524. Trillium And Namaste England Revisited

  It is not fair to judge anything on first acquaintance but I often find that first impressions are rarely far off the mark. I was not, shall we say, overly impressed by the food served on my opening minute’s visit to Glynn Purnell’s Trillium, though others visiting a few days after me were jumping in the air with exhilaration after their first meals in this glitzy, sparkling, energetic and expensive dining establishment.

  However, I had made reservations for a second visit the following week and the question was to be whether or not I was going to appreciate the food more than previously.

  I started off with the Trillium cocktail which had not been available the previous week. It was pleasant enough though in the future I would opt for something less sweet.

 I had resolved to order less food on this second visit as I had ordered far too much for me to handle the previous week. I ordered two snacks and no starters and once more enjoyed the extra large gougère (the menu still has the accent over the first e pointing in the wrong direction) and, this time, the battered potato scallop which, though rather lightweight, brought with it pleasure and a hint of Aktar Islam’s sophisticated aloo tuk..

  It was all very busy but the staff had time to chat passingly and the service was fine save that the food was coming out, as in the first week, a little cooler than one might have hoped. It was difficult to see why. It all came to a head with a dish of otherwise very good confit leeks which I had ordered for my main course of braised shoulder of lamb and which were almost inedibly cold. When I mentioned this, apologies were made and a very much better hot dish of leeks was quickly served but at these sort of prices, food should be being served hot. With so many distinguished chefs in the kitchen and with the high prices, Trillium must do better. No simple errors like that should happen at any time. I’m sure that placing cold sour cream on the leeks does not help them to retain a reasonable temperature. The lamb itself was excellent and a big improvement on the pork chop I had had the previous week. The meat was succulent and delightfully tender but best of all it tasted like lamb (this is not the case in a lot of restaurants) - perhaps because it was hogget - and its being matched with mint - the two always making the ideal combination (though you can add some redcurrant if you like and a sprig of rosemary). I thoroughly enjoyed my main apart from the misstart with the cold leeks and my confidence in this new restaurant was starting to build.

 

  For dessert I opted again for the very passable zabaglione made joyous by the two accompanying beignets and topped it all off with a very, very quaffable Old Fashioned.

  This was a distinct improvement compared with the opening day. In between my two visits, a gourmand friend whom I sometimes suspect of having a Stockholm Syndrome as regards restaurateurs, had pronounced that he’d had a very good meal centred on the £55 Creedy Carver duck dish and the photographs certainly looked very good but man can not live by duck alone and I remain to be convinced that apart from Trillium being the spot to be seen at, it lives up to expectations, and its prices.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛🌛.

17 December 2025.

  After all the glitz and bustle of Trillium, I paid another visit to a recently reopened Namaste England in West Heath. It really is a lovely place, sadly far too quiet but I hope that is just because I chose to dine there early lunchtime midweek, its decor bright with colourful elephants painted on the walls and a Christmas tree to bring seasonal pleasure; with a short and enticing menu which has a marked emphasis on vegetarian dishes while not proscribing meat and poultry. It’s all nicely presented but has a charming home-cooked and rustic air to it all. I like going there.

  This time I started with a pistachio lassi - very good - and then, as on my previous occasion, ordered the nice little onion bhajis which were perfectly spicy and matched by a nice yogurt dip though they were a little dark and looked as though they had been fried for longer than they should have been.

  As my main, this time I had the chicken biryani which was served nicely but there was no pastry cover over the biryani. The rice was well cooked and the little chipmunks of chicken incorporated in it were moist and pleasant. The rice was a little oily and I could not help wondering if this had been a stir fried pilau with added chicken rather than a steamed true biryani. The fried onion slices scattered on the top were also burnt and did not look good. It was certainly a very generous portion but after a number of mouthfuls I grew a little tired and bored with it and asked for the remainder to be boxed up for me to have for summer. Despite its faults the dish was aromatic and tasty and pleasant enough.

  Once again I had the excellent homemade pistachio kulfi served beautifully in a pretty little dish and thoroughly enjoyed it.

  This is a lovely place where a decent enough meal can be had. The prices are remarkably low (I paid about £27 for the three courses plus lassi and service which was added at just 5%). Tge service was, as before, charming. I hope that it succeeds.

Rating:- 🌛🌛🌛.

23 December 2025.

522. Trillium.

 

  I passed many happy hours, many, many times in Purnell’s. It was luxurious in a Birmingham sort of way. It was both sophisticated and comfortable. It had with it a sense of humour running through it and it was so relaxing. The food of course, at its height, deserved another star.

