government and the actions it is taking are playing a huge role in destroying the town and the industry. So Stratford says Ciao to another popular dining establishment. No doubt, it is not the last. 

284. Laghi’s Edgbaston.

 

  The city’s tram line has been extended to what is tweely named Edgbaston Village though the area is enormously urbanised and has no resemblance whatsoever to a village and may otherwise be more accurately named Five Ways which is the huge traffic island leading to Ladywood, the large Georgian and Victorian homes of the upmarket part of Edgbaston and the Hagley Road which takes one past The Plough and Harrow, which was once the best dining establishment in the city especially when Andreas Antona was Head Chef there, and out to Quinton.

  Situated just off the Five Ways island is the well thought of Italian-style restaurant, Laghi’s, opened in 2017 by Luca Laghi, a doctor specialising in the care of elderly people at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital  and of Italian heritage himself. On 16 July 2022, Leo Kattou left his job as Head Chef at Simpsons after working there for 13 years and working his way through the ranks and at the end of October 2022 he became Head Chef at Laghi’s. The restaurant manager is Charlotte Carter.

  I arrived late for my lunch after staying a little longer than I should have done on a visit to the remarkable Coffin Works museum which is situated a stone’s throw away from Aktar Islam’s Opheem but I nevertheless received a pleasing welcome from Charlotte. Lunch service was winding down but the remaining diners looked comfortable and satisfied and I quickly settled down in the smart modern, stylishly decorated surroundings.

  From the sensibly sized menu I chose two ‘small plates’ after discussing my options with Charlotte - barbecued red prawns with salsa verde and truffle arancini with aged parmesan. I also opted for a half helping of the mezze maniche carbonara from the list of pasta dishes.

 

  All the dishes were excellent - from the splendidly large, tasty crustacea happily accompanied by the delicious salsa verde to the nicely crispy coated, richly truffled pair of arancini with the thrill of the aged parmesanto the gorgeous carbonara, the pasta accurately cooked as you would expect, the sensationally crunchy pancetta and the silky, glamorous, unctuous carbonara itself - a very memorable dish.

  This was an immaculately satisfying meal which I rounded off perfectly, I felt, with a modestly sized affogato. 

  Rating:- 🌞 

  I was not able to complete my pasta dish at Laghi’s because I had breakfasted again at Wayland’s Yard where, on that occasion, I had been regaled with a fine stack of nicely textured pancakes with good, crispy salty bacon made into a petit dejeuner symphony by maple syrup which I drizzled over it all.

  To complete a trio of breakfasts I also turned up there the following day with my dog, who by then loved heading for there, and again spoiled myself with a sausage and bacon bap which was delicious. The raison d’être of Waylands Yard was originally to serve fine coffeee, which it does very satisfactorily, but the breakfast and brunch food also available is thoroughly enjoyable and generously portioned.

Rating-  🌛🌛🌛🌛