456. Satori, Moseley

 Birmingham gourmands, epicures, gourmets, ‘foodies’ - call them what you may -  and others will recognise the address 27 Warstone Lane in the Jewellery Quarter as the home of Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness. And those who go back a bit will also know that prior to its current existence, the location had been home to Niki Astley’s Two Cats and before that a succession of mostly notable restaurants stretching back to the turn of the millennium - Veda Sampson’s Big Nanny’s Caribbean Restaurant (2011-14), Choloo Nepalese restaurant (2006-11), Didier Philpott’s Toque D’Or (2003-6) and Paul Gilmore’s Restaurant Gilmore from 1997 to 2003. Some buildings are just meant to play an important role in the history of Birmingham and West Midlands cuisine.

  And now, it seems there is another - the location of the recently opened Japanese-style restaurant Satori. This new dining establishment opened in October 2024 in the shop which previously was the home to Carter’s of Moseley at 20C Wake Green Road and on 8 January 2025 Michelin, 44 days after Satori opened, announced that it had added the restaurant to its Guide along with the sister restaurant Baloci (Central Asian cuisine - see Blog 372) in Highfield Road in Edgbaston nest door to Simpsons. The owner, FB Holdings, also include Qavali (Persian cuisine, see Blogs 191) and Mayan (Mexican cuisine, see Blog 334) in its portfolio and all four are characterised by their extravagant, vaguely or perhaps definitely over-the-top decor which makes a good stab at a return to glamorous dining out though the question lurks at the back of one’s mind as to whether or not it’s all somewhat expensively naff. Hence 20C Wake Green Road follows in the footsteps of 27 Warstone Lane as one of those Birmingham locations which historically is home to more than one Michelin-listed restaurant (as well as being painted black).

  The Head Chef is Kin Ho Fung aka Jacky and he and his kitchen staff provide a menu which offers an interesting selection of Japanese dishes -  maki sushi, nigiri, temaki and sashimi - promisingly wide-ranging. After the meal he came to speak to me and he obviously takes his work very seriously and has previously worked in Singapore and Dubai. I enjoyed my chat with this charming, soft-voiced man and he reflected on how he had to shape his menu around the availability of certain ingredients in this country. 

Head Chef Kin Ho Fung

  The restaurant, though it has been  refurbished, is recognisably the location where Carter’s was homed - it retains its open kitchen, the black walls enhanced now by a golden dragon along one wall (though I wondered if that suggested Chinese rather than Japanese cuisine) and the large, illuminated wine cabinet along one wall. Throughout, the Saturday lunchtime, the number of diners not being large, I was served by  Sharath Sundar, Satori’s director, and was again able to have a chat with him as the 10 course tasting menu gradually unfolded. He is man who clearly understands the hospitality industry, and its present grave problems, but clearly he had been uplifted by Michelin’s recent honouring of the restaurant and he was enthusiastic about support from locals and other diners. He was helpful, polite, appropriately friendly and clearly well informed. But these are hard times for hospitality - Starmer’s malign government has ensured that - so we must see how this difficult year will pass. But to the food.

  To start there was a slightly underwhelming sakizuke/amuse bouche of two crackers sandwiching various items which did not ring out the words, ‘fine’ and ‘dining’. Still, it was only an amuse bouche you say but often that morsel speaks volumes about what is to come. Look at the magnificent canopés presented at the start of a meal at Opheem - hauntingly memorable - but then again Opheem has two Michelin stars and the tasting menu costs almost one hundred pounds more. You have to start somewhere. As the meal proceeded subsequently I had the feeling that the will was there to move things along to greater heights if, like other restaurants, the oppression of hospitality does not take its toll.

  There followed the first course proper, a generously portioned sushi and sashimi platter. The dish lacked the finesse expected when the words “fine” and “dining” with its application to sushi and sashimi are used together in that order and the salmon for sure needed the various condiments to anoint it with any element of flavour but the dish was pleasant enough and virtually a meal in itself.

   Then, came a quite tasty miso soup with langoustine and shredded spring onion and tofu which is an ingredient which should never have been allowed to leave the Far East where the diversity of mankind’s tastes allows it to be properly appreciated while an Englishman in preference enjoys roast beef and all the trimmings.

  The next dish brought with it ebi (prawns/shrimps) and yasai (vegetables) tempura which looked rather splendid adorned as it was by noodles branched like trees with leaves of rice fixed to them and coated in tempura and deep fried, emerging crispy and crunchy. The tempura was certainly anot light enough to enable one to conjure up a mental picture of elite Japanese fare but again it was all edible enough served with a mooli tempura sauce. Next there was an enjoyable, goodly-sized karaage - Japanese fried chicken  - with nice, crispy batter, accurately cooked chicken which retained some moisture and made delicious by the sweet syrup and salty tobiko (flying fish eggs) served with it. A hit! A palpable hit!

  I moved on to the next course of grilled plump sea scallop - again nicely cooked to my taste - with the surprising hit of preserved lemon and then on to tasty grilled honey and soy duck - which was cooked pretty much as I should like it to be - with an apt plum sauce, mooli, sesame foam (more decorative than a stimulant of the taste buds) and tenderstem broccoli which was anything but tender-stemmed. The greens around this winter, what few there are - and they’re mostly tenderstem broccoli - are awful. The weather of 2024 has certainly taken its toll on our winter greens. I have not yet seen that among the perils of global warming is our lack of Brussels sprouts for Christmas lunch or the sentence to eat untenderstem broccoli but the world should be told and, to a man, we would all be rushing to turn down our thermostat temperature,

  The meal was drawing to a close but there was yet the main main to go - an absolutely delicious grilled pink pepper lamb cutlet served with a yuzu and mint dressing and a somewhat unremarkable carrot. The cutlet would have worked quite well by itself, so enjoyable was it, but the modestly flavoured mint dressing was both apt and pleasing.

