482. Great Brummie Menu, Birmingham College Of Food.

 

  This was the second year of The Great Brummie Menu, held at the Birmingham School of Food, part of University College of Birmingham, which was a charity event on behalf of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I had been unable to attend the first event but was delighted to go this year’s which featured Liam Dillon of The Boat in Lichfield, Luke Tipping of Simpsons, Jonathan Howe of Lumière in Cheltenham, Glynn Purnell of The Mount in Henley in Arden and Darryl Collins, pâtissier at Resorts World at the National Exhibition Centre who had previously worked at the Lygon Arms in Broadway among other locations. The event was attended by about 90 diners and preced by a sparkling wine reception with some decent canopés.

  Liam Dillon was the first chef to present his work to the diners and it took the form of some passable Isle of Wight heritage tomatoes served nicely with an unaggressive goats cheese, herbs from the garden of The Boat and, most delicious of all, some very toothsome smoked eel. A good start though heritage tomatoes served nicely dishes are a great risk unless every presented tomato is packed with flavour.

  Luke Tipping served up a remarkable scallop dish - a variant on the numerous scallop dishes I have enjoyed at Simpsons over the years. The plump and well cooked scallop was served with the mild bitterness of chicory, the invigorating thrill of lemon, the savouriness of sauce épicée and sesame. A very fine dish, the best course of the whole meal.

  In contrast, I am sad to write that the main, a particularly small piece of nicely cooked Creedy Carver duck (though I can see that some might have felt it was somewhat over) served with a terribly soggily coated bonbon of dry and almost inedible duck meat (how lovely it might have been with a nice crispy coat on the bonbon) along with Cheltenham beetroot about which it was difficult to build up any enthusiasm and various purées, one of which was said to be fennel but which I found difficult to identify. I don’t think Jonathan Howe was having the best of days. Next came Glynn Purnell’s ‘10-10-10 Egg surprise’ alongside its ideal companion - strawberries and tarragon including a lovely strawberry ice cream. Purnell, I felt, had not lost his touch. 

  Finally from Darryl Collins a chocolate dessert which is best described as “safe” though nicely done.

  To close, five different mignardises including a macaron, a well made pate de fruits, a cracknel, a truffle and a Turkish delight. Each petit four was thoroughly enjoyable and the same could be said for the accompanying wines which were donated by Arch 13 Wine Bar. 

  This was a happy evening held for a good cause with the guest chefs donating their precious time and energy. Matt Davies played a large part in making the event occur. He had been cmployed as Andreas Antona’s first apprentice at Simpsons after it had moved to Edgbaston. He eventually became Executive Chef for the Lewis Partnership in Staffordshire which included the Moat House at Acton Trussell where unfortunately in 2018 he was seriously injured in an electrical accident necessitating long running treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. He was now the Vice President of the British Culinary Federation. The Great Brummie Menu was a way for him to thank the hospital for the treatment he had received there and a sum of £17,000 was raised during the evening to support the Queen Elizabeth.

  I was saddened by a note on the back page of the menu which stated, “In loving memory of Wayne Thomson 22/09/1971 - 12/04/2025”. I had dined very happily a number of times at Wayne Thomson’s excellent Michelin-listed No. 9 Church Street in Stratford upon Avon. He was a hard working man who cooked extremely enjoyable dishes and his small restaurant was a charming delight. It was a sad event when the restaurant failed to reopen after the COVID-19 lockdowns though Wayne continued to work in the catering industry. Ars longa vita brevis.

  Finally, for the record - the first Great Brummie Menu was held at the School of Food on 21 May 2024 with the guest chefs being Luke Tipping, Adam Bennett of The Cross in Kenilworth, Jonathan Howe, Thom Bateman of the Flintlock at Cheddleton in Staffordshire and Louisa Ellis.

475. Easter Sunday Lunch At Simpsons.

 

  It was a nice treat to be invited by friends to join them at Simpsons for lunch on Easter Sunday to celebrate the birthday of one of them, And what a glorious spring day it was. The sky was blue, the sun was bright, everyone looked relaxed and full of the spirit of Easter. It was good to see that many of the diners, especially the older ones, were dressed to dine in a smart place where the food was fine and for something a bit special. If the restaurant can make the effort then the diners should too.

  I arrived somewhat earlier than my friends and was warmly greeted, within the parameters that one would expect from such an august establishment, and was soon indulging myself in a white port and tonic and ordering a bottle of Hundred Hills (an Oxfordshire winery east of Didcot) Preamble No 2 which my friends and I were pleased to drink with our canapé’s brought to us in the lounge prior to moving to the main restaurant. I enjoyed the English sparkling wine very much - crisp and refreshing without the strong acidity so often encountered in some of these products.

  The canapés, as always, were delicious - a lovely, crispy cod fritter and a delicious and equally crispy tartlet filled with fine beef tartare and garnished very prettily. A charmingly relaxed way to kick off a meal in good company. Then to the restaurant for the main event.

  There was the usual bread and butter course to start. This sounds all very routine but the bread there is so lovely that there is nothing routine about it. The brioche with duxelle was crispy and the sourdough toothsome and the wild garlic butter on this occasion was pleasingly restrained in flavour.

