307. Chapter. Tattu.

  Chapter, in a rather twee short section of a road in the even more tweely-named Edgbaston Village which seems to amount to being a short section of a road lined by upmarket houses where no traffic is allowed, is smart, modern and appealing. Chapter is the successor to Opus in Cornwall Street, located across the road from Purnell’s, the trade of which was ruined by prolonged roadworks carried out by the progressively incompetent Birmingham City Council immediately outside the building which housed the restaurant. The previous Head Chef, Ben Ternant and Anne Tonks, previous owner of Opus regrouped and shifted the site of their culinary activities to Edgbaston and opened Chapter which has been well received by diners from the surrounding area as well as The Good Food Guide but not the Michelin Guide.

  The clientele was interesting when I and two companions were lunching there. The location and the nature of the location clearly define who is eating here - smartly dressed Conservative (big C as opposed to little C) ladies-who-lunch, businessmen, upper echelon professionals - so different from trendy Stirchley where carefully scruffy socialist hipsters throng shabby chic cafes. Serious money was lunching out in Edgbaston Village.

  Anne Tonks was welcoming very brilliantly her arriving diners and embracing quite expertly the ladies-who-lunch who were clearly regular visitors to Chapter. It was all so much more civilised than a dip into the downmarket jumble in Stirchley. And so we embarked on our voyage through the new spring menu launched that day. I chose Wye Valley asparagus with poached egg and wild garlic Hollandaise. The menu asserted that spring, a Midlands spring, was here. The asparagus was well cooked and tasty, the egg spot on but the wild garlic in the Hollandaise was imperceptible. Still, a reasonable start and a promise that the seasons were moving along towards summer. One of my companions chose a duck salad as his starter and was pleased with what he was served.

    I was tremendously excited to be having Dover sole ‘on the bone’ with caviar, lemon butter and ‘fries’. The chips were as good as the fish was disastrous. The sole, which admittedly was nice and meaty, was severely overcooked to the point of stodginess. After a few mouthfuls I found it to be inedible and I parcelled it up to bring home for Lucy The Labrador who appreciated the gesture of being offered about £15 worth of expensive fish to be easily gobbled up in five seconds. My companions also ordered some unremarkable tenderstem broccoli at the remarkable price of £5.

  Things could only get better … but they did not. For dessert I chose what seemed to be a promising panna cotta with ‘local’ rhubarb and tiny shards of ginger snap. To be fair the ginger element was very tasty and the rhubarb was well-cooked though not great in flavour but the panna cotta was a disaster with less wobble than the Rotunda and a thick, stodgy texture more suited to a sponge pudding than a happy, light panna cotta. This was really not good enough given the price of the meal.

  Despite, the depressing nature of the meal, I imagine Chapter will flourish and that the Ladies-who-lunch there will continue to, er, lunch there. Sadly though, it seems unlikely that I shall be sitting at a table near them again, given the mediocrity of what was served at this particular lunchtime, particularly at the price we were asked to pay.

Rating:- 🌛

  A couple of evening’s earlier I had dinner at the remarkably glitzy Tattu in Barwick Street. I found that it remained as lively and colourful as ever and worth visiting just to catch the atmosphere of the place. I was seated in a nicely comfortable booth to the side of the downstairs dining room, which suited me perfectly, and I received excellent service from the very attentive front-of- house staff. After discussing my options of what to have from the crowded menu I opted for ‘small plates’.

  I chose robustly tasty black cod croquettes served with ginger and garlic aioli, what turned out to be remarkably ruby red steamed wagyu dumplings which were also very tasty and - rather more disappointing - ‘aromatic crispy duck pancakes’ served with a Szechuan sauce, cucumber and spring onions, as one might expect. The duck would have been nicely cooked if one had chosen a pan-fried dish European style but there was no crispiness about it and the flavours were hardly scintillating. I also had a rather heavy jasmine rice which I would not have missed had I not ordered it.

  

  In the end, not for the last time this week (see above), Lucy The Labrador found herself eating the remains of an expensive meal which did not seem worth the price asked for it. Still, it was an enjoyable evening and the food was generally good and the dog was happy, so what else can a man want in his life?

