530. Snow And Ice And A Purple Sky And Dinner At Asha’s.

 

  I was meeting an old friend who last year moved from Birmingham to Saffron Walden where, he had discovered, dining out establishments are not as he had been used to here in Birmingham. He has the tastes and physique of a true gourmand, and unlike myself, is a lover of game and more impressively, is always able to sink a piece of rare purple wood pigeon from which I shrink away, the ferric flavour of it, like that of that offensive vegetable rocket, too much for my poor tastebuds. 

  We had arranged to stay in The Grand Hotel for two nights and as recounted in the previous Blog dined at Folium on our first evening in town only to be assailed by an irksome snow storm which made our journey from the Jewellery Quarter back to Temple Row somewhat thrilling as our Uber, possibly the last running that evening, slithered on the slushy, slide mean streets.

  I awoke the next morning to a snow-covered panorama looking from my window in room 503, the city paralysed with no effort having been put in by the council overnight to make either the roads or pavements safe. We passed the day quietly and resolved to dine at Asha’s, close by and no further far away than one would wish given the horrific icy state of the pavements. We made it to Asha’s without tumbling to the floor on the compacted snow and ice and heaved a sigh of relief and uttered a silent prayer in thanks for our survival.

  Unusually but hardly surprisingly, Asha’s was as empty as you would probably ever expect to see it on a Friday evening, unless perhaps Christmas Day had fallen on a Friday - I think that we were at one of only three occupied tables. We started inevitably as old campaigners with poppadoms served with some moderately interesting pickles and then we moved on to our starters - my friend judged his Prawn 65 (“batter fried prawns tossed with curry leaves, ginger and onions” to be agreeable and I enjoyed my Fish Amritsari (“Crispy fried fish pakoras seasoned with mint and aromatic carom seeds”) - they were generously portioned, certainly crispy, the unspecified fish nicely cooked but in any real flavour rendering them somewhat dull.

  I chose the again generously portioned chicken dharma curry which had satisfactorily cooked chicken in a nice thick, moderately spicy sauce. This was fine and there was some subtlety in the spicing but there was nothing astounding about it, no sparks of excitement, no evidence that going out for a curry, even at a glitzy, expensive place as Asha’s is, has moved on in any way, since the 1980s when I would often sit in Nirmal’s on West Street while working in Sheffield, being firmly guided to a more expensive dish than I really wanted by that redoubtable woman, Nirmal, herself. We know that “going out for a curry” has indeed moved on as evidenced by Opheem, ten minutes walk from Asha’s, but the latter has not - it lives on its glitziness rather than the excitement of its often quite expensive dishes. My friend enjoyed his chicken jhalfrezi and the accompanying rice, fragrant and tender was very good as was the soft cushion of the  Peshwari naan which was tasty and toothsome.

  I would have liked some kulfi but my friend was too full for dessert and so we settled up our bill and once more waddled out penguin-like on the dangerous pavements in the direction of the Grand Hotel and with a high degree of caution eventually arrived there without fatality or injury.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

January 2026.

  The next morning, I opened my bedroom curtains to the sight of a weirdly pink dawn - the shade of pink never seen by me before in the sky in all my seventy plus years. It emerged that the lights at the Birmingham City football ground had affected the clouds as a result of the snowfall but I certainly had never experienced anything like that before.

  I met my friend for breakfast in The Grand’s Isaac’s restaurant and enjoyed my Full English quite considerably. The ingredients were good quality and well cooked - the black pudding was not dry due to being overcooked though my scrambled egg may have benefitted from a few seconds less cooking and certainly did not need a clump of the omnipresent pea shoot garnish which by now really should have gone out of fashion. I like the spacious side room where guests can chose many different elements of the uncooked part of the breakfast. In all the breakfast was very satisfactory and eating it in the splendour of Isaac’s adds an extra element to it all.

  Lucy the Labrador enjoyed her stay at The Grand as did I. Of course Lucy never got to sit in Madeleine bar as I and my friend did where for lunch we both indulged ourselves in a good hot bowl of sweet French onion soup with large cheesy croutons floating on the surface. And in the evening, after dinner, we relaxed for a pre-bed drink -  a nerve-soothing Old fashioned for me.

    Finally, an interesting photograph, one of very many on display in Isaac’s, of the renovations underway, or about to be started perhaps, of The Grand’s magnificent staircase which led eventually to the hotel being reopened in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis and where I and my much loved Lucy II were among the first guests.

