437. The End Of Purnell’s.

 At 1000AM on Monday 14 October 2024 Glynn Purnell announced via social media that his restaurant, Purnell’s, in Cornwall Street had served its last diners at close of service on Saturday 12 October and that the restaurant was now permanently closed.

  He was interviewed an hour later on the BBC West Midlands station by Kathryn Stanczyszyn and repeated that which he had stated in the social media and identified a number of reasons for his decision to end the 17 years of fine dining he had been serving up to the citizens of Birmingham and from further afield in Cornwall street. 

  We know well Purnell’s story before opening Jessica’s in Edgbaston with owners Diane and Keith Stevenson and this had included a period of work as Chef de Partie at Andreas Antona’s Simpsons and for Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Ludlow. Jessica’s was opened in 2004 and, with Purnell in the kitchen, it was awarded a Michelin star in 2005, joining Simpsons as one of only two Birmingham restaurants to have been awarded the accolade up until then. Jessica’s closed in 2007 after Purnell decided to open his own restaurant which he did in May 2007, quite reasonably naming it after himself, and Purnell’s was awarded a Michelin star in the 2009 edition of the Michelin Guide (announced in 2008). Purnell’s retained the star until its closure.

  Purnell became a local and national culinary celebrity with numerous appearances on television and in the press and opened, and sometimes closed, other restaurants as he was eventually to do with his flagship fine dining restaurant itself as the gastronomic climate changed, costs rose, and the fall off of diners able to, or prepared to, pay significant prices for tasting menus and their ilk.

  Purnell’s is survived by its younger siblings, Plates By Purnell’s in Edmund Street and the upmarket public house/restaurant The Mount in Henley in Arden.

  A look at Blog 413 (28 June 2024) may provide the reader with at least one reason why Purnell’s finally had to close. It was still very good but it was tired, the menu had lost its thrill, its humour and wit, its flair and imagination, its sense of excitement, its oomph. Restaurants rely on their old, faithful customers coming back time and time again and while they like to see familiar old favourites on the menu, they also want novelty and for me the menu was too repetitive drawing on old glories. I’m not convinced that Glynn Purnell had not lost his interest in it all to some extent. When something’s tired and elderly, it’s time to let it rest with its memories of the glory days of fine, exciting, witty experiences and so to move on.

 And in response to the news I made a reservation to visit Plates by Purnell’s the very next day. Somehow it seemed the decent thing to do.

   I had dined just a month ago at Plates with a regular dining companion and we were very impressed. Our chosen dishes were pleading and represented good value. My only real problem with the restaurant was the general lack of space there which makes it feel just a little unwelcoming though that is certainly not a comment that one could make about the excellent front of house staff there.

  We indeed had little to complain about on this occasion - we enjoyed the platter of embutidos (cured meats) which admittedly was more a matter of curation than of culinary skill; we enjoyed some inoffensive albondigas, some cheese and basil  croquetas, some fine-looking patatas bravas (which to be fair were more patatas than bravas) and some nicely seasoned gambas al ajillo. I chose the pistachio dessert - a pistachio foam with honey and tuiles - though it only served to emphasise how unrewarding are the restaurant’s desserts. Generally we enjoyed ourselves and I felt that I shoukd like to return sooner rather than later.

  Which brings us to my solo visit to Plates one month after my previous dining experience there. In many ways I wish I had not decided to dine there. I repeated my previous order of albondigas and requested chicken thigh with romesco sauce (it was not available), ‘chip  de trufa’ - potato with truffle mayonnaise (I was informed it was a single chip which sounded a little insubstantial for £5 to say the least so I opted for good old patatas bravas, croquetas de queso y albahaca and, in the absence of the chicken, calamares with alioli. First the good news - the croquetas were good - nice and crispy though not bursting with flavour, the patatas bravas were indisputably lacklustre, the albondigas were much as one would expect them to be but the crispy squid was awful - true the coating was pleasingly crispy but the squid inside was vile, decidedly miscooked in a way which truly gave it an unchewable rubber band texture. Oh dear! This was not the standard one expects from a Michelin recommended restaurant. *What is going on at these Purnell restaurants?

   The squid was the single most unpleasant piece of food I have put in my mouth in a restaurant since a trip to China in, if I remember rightly, 1993 when I wrestled with a ghastly, grey piece of sea cucumber which had been served as a delicacy. The stuff that nightmares are made on. I pointed out the extreme chewiness of the squid to the waiter and no charge was quite rightly made for the dish and there the matter should end except that one is bound to wonder how the Michelin grade kitchen could let such a horror escape from it.

  The squid had rather knocked me back and I did not feel I could risk a dessert. Glynn Purnell needs to get a grip on this. Hopefully it’s a one off.

Rating - 🌛🌛.