Rating:- 🌛🌛

121. Veil Of Tiers.

Tier 3 - Hell by Giotto di Bondone 1267-1337, Scrovegni Chapel Padua.

   Late in the morning of Thursday 26 November the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced the plans  Boris Johnson’s government had made for when England would exit the 4 week long COVID-19 ‘lockdown’. There were to be 3 Tiers as before but in the newly renamed Very High Tier 3 restaurants and hotels and public houses were to remain shut apart from the provision of takeaway meals. The precise locations of the unfortunate Tier 3 areas were to have been revealed on a government website but so great was the number of people trying to discover in which tier their own area had been placed that the site soon crashed. But the truth was soon revealed - Birmingham, Staffordshire, West Midlands and Warwickshire were all allocated a place in the Hell of Tier 3 while Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Shropshire were consigned to the Purgatory of Tier 2. Indeed of the whole of England only Cornwall, Scilly Islands and Isle Of Wight had found their way into the Heaven of Tier 1.

  This announcement was a great disappointment and cause for concern for the future of the hospitality industry in the West Midlands.  Notable Birmingham restaurants broke the news to their customers with various messages on line and The Birmingham Post headlined the threat to the industry in anticipation of the city’s allocation to Tier 3.

  Only 5 days prior to the government’s announcement, Sam Morgan, patron of Craft and 8, had been publicising that the restaurant had been putting into place more of its ‘dining pods’ which had proved to be very popular during the preceding weeks and helped to ensure heavily booked reservation lists for the restaurant.

 

So in the words of Haircut One Hundred (I have no idea why they suddenly came to mind):-

  And is that the boiling lake of Tier 3 Hell where the lost souls of restauranteurs end up? I hope not.

55. Something Good Comes Out Of Manchester, Purnell To Be Sent To Coventry.

  Gastronomically, it’s fair to say that little of any worth has emerged from the Michelin star desert of Manchester in recent years. Notable chefs have opened restaurants there in the hope of turning the place’s reputation around and all have failed. But at last something delightful has come to Birmingham from Manchester - Tattu - the restaurant opened on 1 February 2019 in the bowels of the Grand Hotel, soon to be reopened (hopefully), well actually in the hotel’s old boiler room, serving contemporary Chinese food in grand style as one would expect given the location (by which I mean The Grand not the boiler room).

  I lunched there in March and was almost paralysed by the wonderful atmosphere, the splendid decor and the gorgeous-looking food which tasted even better than it looked. My lunching companion and I chose to eat from the £52 menu for two people or more which is served as 4 courses or, as the restaurant prefers it, 4 ‘waves’. Everything was delightful and generously portioned ensuring that ‘you weren’t hungry an hour after the meal’ as the old adage about Chinese food used to go.

  Tattu’s first restaurant was opened by Adam and Drew Jones, two brothers, in 2015 with a second branch opening its doors in Leeds in 2017. It was stated that the restaurant serves ‘contemporary Chinese cuisine that fuses traditional flavours with modern cooking techniques and playful presentation’. I like it a lot. The food there is a great pleasure and it is worth going just to see how the interior has been designed. The best new restaurant in Birmingham so far this year.

 I do enjoy the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen but especially when Birmingham’s own Glynn Purnell is hosting it as he did very successfully last weekend. Few hosts have such a wonderful sense of humour coupled with a pleasant vague mischievousness which makes the programme easy and happy viewing. In the recent show Purnell ventured into the realm of Mexican cuisine on which he emphasised more than once that he was not an expert but the viewer, tormented permanently by the ability to see the food but never to taste it, could see that the dish had Purnell’s own ever-inventive twist to it which increased the pain of being unable to reach out and put the food into one’s mouth.

 Meanwhile the Good Food Guide has reported that Glynn Purnell is planning to open his third restaurant in 2021 but in Coventry when it will be the UK City Of Culture. The plans sound exciting -  with the restaurant to be sited in the converted coach house of a restored 14th century monastery. I can’t wait to get on the train to Coventry to dine there or perhaps, given the location, I should plan to travel by coach and horse which I feel is appropriate since my maternal great-grandfather was a coachman, his own father having arrived in Birmingham in the 1850’s after farming in south Warwickshire prior to that.