410. Oyster Club. Purnell’s Cafe And Bistro Coventry Closed.

   Passing the weekend with Lucy The Labrador in town I opted to have Sunday lunch at The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes as I have on a number of previous Sundays in town. Well, actually I had a reservation for 6PM so the use of the word ‘lunch’ is somewhat stretching things. 

  The town was busy with countless fathers being dragged around the city centre to whichever dining establishments were open so that they could pay for their offspring to wish them “Happy Fathers’ Day”. 6PM on a Sunday evening is usually a nice quiet, civilised time to dine at The Oyster Club, one of the very few well thought of dining establishments to actually bother to open at this particular time on that particular day of the week and the restaurant was as civilised as ever on this visit though noticeably busier than usual with a number of men being entertained by their grateful broods and then handing over their bank cards in the knowledge that their families had enjoyed the occasion at their expense. Happy Fathers’ Day indeed.

  Sunday lunch at the Oyster Club usually involves me partaking of the excellently priced Chateaubriand plus all the trimmings lunch on offer there but on this particular day I wanted fish and nothing less than Dover sole would do. After a starter of pleasingly lightly battered tempura King prawns with a tongue tingling Gochujang dipping sauce which gave great pleasure, though one or two of the prawns were a little oily, there was presented a magnificent sole, meaty and of impressive size, quite adequately accompanied by nothing more than a wedge of lime and a fine beurre noisette with the right amount of saltiness and a happy texture provided by a multitude of capers and an insistent flash mob of delightful little prawns. Away you vegetables and you sea herbs, your presence is not needed here! The, I repeat, magnificent, fish was as much as any normal man could cope with though perhaps I might have thought of asking for some little buttered new potatoes (chefs - don’t sauté them please) but I was replete and the sole had not died in vain but such a fine chap had it been than dessert was out of the question.

  And to think, I had toyed with “going for a curry”

  Back to the Grand Hotel and the joyously sumptuous Madeleine bar for a couple of Vieux carrés which were rather good and rapidly served and, I thought, more paralysingly alcoholic than one might expect, which was rather good as there seemed to be no barmen there making the drinks. Great stuff. I do love Birmingham.

  There seems to be a little group of true gourmands in this city and they all tend to be attracted by special events at The Wilderness in particular, or perhaps Simpsons, and now Albatross Death Cult (I love typing the name, how will Michelin deal with it? - there’s no doubt that Alex is a real star). So at the public opening of ADC I was able to ‘network’ with the star Birmingham gourmands - dare I call them ‘epicures’ - who were present there and heard news that had previously bypassed me. This was that Purnell’s Cafe and Bistro in Coventry had been closed for the past winter and had not reopened, nor was it intended to do so. It had been Michelin-listed and well thought of and its life was short. Adieu.

265. The Wilderness, Atelier c/o Robert Wood, Opheem

 

  A pleasingly gastronomically mid-autumn busy week with the evenings dark once more and The Grand Hotel busy and fun, with one or two local celebrities in the Madeleine bar and, since I know them, to have a short chat with. One is a prominent local politician whom we inform that we are off to dinner at The Wilderness; he looks excited at the prospect of dining there and tells us that he loves the place but then says he only once ate there - when it was a pop-up in Dudley Street. Later at the restaurant, I told one of the front of house staff we had been talking to the politician and he said how much he loved the restaurant only to be told with enthusiasm, “Oh yes, he was here just last week”. Why can’t politicians tell the truth?you ask yourself. There’s rather a long time difference between 2016 when The Wilderness was located in Dudley Street and one week ago with it firmly situated in Warstone Lane.

  No matter - my guests and I, as would be expected, had a splendid evening at The Wilderness. Chef Alex Claridge was not to be seen - I suspected he was overseeing the pre-opening of the cocktail bar at Atelier (see below), with Robert Wood but the kitchen’s proceedings were under the excellent captaincy of Head Chef Marius Gedminas. 

  The wonders came thick and fast - firstly, the impertinence of pizza with a profoundly fabulous beef tartar. There was the delicious silliness of a lychee flavoured ‘slushy’ served appropriately in a little cardboard cup; then the sophistication of a humble lamb rib with peas and then spot on duck with fine sauce, the menu gradually winding its way to very pleasing desserts. Claridge has not lost any of his wit and cheekiness and Gedminas executes the menu faultlessly. Rating - 🌞🌞.