  The dessert was the restaurant’s version of Baked Alaska - Baked Mount Fuji - briskly flavoured matcha ice cream encased in a coat of pleasantly peaked Italian meringue with Japanese whisky poured over it and flamed to add a sense of enjoyable drama to it all. The ice cream’s flavour balanced the sweetness of the meringue and the result was a dessert of much pleasure though to be honest, I still not fully convinced that when a dessert involves ice cream, it should not be a moderately sweet ice cream.

  The restaurant is pleasingly decorated though I’m not sure that the blackness of it, whilst suited to the experimental character of Brad Carter’s restaurant, should not have been replaced to bring more light to what is a naturally dark interior and the service is very good. Some of the dishes are lacking in finesse but this is a dining experience bringing with it a lot of pleasure. Perhaps it would be better to stop using the ‘Fine dining’ label and go for a good honest “Upmarket Japanese-style food” (though plainly some of the dishes, possibly the best ones, are basically European with some Japanese elements). Presently Michelin rates Sartori at the same level as ADC and Folium - this is plainly unreasonable - we can only hope that the grading of the two Jewellery Quarter restaurants is raised in the upcoming Michelin awards.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛

25 January 2025.

157. Vingt Sept Noir.

   Alex Claridge and his publicist have posted notice of the reopening of The Wilderness, as this pandemic fades to a close struggling as it is in its last gasps to attack us with fresh not-very-impressive mutants or variants, now ennobled and at the same time made politically correct by giving them Ancient Greek names rather than labelling them with the names of the countries where they were first detected. The main focus of Claridge’s publicity is that the restaurant is even blacker than before and that has everything to do with decor and nothing to do with race.

  The photographs released do indeed make it all look rather, shall we say, noir, actually très noir, and there are new black chairs and we are promised new menus which we hope are not too noir. Naturally being a Claridge enthusiast ever since the days of the ants getting to the cheese tart first I am keen to sample the new menu, which I have not looked up on the website since I shall be there myself in a handful of days time and I like surprises (well most surprises at any rate). You have to have a little uncertainty in your life and a Claridge menu gives one the opportunity to have some (uncertainty that is).

K

  Which brings me on to the decor in 27 Warstone Lane over the years. That of course is the current location of The Wilderness in the Jewellery Quarter and has been for rather longer than Alex Claridge originally intended. This building has a peculiarly interesting part to play in the gastronomic history of Birmingham. From 1997 to 2000, No. 27 was the home of Restaurant Gilmore where chef/proprietor Paul Gilmore won a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide Great Britain and Ireland editions 1998 to 2001. He moved on from Birmingham to open the Restaurant Gilmore at Strine’s Farm in Beamhurst near Uttoxeter in November 2003. In 2015 he became Chef/Proprietor at The Wheatsheaf at Stone near Stoke on Trent and is now the sous Performance and Nutrition Chef at Wolverhampton Wanderers FC training ground.

Paul Gilmore

  When Restaurant Gilmore closed, No 27 Warstone Lane then became home to La Toque D’Or from 2001 to 2006. Chef/Proprietor Didier Philpott ensured that the building continued to be the location of a Bib Gourmand holding the accolade in the 2003 to 2006 editions of the Michelin Guide.

  After the closure of LaToque D’Or, the building then became home to a Nepalese-style restaurant and afterwards one serving Caribbean-style food. I do not know the names of either.

  Two Cats Kitchen was opened by Chef/Proprietor Niki Astley in 27 Warstone Lane in July 2015. He labelled his cooking style as being ‘New Baltic cuisine’ reflecting the then trend for Scandinavian cuisine and tying it to the nationality of his partner Diana Fjordarova who is Latvian. He had previously operated a series of ‘pop-up restaurants’ which was also then a fashion for chefs waiting to establish themselves in their own restaurants, the ‘pop ups’ being titled Two Cats Roaming. He said that he intended to “shed light on Baltic-Russian cuisine by recognising traditional dishes and attempting new ones”. Such dishes included ‘Beetroot and buttermilk gazpacho’ and a dessert of celeriac ice cream, pears, birch biscuit and verbena. In March 2017 Astley announced that the food he was serving was “too niche” although the restaurant had received recognition by Michelin and thenceforth the food served in Two Cats would represent ‘a wider culinary exploration’ but the restaurant finally closed on 30 September 2017, Astley attributing the closure to “volatile trading conditions”.

Niki Astley

The interior of no 27 as Two Cats.

  It is to be argued that the interior of no 27, with its stained glass windows and attractive tiled floor is really too pretty to be converted into a blackout shelter but a restaurant is what the chef and restaurateur are and we may prefer one look or another but no 27 is a fine old industrial building which has seen many changes in its life and Claridge’s desire for darkness is just another stage in its existence which has seen it home to four Michelin-listed restaurants in recent years.

  After the closure of Two Cats, it was announced that no 27 would be home to a restaurant to be titled Grit, in itself not an entirely appealing name when applied to a restaurant. The restaurant was to have retained its links with Niki Astley and the chef there was to have been Graeme Jackson, a Canadian who had worked at Two Cats with Astley, alongside Isadora Gavilet who had worked for a time at Adam’s. However the proposed restaurant never opened and no 27 Warstone Lane found itself home to The Wilderness in March 2018. Claridge had intended it as a temporary home for his restaurant pending the completion of work on his proposed new restaurant in Bennett’s Hill but he decided to open Nocturnal Animals there instead before closing it and recommencing  work on it to relocate The Wilderness. This work was affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and so, for the present at least, no 27 remains home to The Wilderness. And its blackness.