  But Purnell’s is gone. Glynn Purnell, in his early middle age, has embraced change and the realities of the state of the hospitality business in the mid-2020s under Starmer and Reeves. First there came a country town pub and then a tapas bar and then an ephemeral bistro in Coventry. And now we have a full-on 90 minutes only sittings, bustling wine bar/restaurant in the depths of an always intriguing glass monster in Snowhill. Lots of coloured lights, a very crowded kitchen in the corner of the dining area where you can see quite closely the sweat on the brows of two Michelin-starred chefs working almost elbow to elbow and a clientele of comfortably off quite old lunchers side by side with besuited office men and quite chicly dressed younger women hoping to be noticed and all, like me, photographing their food.

  And there are so many familiar faces working there, some of whom had previously worked for Purnell or for Rob Palmer when he had been Head Chef at Hampton Manor where Peel’s Restaurant won a Michelin star while he was working there or for him when he had his own small Michelin-listed restaurant, Toff’s, in Solihull high street. There were two front of house staff from Simpsons including Thomas Moore who had been, for a few months, the sommelier there and a fine job he had been doing there, There was the former restaurant manager from Kray Tredwell’s 670 Grams and the former restaurant manager of the glitzy Gaucho in Church Street opposite the Grand Hotel. Quite a line up.

  I was the first customer served at 12 noon on the restaurant’s first day of opening. How did its galaxy of Birmingham restaurant figures do in the first 90 minutes of service? Did the food match up to the para-glitz?

  Well, let’s remember that this was the birth of Trillium and some births can be easier than others and I was dining there when the placenta was still waiting to be delivered though the child was giving its first shrieks of being brought into the world. It was a good welcome with Glynn Purnell doing his best to shake everyone’s hands as they arrived. Many of those there at this moment, I suspect were old fans of his and keen to relive their Purnell memories and share with him his vision of Birmingham’s culinary future. At the end of the first hour the place was full and buzzing, the multitude of chefs almost tripping over each other in the small cooking area and food coincidently getting colder than one might have expected. But let’s remember, this was hour one, day one and everything follows the rule that practice makes perfect.

  To start, I chose an eponymous Trillium cocktail - it seemed appropriate to start off with the restaurant’s own. However, for some reason, the Trillium was not available so I chose instead a pleasing Sour though the price seemed a little ambitious. I was beginning to feel I was lunching in London and Trillium reminded me of Fallow where I had dined a couple of Christmases ago prior to seeing another Shakespeare mangling in a West End theatre - bustle, noise, the rapid evaporation of money and middle class rusticity. 

  And so, en fin, to the food. I had a mild gasp when I saw the prices but settled down to see what Purnell and Parmer were going to serve up for that sort of cash. It was recommended that I have a snack to start, a couple of small plates and then a large plate. I broadly followed the guidelines.  Snackwise I opted for Trillium milk loaf, (£7.50) restfully lemon coloured with a tasty soft crust paired with a dip of balsamic vinegar, oil and chicken fat. This was good but in the back of my mind I longed for the halcyon days of Purnell’s pain de campagne with cultured butter.

    I also chose, and enjoyed, a single but large (“XXL”) gougère (on the menu “gougére”). The exterior was enjoyably crispy and the innards molten and full of flavour and, like everything else, not cheap at £6 per gourgère). I failed to photograph it. Then on to the roast Orkney scallop ‘small plate’ - it was well-cooked as one would hope it to be when paying £20 for a single and not enormous scallop and I felt I had had more enjoyable accompaniments with scallops than the not-overwarm dessert spoonful of oxtail Bolognaise ragu that lurked on the shell under the scallop like a diminutive Peeping Tom.

  My ‘large plate’ was grilled Tamworth pork chop (£35) served with salsa verde, olive and manchego. This was a bountiful pork chop, well-cooked but rendered vaguely unpleasant by the bitter salsa verde. This dish may have appealed to those who view themselves as having sophisticated palates which happily embrace bitterness but it did not appeal to me. And the chop was so large that I became bored with it by the time I had eaten half of it and there was nothing to do but to scrape the salsa off it, cut it up and take it back home for Lucy the Labrador who delightedly make short measure of it. The best part of the course was the really rather good gratin of baked potato, crispy skins and chive (the flavour of which was for me completely muted) though the portion was very small and severely overpriced at £6. I felt, on the whole, I could do an equally good job of cooking a pork chop and mashed potato at home, far more interesting than this, at a fraction of the price. 

   After the great lump of pork I wanted a light dessert and opted for zabaglione. This was good, possibly needing to be somewhat more robust with its coffee flavour but the figs were a fine addition and the tiny spiced doughnuts were something of a hit.

  

  All was done. The restaurant was full. The heat was rising. The micro-kitchen was where all the action was while the front of house staff were not looking too hard pressed. When paying the bill I was happy to pay the ‘optional’ service charge but not amused by then being asked if I would like to pay an additional ‘tip’ above and beyond the service charge. No I didn’t like. This is a trick which I think is oozing out of London and before that, I think, the United States. This is not appropriate in Birmingham. 

