464. Michelin-Rated West Midlands Restaurants 2025.

 

  In the wake of the recent overblown Auld Alliance Michelin Awards ceremony in Glasgow at the beginning of February, it’s important (to me at least) to see just where the West Midlands counties stand as 2025 gets under steam. This is because the online Guide can be changed as the year passes by and there is no permanent record, with the demise of the paper edition, of where we stood on the date when a paper edition would have been published - in this case, the evening of 10 February 2025.

  Therefore, for the record, I note that there were 77 West Midlands restaurants finding a place in the guide on that particular evening. The Michelin Guide continues to locate Broadway in Gloucestershire instead of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire’s Moreton in Marsh in Warwickshire  - these are irritating long-term displays of ignorance on the part of the guide’s editor and it all has the air of a Gallic shoulder shrugging exercise in not correcting them but I have done so and my list has everywhere in the right place. And despite the claims by some that Gloucestershire is in the south west region, a glance at a map of England immediately corrects that assertion pinpointing the county in the west of England’s middle region though of course Bristol in the pseudo-county of South Gloucestershire is clearly in the West Country and frankly they’re welcome to it though it does indisputably have some excellent restaurants.

  And so here are the West Midlands restaurants recorded in the 2025 Michelin Great Britain and Ireland Guide -

Gloucestershire - 18 restaurants

Restaurants in Cheltenham - Le Champignon Sauvage ⭐️ , Lumière ⭐️ , Purslane, Memsahib’s Lounge, Prithvi, Bhoomi Kitchen; outside Cheltenham - Horse and Groom (Bib) (Bourton on the Hill); The Halfway at Kineton (Guiting Power); Cowley Manor (Cowley); Daylesford Organic Farm (Daylesford); The Fox (Lower Oddington): Atrium (Upper Slaughter); Buckland Manor (Buckland); Wilder (Nailsworth); Old Butchers (Stow on the Wold); Ox Barn (Southrop); henne (Moreton in Marsh) and 5 North St (Winchcombe).

Herefordshire - 4 restaurants 

33 The Homend (Ledbury); The Bull’s Head (Craswell); Kilpeck Inn (Kilpeck) and The Baiting House (Upper Sapey)

Shropshire - 7 restaurants 

Charlton Arms (Bib), Forelles, Mortimers (all Ludlow); Wild Shropshire (Green⭐️), Docket (both in Whitchurch); The Walrus (Shrewsbury) and The Bear Inn (Hodnet).

Staffordshire - 7 restaurants 

Upstairs by Tom Shepherd ⭐️, The Boat Inn, Larder (all Lichfield); Duncombe Arms (Bib) (Ellastone); Lunar (Stoke on Trent); Little Seeds (Stone); The Flintlock (Cheddleton).

Warwickshire - 9 restaurants 

The Royal Oak ⭐️ (Whatcote); The Cross ⭐️ (Kenilworth); The Howard Arms (Ilmington); Fuzzy Duck (Armscote); Salt, The Woodsman (both in Stratford upon Avon); The Mount (Henley in Arden); The Bower House (Shipston on Stour) and Hem (Warwick). 

West Midlands county - 22 restaurants 

Restaurants in Birmingham - Opheem ⭐️⭐️; Adam’s ⭐️ ;Simpsons ⭐️(Edgbaston); Tropea (Bib) (Harborne); Riverine Rabbit (Bib) (Stirchley); Folium; The Wilderness; Albatross Death Cult; Chakana (Moseley); Land; Plates by Purnell’s; 670 Grams; Asha’s; The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes; Baloci (Edgbaston); Sartori (Moseley); Harborne Kitchen (Harborne); Cuubo (Harborne); outside Birmingham  - Grace and Savour ⭐️ ; Smoke (both in Hampton in Arden; The Mount (Henley in Arden) and Cheal’s (Knowle)

Worcestershire - 8 restaurants 

The Inn at Welland (Bib) (Welland); Native (Green ⭐️) Tenbury Wells; The Butcher’s Arms (Eldersfield); 1919 (Malvern Wells); Eckington Manor (Eckington); Black and Green (Barnt Green); The Back Garden (Broadway) and MO (Broadway).

Of the previous  Michelin star holders, Purnell’s was deleted from the Guide on the grounds that the restaurant had closed (a not unreasonable excuse) but of those on the above list Smoke is to close this week to make way for David Taylor’s new Hampton Manor restaurant, Kynd, which one feels in one’s water may well be in next year’s guide.

One final thought is that all of the 77 West Midlands restaurants surely can not have been inspected in the twelve months prior to the ‘publication’ of the 2025 Guide - several visits to one restaurant I can think of were very disappointing, occasionally verging on the awful and convinced me that it would lose its Michelin star but there it still is and no doubt there will be devoted adherents to the Michelin Guides who will turn up there to dinner based on Michelin’s recommendations and will leave sorely disappointed.

