392. Comings And Goings.

 

  In a tweet posted on 6 April Glynn Purnell confirmed that he had appointed two new Head Chefs at Purnell’s - the diarchy of Sam Luck and Tom Blakemore, two old stagers at the restaurant, who had worked as a duumvirate since the departure of former Head Chef, Luke Butcher at the end of December 2023.

The triumvirate at Purnell’s or is it a duumvirate?

  Exciting times for the Old Bloke as Dining Out In Birmingham & The West Midlands Then, Now & Next went to the printers yesterday. The book has over 220 pages detailing the relevant history of dining out which brought us to where we are now as diners in Birmingham and the wider area. 

  There’s everything from the Guild of the Holy Cross to Riverine Rabbit with stop offs in the age of Taverns, the French Revolution, the rise of the Clubs, the Escoffier Scandal at The Savoy, Hotel dining in the 19th and 20th centuries, the First and Second World Wars with the era of rationing and Attlee’s Age of Austerity, the rise of fast food, Elizabeth David’s promotion of Mediterranean food and Jane Grigson’s English food fightback, the rise of the modern Michelin Guide, the coming of nouvelle cuisine, gastronomy, gastropubs, food festivals, immigrant cuisine, the birth of Balti, the growing influence of television on dining out, the rise of fine dining in Birmingham and the golden age of Second City Dining as the city is glittered with Michelin stars, the COVID-pandemic and the energy crisis. Everything you need to know about how we got to how we dine out now round these parts.

  A review at the weekend in The Observer by Jay Rayner of the recently opened Cuubo in Harborne has gained a lot of local press attention.

 The twenty seater restaurant was opened in April 2024 by chef Dan Sweet who had previously served ‘fine dining’ takeaway meals from the same shop which was then called Qbox. Rayner expressed the view that the food, “bursts with huge flavours, big ideas and massive ambition” and declared that, “Dinner here was an introduction to a storming talent announcing itself to the world, one clever, delicious, well-priced dish at a time”. Rayner can be very florid in his praise, or otherwise, of a dining establishment and when he’s keen on somewhere, he’s very keen on that place but I have been meaning to make a reservation for Cuubo and Rayner’s molten enthusiasm for Dan Sweet’s cuisine spurred me on to negotiate the irritating reservation site and grab me a place in Cuubo for lunch in the near future.

Photograph of Dan Sweet from Birmingham Live:-

  The West Midlands dining out scene is certainly lively at present and contributing to all the activity is the news that the former Pensons at the Netherwood Estate at Tenbury Wells will reopen as Native at Pensons with Ivan Tisdall-Downes, described as an ethical chef, the new Head Chef partnered with Imogen Davis, whom he met while studying in Brighton. Tisdall-Downes was born in London and after starting off serving street food and staging pop-ups, opened Native with Davis at Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden and then moved to Borough Market and eventually worked at Brown’s in Mayfair.

  The emphasis of the food to be served at Native at Pensons will be a “sustainable, ultra-seasonal menu” and as we might expect will involve a lot of foraging and, less predictably, ‘street food’. Tisdall-Downes is described as having a signature dish of ‘wood pigeon kebab’ which may or may not be appealing depending on one’s taste for the bird. He appeared as a contestant in the 15th season of The Great British Menu.

Ivan Tisdall-Downes

  Finally, it has been announced as shown by this article in The Caterer, that Adam Bateman has left his post of Executive Chef at the Grand Hotel. Whether or not this will lead to a change in direction of the food served in Isaac’s restaurant remains to be seen. I have never felt that the New York-style cuisine really suited the place. It also really needed to raise its game in what was served given the price charged for food there. I wait to see who will be appointed to take over from Bateman.

304. The Oyster Club On A Slow Sunday Evening.

 

  This will be a short piece. One full of praise and positive adjectives (very positive adjectives). Though not to start with but that is more to do with the wet, cold late March weather and the flight from Birmingham (not an aircraft, you understand, but the general abandonment of the city centre associated with transport strikes and a witless city council) which made the streets look like those of a ghost town.

