390. The Wilderness.

 

  A busy week dining at The Wilderness, firstly as a pre-booked Sonal Clare Drinks Special - this time, titled Collision Course: Fine Wine and Fast Food with, as the event’s title suggests,  accompanying ‘fast’ food and then, the following evening entertaining a younger visitor from New Zealand at relatively short notice and hoping that TheWilderness’ unique atmosphere would prove both interesting and enjoyable to him.

  The menu was a pleasing five courses long - quite adequate - and kicked off with The Wilderness’ supremely delicious steak tartare dish, named in a witty, understated way, The Big Mac. This is one of the finest dishes appearing from time to time on a Birmingham menu and if the meal had consisted only of it, there would have been no cause to complain.

  The second course was a Fried chicken dish, successfully crispy and tasty served as it was with chicken butter and yuzu koshu.

 The third course appeared on the menu as BBQ scallop, Singapore broth and smoked eel. The dish was very enjoyable with the scallop well cooked and the excitement of the dish enhanced by the flavour of the  smoked eel and the broth.

  The main was not so successful - an unremarkable flatbread which gave me no pleasure and which seemed rather short on the amount of keema spread across it. The dessert was Bacon apple pie which certainly was not a pie though one would be foolish at The Wilderness to expect what appears on the plate to look anything like one’s preconceptions taken from the name of the dish printed on the menu.

  

  And so back to The Wilderness the following evening. Before doing so I took my guest along to a Cocktails and canapés collaboration at Baloci in Highfield Road in Edgbaston with Robert Wood, now of Lucky 7 in the Jewellery Quarter, providing some fairly exotic cocktails designed to match Baloci’s stated theme of a journey along the Silk Road. The canapés were pleasing - four types - Persian prawn puzi (prawns with citrus mayonnaise served in a crisp puzi ball), Nihari croquettes (braised beef with ‘Baloci spices’, saffron emulsion and Parmesan), Bell pepper hummus (hummus served with halloumi) and Moroccan chicken cone (“aromatic chicken and signature Moroccan spices served in a spinach cone” - Morocco seems to have shifted its geographical location from North Africa to Central Asia for the purpose of these canapés but we will forgive chef since the canapés were tasty and most of the people in the room looked unlikely to be able to tell the difference between Asia and Africa). Wood’s cocktails were interesting to say the least and very quaffable. 

Robert Wood at Baloci

 

  And so to The Wilderness again to dine from the 7 course menu - six courses for £100 plus a scallop dish which I opted for in the full knowledge that it was priced at a quite extraordinary £28, of which more later.

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  So here was another The Wilderness menu. The restaurant was full and buzzing. Marius Gedminas was at the range. The music was pounding out. This was cutting edge dining out for a visitor from a country with no gastronomic scene at all other than his father-in-law going out fishin’ and huntin’and then barbecuing all the creatures he had slaughtered. My guest seemed to enjoy it. Well it’s nice to have a change isn’t it?

 I’ve worked my through describing several The Wilderness menus in this Blog over the years. This menu reflected all that is happening at the restaurant presently. There were a pair of delicious canapés to start in the form of croustades and tarts and then a fun beetroot dish livened up with sliced jalapeño.

  Then pink fir potato with Parmesan and dashi which brought to mind, for some reason - probably the presence of the pink fir potatoes - Aktar Islam’s sublime Aloo Tuk, in its many manifestations a signature of Opheem. All very edible.

  Next came pleasingly cooked veal sweetbread with lemon grass curry and little slices of pickled carrot and then the optional dish of ‘Orkney scallop’. This was a bit of a shock. The scallop was moderately sized and cooked satisfactorily and was accompanied by a quite tiny piece of smoked eel and rainbow kale; the  elements set adrift in a sea of emulsion. This was good enough but the price of £28 seemed very punchy given that I’ve had bigger, more succulent scallops in my time and never paid so much (yes, I know that was then and this is now but I did feel that The Wilderness is now making a play to sell its food at London prices - perhaps that is necessary to survive - but a bill of £56 for two scallops, one each, did make me feel a little queasy.

The £28 scallop dish

  Let us pass on. We both enjoyed our main of barbecued Cull Yaw lamb with seaweed, shiso and wild leeks and then we prepared for landing with a dessert of dark chocolate entremet nicely accompanied by with malt icecream and hazelnut and the ghostly presence of the subtle and occasional taste of black garlic. It was getting late and it remained only to pay the bill - disfigured as it was by the price of the scallop dish - and take note that the Wilderness’ frog mignardise had hopped off and been replaced by its noted predecessor, the white chocolate skull.