  We had chosen the three course Sunday lunch which experience told me was quite adequate to fill the stomach on the Sabbath and perhaps stimulate a little snooze (otherwise known in Italian, as my friends told me, to general mirth, as a pisolino, the word learnt from their Italian son-in-law, a scientist with a passion for making the perfect pizza).

  I chose the admirable Chalk Stream trout starter which was meaty though perhaps may have benefitted from a little more punchiness in its flavour. The really stand out ingredients in the dish which somewhat put the fish in the shade were the gorgeously sweet Isle of Wight tomatoes which would have been a very memorable starter in their own right.The basil, seed and olive dressing fully chimed in unison with the heritage tomatoes and much pleasure was derived from them.  One of my fellow dinners chose the scallop dish and found it to be cooked entirely to his liking.

  For my main I chose Blythborough pork (from St Margaret’s Farm, Mells, Halesworth in Suffolk, not all that far away from where my paternal ancestors lived for about 1350 years from about 550 AD to 1984 when they trooped off to Birmingham via a short sojourn in London where they ran a pub). The pork was as tender as butter but for my taste perhaps a little more seasoning might have raised it even higher. The roast potatoes were immaculate and the celeriac gel and apple sauce proved to be nice accompaniments with the vegetables all finely cooked - the hispi cabbage was spot on, the carrots had just the right texture and the cauliflower was also nicely cooked though, as I have previously written, I should love a dish of cauliflower sans cheese sauce just the once to be able to fully relish the full unique flavour of that noble vegetable. Will any chef ever be brave enough to present a dish of cauliflower exalted by being allowed to stand there nude and fully revealed and as bold as brass? 

  My hostess chose the butter poached cod and expressed no regrets.

  My hosts thoroughly enjoyed their passion fruit soufflés which I had experienced previously. Each soufflé that comes out of that kitchen is magnificent to behold and a wonder of Birmingham gastronomy. There was a nice touch when Steve Locklin, the restaurant manager who has been with Simpsons since August 2024, having previously carried out the same role in Lunar in Stoke on Trent when Niall Keating had been Executive Chef there (and where I had previously come across him) and also had been in a senior role at Hoar Cross Hall and before that at Liam Dillon’s The Boat in Lichfield, added an edible ‘Happy Birthday” decoration to the birthday boy’s soufflé. For my dessert I had the chocolate mille feuille which was splendidly crispy with pleasingly unaggressively flavoured chocolate cream.

  The final act - the petit fours - came in the form of an enjoyable chocolate cracknell, an extraordinarily sharp blackcurrant pate de fruit and a lovely little madeleine which was bringer of great joy.

  My host was given a very nice souvenir of his birthday lunch in the form of a birthday card with a picture of the restaurant from the garden and nicely signed by staff members. As a collector of menus and the ilk I couldn’t help feeling just that little it jealous.

Rating:- 🌞🌞🌞.

20 April 2025. 

217. Great British Menu 2022 Central Heats (2).

  It is regrettable that once again the Central Heat of BBC’s Great British Menu 2022 was won by a Chef who worked outside of the region - in London of course - and indeed, on this occasion, had never worked in the region. Not that Sally Abé failed to produce what appeared to be the best dishes (who can tell really?, they may look fabulous but in the end flavour is (almost) everything and that’s something the programme viewers never get to experience).

  Liam Dillon of The Boat in Lichfield was eliminated at the end of the second round (main course, intermediate course and dessert) leaving two London-based chefs to battle it out in the final ‘Judges’ round and so once again the London-centricity of the BBC won out. For his main course Dillon, necessarily continuing the theme of the BBC’s centenary, had produced a dish titled Bridge Farm, which alluded to the name of one of the fictional farms featured in the radio soap opera - the world’s longest-running - The Archers, set in the fictional West Midlands county of Borsetshire in the equally fictional village of Ambridge and produced in non-fictional Birmingham (unless you are watching an episode of Peaky Blinders in which case it is fictional). The dish was made up of a fillet of dairy cow beef (brined, cooked sous vide and then roasted) with slow-cooked shin of beef served in a Roscoff onion, pickled horseradish, turnip and beef fat-roasted, glazed heritage carrot. Guest Chef Judge Aktar Islam awarded the dish 8 points, complaining that the use of a water bath in part of the cooking of the fillet had meant that Dillon had not been able to achieve as fine a crust on it as would have been the case if the meat had been solely roasted and also, sounding a little too obsessed about carrots for his own good, thought that Dillon should have used a different type of carrot as the quality of the flavour of heritage carrots in 2021 had not been up to scratch (which is interesting given how obsessed with serving carrots so many chefs are at the moment, something I have moaned about before. I shall soon be revisiting Opheem so I will be interested to taste any carrots served there).

  For pre-dessert Dillon prepared ‘Grab the Star’ inspired by the ITV programme I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here with mango stars and when his rum jelly worms failed in their moulds he added wood ants to provide a citrus flavour. Islam was moderately enthusiastic about the dish and placed it second behind Sally Abé’s sky rocket.

