318. Purnell’s Bistro Coventry.

  Purnell’s Bistro seems to have been long in the making. It must be a couple of years ago that an announcement was made that Glynn Purnell was to open a restaurant in Coventry’s historic Charterhouse, situated rather awkwardly not that far from the city centre but approachable along busy roads and virtually impossible by foot. Still, a lovely setting especially on a bright, sunny spring afternoon.

  Purnell is almost everywhere - Cornwall Street, Edmund Street, Henley in Arden and now Coventry - almost a chain but since each of his four restaurants are different, then not a chain at all. The Coventry branch of the Purnell culinary empire, Purnell’s Bistro, has opened in the past couple of weeks or so but has rapidly settled in - full of customers, bustling, good service and really excellent food. It’s a cross between The Mount, the old Purnell’s Bistro aka The Asquith in Newhall Street and Purnell’s Plates - mostly small plates, and splashes of Iberia and the Mediterranean.

  Three dishes arrived together - crispy, delicious, golden cheese and leek croquettes, spicy chorizo with an honey and cider sauce and, my favourite, finally chopped grilled baby leeks with broccoli in a comforting but tongue-tingling romesco sauce. Finally had the special of very nicely priced 4oz rump steak, cooked exactly to my taste, seasoned perfectly and complemented by a very tasty chimichurri and very worthy of praise. This was a very successful meal. At times I found myself wolfing it down, so pleasurable was it. 

  I managed dessert which was rather limited in choice - just two dishes on offer, similar to Purnell’s Plates (not enough choice to be honest) - and I was pleased with the chocolate and hazelnut tart which I had chosen - the pastry was excellent though the whole was eventually rather dry and it would have benefitted from being served with some ice cream or sorbet

  By the look of things, Glynn Purnell has set up a really enticing dining establishment in Coventry. The master seems to have struck again. But he needs to improve the restaurant’s approach to desserts.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

 

148. At Last. 17 May And We’re Off.

 

Soir Bleu by Edward Hopper (1914). Out to dinner again but with some unease?

Weeks of wet weather and suppressed social activity come to an end. Glum times indeed. In the background there’s a faint whiff of danger as everyone whispers the words, “Indian variant” (not a new recipe for chicken tikka masala). But, no matter what, restaurants reopen to indoor dining today and we can once more stay in hotels and generally feel as though the forces of liberation have moved in.

  And it’s my birthday week. As we can only dine out with five companions for the present I shall not be having my usual jolly dinner at Purnell’s but will be spreading the event over three days to enable all my usual guests to attend which gives us a chance to visit three Birmingham Michelin starred restaurants in three days but in smaller groups. What fun. But first, to Ludlow where last the dog and I were staying at Christmas. 

  Meanwhile, as we head for Shropshire, worrying news of what’s happening in Birmingham, with hospitality venues under assault from the combination of COVID-19 and an incomprehensibly incompetent city council. I have commented before on the Council’s determination to introduce a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) on 1 June which will involve motorists who drive into the city centre paying £12 per day if they choose to bring their vehicles with them when they dine in the city’s cherished restaurants. A fanatical Labour councillor, Waseem Zaffar, best summed up as a ravening, swivel-eyed zealot, has determined that he will push ahead with this within days  of the reopening of the city’s dining establishments which have survived the Coronavirus storm. Those who run hospitality businesses and anyone with more than one brain cell can see clearly that the extra costs of coming to the city centre and the inconvenience and dangers of using Birmingham’s lamentable public transport services are bound to severely affect the number of people prepared to use city centre businesses and will therefore be a further blow to the city centre’s future. But Zaffar and his mates who run the council are determined to run amok regardless of the consequences. It is therefore an important part of the unfolding story of dining out in Birmingham to record these events as they may have a profound effect on the future of many respected businesses.

Zaffar, who may be the man to kill off dining out in Birmingham.

  Restaurateurs are very worried about the possible developing disaster and the potential devastating effects on their businesses which they have worked hard at great personal costs to bring to the very peak of places to dine in England. We have previously mentioned that Opus will never reopen and Purnell’s Bistro and Ginger’s Bar is certainly remaining closed for the present with never ending road works and construction work going on outside it. 

  Glyn Purnell has expressed concerns about the future of city centre restaurants and urged the people of Birmingham to use them or else their future will be threatened. He has stated that he believes that city centre businesses should have “six or eight month’s grace” before the CAZ is introduced. This seems an entirely sensible request but one which Zaffar and his fanatical colleagues are hardly likely to listen to sadly.

  We hope it is not farewell to Ginger’s Bar; I and my fellow Old Blokes have enjoyed many a happy cocktail there prior to lunching or dining at Purnell’s Bistro or moving on to one of the city’s other restaurants. Personally, I’ve been looking forward to a glass of Ginger’s Penicillin and in the absence of a definitive announcement I hold on to my hope that I shall yet again get a shot at that bar.

Welcome back!

92. Food In The Time Of Covid-19.

  For anyone who doesn’t get the literary allusion, and I’m sure all readers do, the title of this Blog rejigs the title of the novel by the Colombian writer Gabriel Gárcia Márquez, “Love In The Time Of Cholera”. What goes around - eventually - comes around. For ‘Cholera’, substitute ‘Coronavirus’.
  Restaurants and their chefs and owners are dealing with the total close-down of dining establishments throughout the United Kingdom in different ways.
  Glynn Purnell, for instance, is delivering medications to the homes of people who need the service in his childhood home of Chelmsley Wood according to an article on the BirminghamLive website. It states that, “.... that’s been a good way of forgetting about the stress of wondering (if ) his two city centre businesses will survive the ongoing pandemic lockdown ordered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday March 23. That move came just three days after the government had ordered the shutdown of all pubs, bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, gyms and leisure centres from the night of Friday March 20”.
  “Glynn .... said “Looking after people’s health comes first and we hope we can all come out the other end. And if my businesses go belly up I will still have the spirit to start from scratch all over again - there will definitely be some sort of Purnell’s in the city centre in the future. ..... But what will happen when this is all over? Will people still want or have the money to come back out to eat in a restaurant? If they are still worried they might not want to come out. Hopefully I’ve got enough cash to furlough my staff”.”
  And that’s the rub ... uncertainty.