  It’s a good thing that The Oyster Club by Adam Stokes opens its doors to diners on Sunday evenings as it is now almost a refuge from the streets all but empty apart from a burgeoning army of beggars queuing up to be given end-of-date sandwiches by various charitable middle class people who serve as honey to bees. I crossed St Phillip’s Place, the thirty seconds walk from The Grand Hotel to the Oyster Club at the top of Temple Street, and burst into the warmth and light of an otherwise empty restaurant. A good welcome, fine service and though I think it’s ridiculous to eat meat in a restaurant which specialises in fish and seafood, I drew the line at missing out on the Oyster Club’s wonderful Chateaubriand Sunday lunch which is keenly priced, happily luxurious and makes any Sunday afternoon, rain or shine, a red letter day.

  This was an excellent dish, the Chateaubriand was generously portioned, cooked impeccably - perfectly seasoned, caramelised nicely on the exterior and gorgeously tender and tasty on the interior, just look at the pictures of it - and served with fine ‘trimmings’ - a Yorkshire pudding, brilliantly puffed up and crispy, a delicious sweet, nicely textured carrot (none of that daft undercooked bullet-style texture, beloved by some chefs), spinach,  a powerfully flavoured cauliflower cheese, a fine sauce and, perhaps the only disappointment, a creamy horseradish sauce which had no bite to it all. Still, horseradish sauce aside this was a memorably enjoyed late Sunday lunch.

  Nicely full, Greed insisted that I have a dessert. Thank you Greed, I would have not wished to miss this gem for anything. Menued as Vanilla panna cotta, this was so much more. The panna cotta really was loaded with the delightful flavour of vanilla but with it came three strips of precisely cooked rhubarb, so timely as we reach the end of the forced rhubarb season, it’s spot-on crunch and mellow sourness  accurately balanced by a sweet syrup and a most astonishingly good rhubarb sorbet, the best sorbet I have had for a long time. A great dessert.

Rating:- 🌞🌞

  All too soon it was finished. I was very happy. Back to The Grand to digest at my leisure and see what Steven Knight has done to Great Expectations.

267. Pulperia Adieu.

  It came. It delighted. It has passed.

  I had a reservation for Sunday lunch at Aktar Islam’s  Pulperia which I have enjoyed many happy times before when the bomb shell dropped, firstly in the social media and then in the hoary Birmingham Post, Pulperia was to close within days - Chef Aktar was quoted as saying, “With the current climate we simply cannot operate at the standard we want without outpricing our customers. Consumer habits have changed and we feel we’ve come to the end of our journey”.

    Pulperia was born just at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and closed almost as soon as it had opened. Then, only when the trials of the lockdown were over was it able to really get moving. It was soon listed by Michelin and quite rightly too. Its remarkably good value Sunday lunches became legendary among those who know. Spectacular tasty and tender beef with all the trimmings in generous portions. A great meal at a great price. 

  And so there I was at the last ever Sunday lunch to be served in this great and good looking restaurant. Service had always been excellent and the management impressive. Thanks to all for making Pulperia what it was - its life was short but memorable. This was a restaurant to be forever mentioned in the book of the history of Birmingham cuisine. May flights of angels sing theE to thy rest.

  For this farewell I didn’t change my ways. I had a lovely lychee martini to get me in the mood for this celebration of Pulperia’s life.Then the very tasty chorizo starter served with a coleslaw and admirable heritage tomatoes.

  Then the miraculous three slices of gorgeous, delicious, perfectly tender beef - no restaurant I can think of can offer this meat so absolutely spot on -  we shall not see its like again. With the beef came a cornucopia of vegetables - roast potatoes of course, creamy cabbage and leek (my favourite accompaniment), enjoyable carrots and cauliflower in a cheese sauce, a top rate Yorkshire pudding, a light and tasty gravy and a mild zap of horseradish sauce. The portions were very generous - more than my gastrointestinal tract could cope with - I’m not complaining - but this meant I could not contemplate consuming a dessert - an old man has to know when he’s had his fill.

    Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow - the hospitality industry moves on - but I feel sad at Pulperia’s passing. I always looked forward to going there. She should have died hereafter; there would have been time for such a word. But nothing is forever except The Mousetrap (theatre not cheese). I asked if I might have a menu as a souvenir and was kindly given not just a menu but the historic menu cover. Thanks and farewell.

Rating for the last time:- 🌞.

  The previous evening I had dined in Isaac’s in the Grand Hotel where I was staying in company with the labrador. This restaurant is coming along quite well. I quaffed a particularly delicious Sazerac while contemplating the menu options and settled on what turned out to be a highly delicious Burrata salad with surprisingly tasty macerated heirloom tomatoes (heritage tomato dishes have often been quite disappointing at various places I have visited in recent months - not today’s Pulperia I hasten to add) along with red onion and sweet raspberry vinaigrette which really pushed the flavours along.

    

Then to a main course of finely baked and delicious halibut with lots of caviar, a saffron velouté and Provençal vegetables. Sadly the dish was served a little cold and the vegetables didn’t have an air of robust Mediterranean peasantness I should have liked to experience but the fish entirely made up for these misfires and could easily have been eaten in isolation and have invoked great pleasure. I also had some delicious chips as an accompaniment and these were very fine chips. I‘d have them any day.

     Dessert, a sundae, was alas quite disastrous. It was a terrible cacophony of flavours - everything bar the kitchen sink lurked in that long glass. I could not finish it.

  Isaac’s is getting there. I enjoyed much of what I was served. Rating:- 🌛

265. The Wilderness, Atelier c/o Robert Wood, Opheem

 

  A pleasingly gastronomically mid-autumn busy week with the evenings dark once more and The Grand Hotel busy and fun, with one or two local celebrities in the Madeleine bar and, since I know them, to have a short chat with. One is a prominent local politician whom we inform that we are off to dinner at The Wilderness; he looks excited at the prospect of dining there and tells us that he loves the place but then says he only once ate there - when it was a pop-up in Dudley Street. Later at the restaurant, I told one of the front of house staff we had been talking to the politician and he said how much he loved the restaurant only to be told with enthusiasm, “Oh yes, he was here just last week”. Why can’t politicians tell the truth?you ask yourself. There’s rather a long time difference between 2016 when The Wilderness was located in Dudley Street and one week ago with it firmly situated in Warstone Lane.

  No matter - my guests and I, as would be expected, had a splendid evening at The Wilderness. Chef Alex Claridge was not to be seen - I suspected he was overseeing the pre-opening of the cocktail bar at Atelier (see below), with Robert Wood but the kitchen’s proceedings were under the excellent captaincy of Head Chef Marius Gedminas. 

  The wonders came thick and fast - firstly, the impertinence of pizza with a profoundly fabulous beef tartar. There was the delicious silliness of a lychee flavoured ‘slushy’ served appropriately in a little cardboard cup; then the sophistication of a humble lamb rib with peas and then spot on duck with fine sauce, the menu gradually winding its way to very pleasing desserts. Claridge has not lost any of his wit and cheekiness and Gedminas executes the menu faultlessly. Rating - 🌞🌞.

  The next evening was the first evening of being open to the paying public of the wonderful new cocktail bar, Atelier c/o Robert Wood, situated in the previously unknown Newhall Square off Newhall Street. At 5PM, with the mid-autumn twilight descending on the city, I arrived at this chic, welcoming, bright establishment to be greeted very nicely by Wood himself, his staff and Alex Claridge who is part of the venture. I might claim that I was the first paying customer to be served there once I was very comfortably sat in a delightful cosy chair, beating even a group of influencers, mostly in the early stages of middle age and on the edge of hipsterity, who turned up to enjoy what was available on the menu while self-consciously preening themselves. All part of the dining scene of the 2020s and amusing to watch.