  Liam Dillon’s dessert was ‘The Phantom Flam Flinger’ from another ITV programme, Tiswas, which was a star anise espuma and damson jam custard tart with plum sorbet and Aktar Islam awarded it 7 points because the tart was served still warm and the custard element not fully set. This score was insufficient for Dillon to go through to the final heat where all the dishes were to be judged by celebrities of varying degrees of silliness apart from chef Tom Kerridge who added a note of seriousness to the proceedings. One of the celebrities’ main contributions was the constant expostulation of the word ‘Wow!’ every time a new dish was brought into the judging room and the bulk of comedian Ed Gamble’s comments were fatuous, flippant, tiresome and not in any way funny. Nevertheless Sally Abé was chosen as the winner of the regional heats and once more the Central region found itself represented by a London chef. 

215. Great British Menu 2022 Central Heats (1).

 

  The first part of the Central heats of the 2022 Great British Menu  was screened on BBC2 on 1 February. Self-indulgently and self-referentially the theme of this year’s series is the Centenary of the BBC itself.

   As in previous years the region was represented by only two chefs who actually work in the Central area and two who have little to do with the region and work in London. This enables BBC producers to ensure that the only part of the country it’s truly interested in - London - which is overwhelmed with restaurants and overpopulated by chefs can see more of its restaurants represented on the programme. We may also find that to be the case with BBC producers’ second favourite city - Manchester - as many BBC luvvies now live in the area because of the BBC production facilities in Salford.

  As revealed in a previous Blog the two Midlands-based competitors this year were Harvey Pertiola who was Head Chef at Maribel in Brindley Place before the pandemic (see Blog 86) and Liam Dillon whose Michelin Plated restaurant, the Boat Inn in Lichfield, I visited a couple of months ago (see Blog 199) and came away from having had a very pleasurable meal there.

  The two London-based chefs who were featured were Sally Abé who was born in Mansfield but has never worked in the Midlands and Ben Orpwood, originally from East Anglia and now one of Gordon Ramsay’s disciples. The guest Chef Judge at least manifested himself as someone intensely interested in Midlands cuisine in the person of Aktar Islam, chef patron of Opheem, who is rapidly becoming a darling of the BBC.

  Islam appeared in the kitchen and his first act was to judge the amuses bouches, as BBC script writers like to call them, prepared prior to his appearance by the chefs. Liam Dillon had prepared a cheese bonbon with pickled shallots and Pertiola had prepared a tiny tart containing mature cheese custard, pickled onion gel and a crumb of toasted yeast and parmesan. Islam unfortunately chose Liam Dillon’s appetiser as his least favourite - he felt he could not detect the flavour of cheese in the bonbon; he placed Pertiola’s cheese tartlet second expecting, he said, more flavour from the cheese. Sally Abé’s chicken liver parfait tartlet was placed first.

  And so to the starters and the BBC programme-themed dishes kicked in except that Orpwood managed to produce a homage to an ITV programme, Blockbusters; still it looked pretty. Of the two Midlands chefs,  Dillon stayed safely with the BBC with a quail-based dish called Don’t tell him Pike which recalled the sublime comedy Dad’s Army and Pertiola presented Aktar Islam with a lamb sweetbread dish titled By Order of the Peaky Blinders, a homage to the excruciatingly exciting but shockingly violent tale of Post World War I Birmingham gangsters who unlike the generally good-natured and pleasant real inhabitants of the city are just about the most miserable bunch of villains ever met who are not yet known to have cracked a smile on screen and speak with grim accents rather than the genuine lighter and cheerful tones we hear when real Brummies such as Glynn Purnell appear on screen. Still, the dish gave the other chefs an opportunity to don their Peaky Blinders flat caps, hopefully without razor blades sewed into the peaks.

  Unfortunately the cooking of the starters by the Midlands chefs did not go down well with Aktar and he scored them both 6 out of 10 while awarding 7 points to Orpwood and 8 points to Abé. But all was not lost with the fish to come.

 

  Dillon’s fish course paid tribute to the programme Blue Planet hosted by one of the BBC’s greatest luvvies, David Attenborough, and was a brill-based dish served with salsify that also had an environmental note to it about the problem of plastic in the oceans. Pertiola presented a dish, Monkfish like Mobeen, centred on a local Birmingham comedy. Abé’s dish celebrated the comedy Absolutely Fabulous and Orpwood presented an impressive-looking dish Fanny’s Haddock which celebrated the TV chef from years ago, the remarkable Fanny Craddock, and her love of presenting remarkable soufflés to her audience. It has to be said that Orpwood’s dish was indeed a remarkable haddock soufflé presented immaculately.

  The upshot of it all was that Harvey Pertiola was awarded 7 points, Liam Dillon 8 points while the London chefs received 8 points (Abé) and 9 points ((Orpwood) and this led to the Pertiola’s elimination from the rest of the competition and only Liam Dillon left to represent the West Midlands in the main and dessert course heat to come. Which I expect is just the way BBC producers would have hoped things would turn out.