  Purnell has opted to withdraw from fine dining and to go the small plates/large plates route and to charge a lot of money for relatively simple dishes which appear to be largely unimpressive. Purnell’s strength was always in the ingenuity and humour of the fine, gorgeous-looking dishes that came out of his kitchen. ‘Rustic and expensive’ do not in any way attract me but I’m sure Purnell has an enthusiastic audience of diners ready to eat simply but pay the price for something which should have more flair, more thrill and more culinary ambition to it. Compared with what came before, there seems to be a laziness about it all. Money for old rope you might say. It’s early days (well, the earliest actually) but food needs to come out of the kitchen hot. I don’t think that this concept has any direction at present - is it a wine bar? Is it a restaurant worthy of being included in the Michelin Guide? Is it just a place for cool people to be seen and to draw attention to themselves? Time will tell. But time certainly did tell. My bill came to over £117 which included service (but not an additional tip) and that bought me 90 minutes of service. For that sort of money I expect not to be in a nervous state related to having to eat and drink up before I might be ejected (clearly the staff were far too polite to do that but who knows what will happen when one is sitting there hoping to relax over an expensively decent meal?).

Raring;-🌛🌛.

10 December 2025.

398. Sublime Wilderness x Nyetimber Collaboration; Michelin Recognises Rabbit; Toffs Moving On.

 

  I like collaborations. They tend to bring out the best in chefs. And when it comes to “the best”, Chef Marius Gedminas at The Wilderness is a very regular achiever of the concept just as Sonal Clare is a very great achiever of “the best” when it comes to hosting an event. I also enjoy English wine. It gets better as the annual temperatures rise in this island. Nyetimber was the first English wine company to make its mark and good stuff it is too.

  But to get back to basics, this blog is centred on the food encountered when dining out and so I will not stray into the field of oenology, there are those who know quite well what that are talking about while my skill is enjoying the moment when a good wine is brought forth and not getting too wound up about all the details of it. Still, even at this late age, my nose can spot a bouquet when it needs to do so and my taste buds also still function quite successfully. And so to the food served at this immaculate dinner.

  To start off this cascade of pleasures - a toothsome, profoundly flavoured smoked trout belly tart, delightful by itself but embellished with the taste of XO and ginger. The thin, crispy tart pastry was a pleasure in itself. This was served lavishly with the delicious Classic cuvée served from a magnum.Then on to one of the great dishes of the year which had the diners fainting with the gorgeousness of it a bed of white crab delightfully citricised with lime under a a fine espuma with wonderful smoked mussels, the hit and texture of almonds and white asparagus and a burst of flavour from an oyster leaf. This was accompanied by a very drinkable glass of Blanca de Blanc 2016.

   Then came perhaps the most perfectly cooked veal sweetbreads I can remember having been served to me, with peas and asparagus with a perfect bite to it and a chlorophyll Hollandaise. The rise that accompanied caused great surprise - so good was it - and proved to be the hit of the evening from the drinks point of view. Spring on a plate.

   Then the luxury of excellent barbecued turbot - cooked perfectly and bursting with flavour and escorted handsomely by a chicken sauce and crispy capers among other ingredients. Afterwards, and sadly I forgot to photograph it, a fine Orkney scallop, cooked precisely with a Thai green sauce - this time, unlike that I had been served a few days before, pleasingly rife with the flavours of south-east Asia. This was accompanied by a highly lavish glass of 1086 by Nyetimber (the date is the year of the Domesday Book relevant to the estate) 2013. “Ambassador, you are spoiling us”.

  It just remained to enjoy a familiar but not unwelcome dessert of green pear, finely diced, with a bay leaf ice cream and accompanied by a very happy glass of cuvée cherie - and why not!

  A memorable evening of very fine food and highly pleasurable wine.

Rating:- 🌞🌞

  Good news emerged from Michelin on 25 April when it published its April list of new additions to the Michelin Guide. Of the eight new additions, the much admired Rabbit in Stirchley has been allocated its place in the Michelin pantheon (the other seven were mostly in places favoured by the Michelin inspectors, because of their trendiness or ease to travel to - two in London (of course) and one each in Bristol and Edinburgh and three in the Newcastle Upon Tyne area). I have previously written that the opening  Stirchley’s now first ever Michelin-listed restaurant was probably the most important Birmingham dining out event of the year and as spring moves on, I’m sure that remains true. The restaurant owned and run by Ash Heeger and Erin Valenzuala Heeger now has a long waiting period to secure a reservation and is presently booming. This is all very reminiscent of Upstairs by Tom Shepherd. Perhaps the BBC have spotted Ash as a potential competitor on The Great British Menu.

  News from Solihull where Rob Palmer has announced that he is to close Toff’s and begin to work at the Hogarth Hotel in Dorridge which I previously visited during the limited time when the Butchers Social Club was based at the Forest Hotel. After settling in at the Hogarth overhauling the menu of the brasserie there during the summer, he plans to open Toffs at Hogarth in September 2024.