  More bad news. The friend .with whom I dined on the first of my reported visit to Plates usually joins me for a ‘3 and half ounces of pleasure’ at The Alchemist prior to our sauntering off to some worthy dining establishment for our regular lunch. He was not with me on my second visit but having 45 minutes to pass prior to my reservation time it seemed like a very good idea to pop into the Alchemist and renew my acquaintance with that very soothing cocktail. Alas! I was informed that 3 and half oz was no longer being made. An instant state of crestfallenness set in. But it was suggested I substitute the Pleasure with a June Bug, the ingredients of which included gin and banana and coconut. This was good - who can resist gin with some of the ingredients of a Planter’s punch? But the embracing rum of the Pleasure would have been a nice soother on a grim, cool English mid-autumn afternoon. Perhaps June is the best month for glugging a June Bug unless you’re in Jamaica where, I guess, the weather makes any time fine. 

  We like to close with good news. A near neighbour location of Plates, the now closed Urban Coffee where Ben Tesh staged pop ups in 2016 prior to opening Folium has posters in the windows which indicate that Tiger Bites Pig will be moving in - just what the restaurant needs -a lot more space.

293. Folium.

 

  A companion and I set out for lunch at Folium in the Jewellery Quarter on the day it had reopened after the Christmas and new year break. En route we had each enjoyed two glasses of the soothing cocktail Three and half ounces of happiness - making a total of 14 ounces between us - they lived up to their name - at the increasingly simpatico The Alchemist in Colmore Row, nestled very cosily as it is on under the simply stated luxuriousness of the grand Grand Hotel. Thence a slightly unsteady progress along Newhall Street, which in centuries past had once led to the grand home of the Colmore, past the now boarded-up and greatly missed Ginger’s Bar and Purnell’s Bistro where once we had enjoyed such pleasures as Cockney Rhyming Sling and Penicillin, eventually taking a right hand turn towards the beautiful Georgian St Paul’s Square, and thence a short distance up Caroline Street to the rather anonymous frontage of Folium.

  It was good to be back at Folium where the welcome was real and the faces are always friendly. It’s a smart place and looks the part. When everyone is going on about the future of fine dining and when hipster burger joints are breaking out all over in middle class suburbs to overhyped acclamation delivered by internet influencers and a meal’s not a meal without several negronis to precede it, it’s so lovely to still have a calm, tasteful haven in a quiet Victorian Street where very fine food, beautifully presented with originality shot through it, can be enjoyed at a restful pace.

  We had chosen the sensible five course lunch menu and were delighted with the dishes that arrived at our table.

  To start, there was a delightful amuse guele which took the form of a little tube flavoured with burnt onion and filled with fine chicken liver parfait, gorgeously flavoured and silkily textured. 

  After the excellent bread served with cultured butter, which we ate with relish, there followed Amela tomato with bonito vinegar and pretty, tasty little shiso leaves. I thought that this was very tasty; my companion felt that the tomato itself was not as full-flavoured as he might have liked but we both agreed that the dish as a whole was very pleasurable. It may be that a tomato-based course in mid-January is a little incongruous and I really do not know what time of year this variety of the fruit is at its best, originating as it does from Japan where it first appeared in 1996, but the tomato’s original homeland, together with the dish’s dressing and garnish, were a summary of much of the rest of meal - Japan was very much on the cards.

  Next a fine, Orkney plump scallop served with what appeared to be a rather pleasing, small beignet which was described perhaps a little inelegantly on the menu as ‘fried bread’. The scallops, which we both thought to have a spent a little too much time in the pan, were accompanied by an apt and delicious Ponzu espuma. The scallop was served sliced; is this a new trend? I see that Andy Hayler in his inestimable Blog (sadly almost entirely devoted to dining out in London and increasingly almost exclusively to dining at The Ritz, where once Escoffier plied his trade after defrauding and being sacked by The Savoy) also reported experiencing a sliced scallop in the past week which led him to express regret at this particular action by the Chef.

  The main course was really very good. This was Guinea fowl, which Chef Ben Tesh serves quite frequently, served as a ballotine, accompanied by a tasty yeast Béarnaise sauce. It was moist and nicely textured and thoroughly enjoyable. On then to an intermediate dish of iced horseradish with white chocolate shards and sorrel sauce. This was excellent with just the right amount of heat coming from the horseradish to liven up the tastebuds and reexcite the appetite for the final stage which was a toasted hay ice cream with a final burst of Japan in the form of miso and there was toasted buckwheat for a crispy texture. We both felt that the flavour of hay was a little too subtle but we certainly enjoyed the dish and the pleasure of our coffee drinking at the end of the meal enhanced by two delightful mignardises a ‘whisky and peat butterfly bun’ about which my lunch companion fell into raptures using the term ‘whisky baba’ to describe it and a chocolate and lavender choux, which was flavoured absolutely accurately and textured precisely.

Rating:- 🌞🌞