  Each week that goes by the financial situation grows worse for almost everyone. If the lockdown goes on for too long then businesses run out of money and collapse and many potential customers also find their private finances collapse to a level where they can no longer afford to dine out even if they would like to do so. The elderly - most at risk - may well feel it is safer not to risk going out to dine even if they they have the money to do so from their pensions and with many more deaths occurring in these older age groups some regular customers of many years standing may well have lost their lives to Covid-19 (which seems to be dining out very well at present) though it is true to say that the most at-risk group - those aged over 70 - are not to be seen to frequently dining out at city centre fine dining establishments.

  Hope springs eternal in the human breast. 

  Meanwhile chefs around around the country have been cooking special meals to provide a service to front-line Health Service workers and others have attempted to set up and run home delivery services as a means of keeping their businesses going. I have just had 2 very enjoyable Easter lunches cooked in carvery style (not Fine Dining by any means but pleasingly delicious all the same) delivered from The Old Rose And Crown Hotel in the Lickey Hills which was an 18th and 19th century coaching inn.  How delightful it was to have a tasty freshly cooked meal delivered to my home after these last 3 weeks of making do with what I felt up to providing for myself. Oh the joy of Roast beef and Roast turkey with all the trimmings even though my prentstion of the food on the plate could hardly be described as ‘Cheffy’.

The Old Rose And Crown

  Signs of the times:-

 Adam’s:-

Purnell’s Bistro:-

Simpsons:-

Harborne Kitchen:-

Carter’s Of Moseley:-

Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham:-

Salt, Stratford-upon-Avon:-

78. Lunch At Purnell’s Bistro.

  Over the years, since Glynn Purnell opened it as his second string city centre restaurant, firstly with the name The Asquith (originally located in Edgbaston), in 2011, the food at Purnell’s Bistro in Newhall street has been rather inconsistent in its quality.

   Purnell had opened the Edgbaston Asquith in the building in Montague Road which had been home to Jessica’s where he had earned his first Michelin star till he decided to move on to open his own restaurant, Purnell’s, in Cornwall Street, but after only 6 months and after problems with his landlord, he decided to move The Asquith to its current location. The head chef in Edgbaston had been Jason Eaves and he moved to the Newhall Street location when the Asquith was relocated but he decided to go travelling internationally in 2012 and Purnell decided to close and rebrand the restaurant as Ginger’s Bar and Purnell’s Bistro. 

  Although the Edgbaston Asquith closed before I got around to eating there I did dine at the Newhall Street Asquith in early March 2012 when I think Jason Eaves must still have been Head Chef and I had a thoroughly good evening of cocktails from Ginger’s Bar followed by a dinner of Brixham scallops served with leek and potato velouté, leek fondue and ‘bacon crumble’, braised ox cheek Rossini accompanied by puy lentils, pomme purée and fois gras and vanilla panna cotta served with a red current sorbet. The menu sounds that little more sophisticated than it reads now. And it was very good.

  After Jason Eves departed the standard of food remained very satisfactory and I enjoyed a birthday dinner there with 11 guests in May 2013 but since then experiences at Purnell’s have been variable from both the food and service points of view. Despite being a fairly frequent visitor to Ginger’s Bar I had not eaten at Purnell’s Bistro for a year or two so I was not quite sure what to expect when I lunched there with friends recently.

  What I had, the pleasure no doubt boosted by two doses of Ginger’s Bar’s admirable whiskey-based Penicillin cocktail, made for a highly enjoyable lunch. I started with the thoroughly tasty Chicken and ham hock terrine nicely accompanied by a celeriac remoulade and apple purée. It looked simple but was truly delicious. 

  And so on to the main course. Much musing took place as to what to choose but I couldn’t resist what turned out to be unimpeachable Beer battered fish and chips with wonderfully cooked cod in perfectly crispy batter, highly successful chips, a spot-on tartare sauce and perfectly adequate mushy peas. I opted to have a vital additional element - malt vinegar served in a dinky little bottle. Perhaps that little bottle of vinegar should be served with the dish without the need to ask for it, just for perfection. The very best fish and chips I have had for a long time (yes of course it’s also the most expensive plate of fish and chips I’ve had for a while but really I can’t wait to go back to have a second helping and hope that the excellence of this first plate will be repeated in the second).

  I had a wonderfully enjoyable dessert in the form of a perfectly coconutty coconut parfait accompanied by pineapple and when consumed with the recommended drunk, a delicious rum, one found oneself eating and drinking a deconstructed pina colada. A modest little classic. I’ll eat that any day. 

  Purnell’s Bistro has been returned to me. I shall return to it.

  And on to another notable name in the increasingly spectacular Birmingham restaurant scene - Aktar Islam, he of the Opheem fame. Apparently we are now only a few days away from the opening of his Argentinian-style restaurant, Pulperia, in Brindley Place (see Blog 65). On Twitter some devastatingly enticing images can be seen of some of the food which will be on offer. The stuff that dreams are made of:- Galician prime rib, truffle mushroom tagliatelle, Morcilla, Fresian Cider House ribeye:-

  Don’t cry for me Argentina.