182. Docket No. 33.

 

 

 And so to the furthest north westerly edge of the West Midlands. Two miles from a foreign country (Wales) and two miles from the strange and barbaric place known as The North (well Cheshire actually which really ought to be in The Midlands but was annexed by posh people in Manchester who could not actually bear to live in the real North). Anyway this is where West Midlands restaurants end and where Salford-based BBC luvvies begin to dominate culture, be it gastronomic or otherwise, and which apparently is in need of jolly well being uplevelled. Which nobody can deny.

  But on this side of the very edge of our Mercian civilisation stands the town which the dog and I are visiting - Whitchurch. This is a very, very, some would say profoundly, quiet town. In the daytime you can stand still, listen to the noise around you and hear nothing, absolutely nothing. Silence. It’s my cup of tea for that reason alone. It’s picturesque and famously is home to the restaurant, Docket No 33,  belonging to chef patron Stuart Collins who was the Central region champion chef in the most recent Great British Menu (see Blogs 136-38). And that is why Lucy The Labrador and I are here in the furthest reaches of our region close to strange lands.

  Front of house is so important to the enjoyment of a meal and few lead a team better than Frances Collins, chef’s wife, business partner and restaurant manager, who exudes the sense of welcome mixed with meticulous competence. The Michelin-plated restaurant is decorated meticulously too with completely apt contemporary art coupled with relaxed comfort. And the taster menu comes up trumps at a very user-friendly price and an equally sensibly-priced wine flight. This is good and my fussy dining companion and I are in a thoroughly good mood.

  I am not at all disappointed to find the chick pea chip, which I have grown to love on my visits to Purnell’s, on the menu (see Blog 50). It is accompanied by a tasty smoked garlic dip and served at the same time as an exquisite golden beetroot tartlet, the pastry as finely crispy as you could wish, all made very pretty with red veined sorrel leaves. The chips, alas, are not as firm in their texture as Purnell’s’ are and fail to thrill me. Purnell’s chickpea chips are smaller and it may be that the chickpea contents are more compressed to give a firmer texture. The bread is not our favourite though my dining companion likes the poppy seeds in it and Appleby’s whey butter does not really float our boat either. Perhaps the option of a little accompanying salt would be the solution.

  Next mackerel. Oh dear, I’m always moaning about mackerel and it’s ubiquity. But this is a great mackerel dish. This fish lacks the aggressive flavour with which I often feel assaulted when mackerel shows its face. It’s beautifully delicate mackerel with a perfectly crisp skin and the accompanying gooseberry in particular adds to the pleasure of it all. Then a course noteworthy for the texture of the King Oyster mushroom complemented  by little blobs of truffled goats curd with other ingredients. Some meticulous work here but, being rather curmudgeonly I’m afraid, a course made up of a slice of mushroom  seems a little inconsequential despite the cleverness of it. Then to the focal point. A fine piece of blushingly pink Mangalitsa pork cooked sous vide but beautifully finished off served with a delightful little faggot on a butternut squash purée and hispi cabbage. The failure of some meals is that the main course is often not the highlight and sometimes the biggest disappointment. This was certainly not the case with this excellent dish.

  The dessert too was very pleasing. It came on a stick which seems to be the case in quite a lot of restaurants at present. It was also a chocolate dessert as is so often now the case nationwide. Myself, lacking in sophistication, bitter chocolate desserts even when coupled with elements to bring some sweetness and to cut the richness, just do not bring me to a happy place. But this pleasurable chocolate lolly was tasty and painless for me, the dark chocolate being cut through with the sweetness of toffee flavour. That’s the way to do it. But that was only half the pleasure as the lolly sat on the lid of a dish which when removed revealed such a dish of delights as to bring a “wow” to one’s lips. 

  Stuart Collins had delivered the goods. My fussy companion and my curmudgeonly self both agreed we had had an excellent evening of fine, delightful food - you can not be gushing about everything, after all. We both felt that a trip to the furthest borders of civilisation had been well worthwhile and the price for such an excellent meal had represented exceptionally good value. Is Shropshire still the culinary epicentre county of the West Midlands? Quite possibly.

 I should have also liked to visit Whitchurch’s other Michelin-plated restaurant, Wild Shropshire, but as Whitchurch is closed for most of the week (Sunday to Wednesday) it was only possible to go to Docket No 33 on this particular visit to this sleepy town. Docket No 33 is fully booked until April 2022. Stuart Collins came out to speak to his diners as service drew to a close. I annoyed myself in that I forgot to ask him why the restaurant is called Docket No 33. That’s a question that will just have to wait until next time.