  The next evening was the first evening of being open to the paying public of the wonderful new cocktail bar, Atelier c/o Robert Wood, situated in the previously unknown Newhall Square off Newhall Street. At 5PM, with the mid-autumn twilight descending on the city, I arrived at this chic, welcoming, bright establishment to be greeted very nicely by Wood himself, his staff and Alex Claridge who is part of the venture. I might claim that I was the first paying customer to be served there once I was very comfortably sat in a delightful cosy chair, beating even a group of influencers, mostly in the early stages of middle age and on the edge of hipsterity, who turned up to enjoy what was available on the menu while self-consciously preening themselves. All part of the dining scene of the 2020s and amusing to watch.

  There was a menu of delightful-sounding original cocktails on offer - I started with a very pleasing light drink and then turned the page and requested the four part menu in which each drink was centred on the flavours of a different season, starting with spring and working through to winter. A nice concept and executed very splendidly. Spring (‘Harvest’) - cherry blossoms and rhubarb - worked well but summer (‘Parklife’) - the remarkably robust flavours of nettle, linden leaf and grass - was absolutely brilliant; then autumn (Wicker trug’) the season of plums, damsons, elderberries and sloes hit the right note and winter (‘Truffle pig’) brought with it a riot of Christmasness and foraging in the deepest part of the wood - English truffles and apples).

Rating- 🌞🌞

  I felt better than perhaps I should have done after drinking five cocktails in two hours having thoroughly enjoyed myself but it was time to head back to The Grand stopping en route for supper. I had curry fixed in my mind and was thinking of  Itihaas as the place to procure it but I seemed to have missed the restaurant on my return journey and so walking past the previously unvisited Nepalese-style Jo Jo Bar and  Lounge I resolved that the very large and spacious dining establishment would be my source of nourishment for the evening. There was only a party of four people besides myself in the restaurant and the two young men in the group were loud and out to impress the women accompanying them. Despite this I soldiered on bravely. The first item to arrive were poppadoms which were somewhat singed and not particularly pleasant - the accompanying tomato and onion pickle and inevitable raita were of little interest.

  I chose from a ridiculously vast menu a very edible starter of pretty decent steamed jhol momo (stuffed dumplings accompanied by an adequate tomato and sesame seed sauce) and then opted for a Kathmandu biryani which looked quite attractive cooked as it was sealed under a flat bread. But it was not good - much of the chicken inside was overcooked and there was no flavour of interest in the biryani nor the accompanying sauce nor even the raita. I struggled to eat even a fraction of the dish. This was one of the worst meals I’ve had recently - not dire by any means, I suppose, if one accepts that restaurants should be turning out, at not immodest prices, dishes with little evident enthusiasm put into preparing them and which are greatly sub-optimal. I presume that this was my first and last visit to Jo Jo Lounge.

Rating:- 0 

  Thank the Great God of Gourmands, therefore, that it was arranged that I should meet some very old (in both senses of the word) friends from around the country for a reunion dinner at the sublime Opheem the following evening.

  I’ve covered it many times and will say little more than to comment that the restaurant moves from strength to strength. Chef Aktar Islam was busy supervising the kitchen and bringing out some of the dishes and meeting his diners. The place was bursting at the seams with satisfied customers and each dish was  - unarguably - impeccable. The tasting menu is long - the sheer time involved in eating it make such menus a little exhausting - but each second spent at the table in Opheem is an investment in gastronomic pleasure. From the several spectacular appetiser snacks - they’re so good that you feel you should break out into French, so let us call them amuses gueules, through the several courses - some very familiar but often reworked to their ever increasing benefit - bhutta (grilled corn on the cob with tangy spiced butter), heritage tomatoes (rassam), aloo tuk (Chef’s  potato dish sensationalised with tamarind), infinitely precisely spiced Orkney scallop with gorgeous tamarind sauce (tisria), meen mappas (finely cooked, meaty monkfish and king prawn enhanced by coriander), pao (now evolved into a mini kebab on a tiny milk loaf), lababdar (perfectly cooked saddle of lamb with shockingly tasty slow-cooked lamb keema and an apt smoked sauce) through to the desserts and then, back in the lounge, to the inventive and gorgeous petits fours included a small and refreshing mango ‘Magnum’ and chocolate and fudge and babas and jellies, this is a feast surely as good as that which is coming out of two star restaurants. I must fit in at least one more visit before the next Michelin awards and Birmingham sees its first two star restaurant  getting the recognition it deserves. Rating - 🌞🌞🌞.