Rating:- 🌞

315. Atelier With Sushi.

  Being old and twenty or thirty years out of touch with words and phrases younger, infinitely trendier people use to express themselves, I have no idea whether  the word ‘cool’ is still usable without eliciting derisory laughs and scoffing (though I suppose it is quite acceptable to use it to mean moderately or mildly cold) but the word is that which sprang to mind on my recent visit to Atelier in Newhall Square, as I lounged in a comfortable armchair near the serving counter where The Wilderness’s exceptional Head Chef, Marius Gedminas, was preparing sushi and where the restaurant’s sommelier, nay, célébrité (it seems to have more import in French somehow), Sonal Clare, was presiding over the list of cocktails and wines and venturing forth to tempt the punters, most half my age and many looking very of the moment - cool, in fact in a 2020s sort of way - to sip a cocktail or put his choice of wines to the test.

  If my knowledge of now speak is effectively non-existent then my knowledge of Japanese food barely rises to the next level up. Of course I’ve had it and it’s ingredients are barely avoidable in these present times where virtually no British chef is not making use of yuzu or wagyu or miso ad infinitum but I have not immersed myself in Japanese food nor have I been able to adjust myself to sake, which was all the rage not that long ago. Equally I have not trailed off up the dreary Bristol Street to Gaijin Sushi, loved by Jay Rayner, though I’ve often told myself I should. Some streets just require a lot of backbone to trail along but, after the Atelier evening, I’m one step on the journey now.

 

  Atelier is lovely. Yes, and it reeks of cool. Robert Wood who started it up with Alex Claridge seems to have moved on, perhaps his cocktails were a little extreme and accompanying food always seemed to be the missing element. Now, Atelier was host to a two evening extravanganza of less arcane cocktails, classics with a twist, a selection of impressive but nicely priced wines and Gedminas’ remarkable sushi selection. Marius told me that while he had not been to Japan he had had opportunity to work with a chef practiced in the area and he had clearly absorbed the art as his food was exceptionally delicious.

  I took advice from Gedminas on my choices for the evening. First off, an eight piece platter of uramaki rolls which seemed a safe place to start. I had KFC (the humour of The Wilderness carried over to Atelier)  - fried soft shell crab with yuzu, mango, old soy and the crunch of nashi pear. These were delicious, absolutely so, and looked good as well. Then, two pieces of nigiri - my choice was salmon, aviar and wasabi. Again a hit, a palpable hit. On to sashimi; I was not yet ready for raw fish - a career in medicine had taught me a lot about parasitic disease related to raw fish ingestion (silly, I know but sometimes you take time to pass some barriers) but I was quite ready to opt for the A5 Kagoshima Wagyu and sublime it was, especially when paired with a glass of Sonal Clare’s recommended Burgaud Morgan Côte de Py 2021, brisk with cherry. I managed to consume, with great relish, two of the three slices of the prime Wagyu rolled up with soy and wasabi before photographing it but given the butter soft tenderness and the flavour I expect I can be forgiven for my impatience to enjoy it.

 

  It was the end but just time for Sonal’s twist on a Sidecar with yuzu in there somewhere. A perfect end.

   The following evening to the Oyster Club, sister restaurant to Adam’s, where, unusually for a Sunday evening visit, I opted to eschew the generously-sized roast Chateaubriand with all the trimmings and instead chose a magnificent Dover sole served à la Meurnière - the brown butter, lemon and parsley sauce and capers were all the fish needed and ever will be. However the fish was possibly slightly over, though not tragically so, but at £45 precision might be expected though I thoroughly enjoyed the joyous meatiness of it. I also had a rather small bowl of fine buttery mash which at £5.50 was good but all its money. For dessert I had chai panna cotta which was excellent in flavour and consistency but very let down by the accompanying coconut sorbet in which the flavour of coconut was indiscernible. For a heady £10 I would have expected the dish to deliver what it promised.

  At the time Adam’s was taking on a new Head Chef (see previous Blog), so too was The Oyster Club as its Head Chef, Rosanna Moseley, who left to have a baby, was replaced by Stuart Langdell, who after leaving the army, had worked as demi chef de partie at Simpsons, then at the Pear Tree Inn in Wiltshire, then in 2015 to 2016 as sous chef at the Cross in Kenilworth under Adam Bennett. He was subsequently Head Chef at the Duncombe Arms in Derbyshire.

297. Purnell’s In 2023; Sonal Clare - A Legend In His Own Lifetime.

 

  Think of Food Personalities/Celebrities in Birmingham, well, anywhere really, and you think of chefs and chefs and chefs - here we have Glynn Purnell obviously but there’s also Brad Carter, Alex Claridge, Kray Tredwell and others - they have all appeared on popular television programmes at some time or the other and each has there own distinctive personality. 