  There was a menu of delightful-sounding original cocktails on offer - I started with a very pleasing light drink and then turned the page and requested the four part menu in which each drink was centred on the flavours of a different season, starting with spring and working through to winter. A nice concept and executed very splendidly. Spring (‘Harvest’) - cherry blossoms and rhubarb - worked well but summer (‘Parklife’) - the remarkably robust flavours of nettle, linden leaf and grass - was absolutely brilliant; then autumn (Wicker trug’) the season of plums, damsons, elderberries and sloes hit the right note and winter (‘Truffle pig’) brought with it a riot of Christmasness and foraging in the deepest part of the wood - English truffles and apples).

Rating- 🌞🌞

  I felt better than perhaps I should have done after drinking five cocktails in two hours having thoroughly enjoyed myself but it was time to head back to The Grand stopping en route for supper. I had curry fixed in my mind and was thinking of  Itihaas as the place to procure it but I seemed to have missed the restaurant on my return journey and so walking past the previously unvisited Nepalese-style Jo Jo Bar and  Lounge I resolved that the very large and spacious dining establishment would be my source of nourishment for the evening. There was only a party of four people besides myself in the restaurant and the two young men in the group were loud and out to impress the women accompanying them. Despite this I soldiered on bravely. The first item to arrive were poppadoms which were somewhat singed and not particularly pleasant - the accompanying tomato and onion pickle and inevitable raita were of little interest.

  I chose from a ridiculously vast menu a very edible starter of pretty decent steamed jhol momo (stuffed dumplings accompanied by an adequate tomato and sesame seed sauce) and then opted for a Kathmandu biryani which looked quite attractive cooked as it was sealed under a flat bread. But it was not good - much of the chicken inside was overcooked and there was no flavour of interest in the biryani nor the accompanying sauce nor even the raita. I struggled to eat even a fraction of the dish. This was one of the worst meals I’ve had recently - not dire by any means, I suppose, if one accepts that restaurants should be turning out, at not immodest prices, dishes with little evident enthusiasm put into preparing them and which are greatly sub-optimal. I presume that this was my first and last visit to Jo Jo Lounge.

Rating:- 0 

  Thank the Great God of Gourmands, therefore, that it was arranged that I should meet some very old (in both senses of the word) friends from around the country for a reunion dinner at the sublime Opheem the following evening.

  I’ve covered it many times and will say little more than to comment that the restaurant moves from strength to strength. Chef Aktar Islam was busy supervising the kitchen and bringing out some of the dishes and meeting his diners. The place was bursting at the seams with satisfied customers and each dish was  - unarguably - impeccable. The tasting menu is long - the sheer time involved in eating it make such menus a little exhausting - but each second spent at the table in Opheem is an investment in gastronomic pleasure. From the several spectacular appetiser snacks - they’re so good that you feel you should break out into French, so let us call them amuses gueules, through the several courses - some very familiar but often reworked to their ever increasing benefit - bhutta (grilled corn on the cob with tangy spiced butter), heritage tomatoes (rassam), aloo tuk (Chef’s  potato dish sensationalised with tamarind), infinitely precisely spiced Orkney scallop with gorgeous tamarind sauce (tisria), meen mappas (finely cooked, meaty monkfish and king prawn enhanced by coriander), pao (now evolved into a mini kebab on a tiny milk loaf), lababdar (perfectly cooked saddle of lamb with shockingly tasty slow-cooked lamb keema and an apt smoked sauce) through to the desserts and then, back in the lounge, to the inventive and gorgeous petits fours included a small and refreshing mango ‘Magnum’ and chocolate and fudge and babas and jellies, this is a feast surely as good as that which is coming out of two star restaurants. I must fit in at least one more visit before the next Michelin awards and Birmingham sees its first two star restaurant  getting the recognition it deserves. Rating - 🌞🌞🌞.