  But the restaurant business also has another side to it - apart from the kitchen where stars are born and emerge to prominence, there is also front of house. One hundred and twenty years ago or so, Birmingham could boast of its own celebrity Maître D’Hotel (Maître d’/restaurant manager in modern terms) - M Joseph, born in Birmingham of French parents in the 1860s but mostly brought up in France where his skills as Maître d’ were so admired that he was approached by Richard D’Oyley Carte in 1898 to restore the fortunes of the Savoy in the wake of the fraud scandal involving Escoffier, Ritz and Echenard. As recounted in Blog 146, M. Joseph did indeed take up D’Oyle Carte’s offer of employment and for a short time was the main draw for the hotel to customers choosing to dine there but he became homesick for France whither he returned after a relatively short time at The Savoy and died shortly afterwards.

  The popular media in general, and television in particular, especially the BBC, may centre its interest on the celebrity chefs but behind many a notable chef including those here in Birmingham there has to be an accomplished restaurant manager. Most stay in the background but know how to deal with their diners in ways professional but friendly and welcoming and chat to their customers with the appropriate and welcome degree of schmoozing which their diners will appreciate. Then there are some who are personalities in their own right though the media has largely not recognised this yet. One of Birmingham’s outstanding Maître d’s is Sonal Clare who works with Alex Claridge at The Wilderness where he employs his particular sommelier expertise which he sharpened up during his time as restaurant manager at Purnell’s. I will return to Mr Clare shortly, but on the subject of Purnell’s, I was delighted, a couple of days ago, to lunch at Birmingham’s doyen restaurant.

  While all the attention is on the brilliant new or newish West Midlands restaurants of the new high achievers such as David Taylor, Dan Lee and  Alex Claridge, Purnell’s is there continuing to serve up very fine food beautifully and artistically presented. This is food as art. True, sometimes one feels that there are rather more longtime dishes being served still after all these years even if they are presented in new formats and still with a great degree of wit but it is hard to find dishes there which have not been skilfully and artfully prepared. 

  Thus there was a new twist on the long-established cheese and pineapple amuse gueule otherwise known in a previous life as Emotions of Soixante dix as part of the Gifts From the Kitchen - as well as a glass of cheese and pineapple steaming with liquid carbon dioxide this time additionally there was a very pleasing gougère alongside cubes of grilled pineapple on sticks. This new version of an old favourite proved that Purnell, who sometimes does rather make a parody of himself, can still put a broad smile on his customers’ faces.

  The starter of ruby beetroot with grains, orange gel and leaves was excellent, served as it was with a little spiced brioche. Then came a thoroughly enjoyable dish of Cornish crab served on a bed of crushed almond and invigorated by sweetly pickled sea vegetables, mainly samphire, three happy little piles of caviar and a rather delicious lobster bisque which could only be bettered by having more of it. I liked this dish very much.

  How pleasing to see that the lunch menu was serving up poached cod rather than the skate that was being served on the very much more expensive tasting menu. The fish was exalted by the pickled hispi cabbage it was sitting on and the accompanying smoked eel Velouté was delicious punctuated by caviar and trout roe which made the dish very pretty.

  Fine too was the slow cooked daube, extremely tasty and tender, embellished with a duxelle, parsley gel and crispy shallots - winter confronted and put to flight by this very enjoyable dish. The meal closed with a thin slice of Gypsy tart, a malt-flavoured custard on extremely thin pastry which might have been a little crispier though it was such a pleasure to have real patisserie than yet more crumble scattered across the plate which is often the fashion elsewhere. A lesson to head chefs - if you’ve got a good pastry chef, hold on to them at all costs. The tart, by the way, was nicely balanced by frozen yogurt and date.

  Purnell’s continues to keep the punters coming with perfectly judged service and consistently admirable food. Soon to have notched up its sixteenth year Purnell’s continues to pass the test of time.

Rating:- 🌞🌞

  And so back to its former Maître d’, Sonal Clare. With Robert Wood away for a short time from his specialist Atelier cocktail establishment, Sonal used the time and space wisely by enjoyably holding several Sonal’s House Parties at Atelier which gave him an opportunity to get out his turntable and play some music, pleasingly unobtrusively, while his paying guests sat back in the comfortable chairs or at the serving counter, and quaffed in the most relaxed way, five wines of his choosing which were eclectic and pleasing.

  I went along in the evening after the lunch at Purnell’s earlier that day as recounted above. It was an excellent example of what Birmingham has to offer to those prepared to take up those offers presented to them by some of the city’s great culinary and drinks experts. Of course the experience was also enhanced by the best of hosts circulating around his guests and talking to them, without any oppressive or desperately intense gravity, about his choice of wines which he was presenting to them. It seemed quite apt that he rounded off the evening with a bottle of wine from Georgia, where wine in Europe began.