334. The Mayan.

 

  My knowledge of Mexican food is very limited to say the least. I couldn’t tell you what is authentic Mexican cuisine and what isn’t. Of course the English food snob is obsessed with ‘authenticity’ and will not put up with Anglo- variants of a dish, though the changes in them are made to make them palatable to English tastes. I see little point in suffering in the cause of authenticity and so I am quite happy to eat foreign food even if it has the spirit of a foreign dish rather than the complete substance of it. So I had no hesitation in reserving a table at the New Mexican-style restaurant, Mayan, in Gas Street Basin.

  In the past I have been to Mexico City for a few days and eaten genuine Mexican food in good quality restaurants but that was forty years ago and my recall of the dishes is now rather limited though I do remember an excellent dish which included a heavy use of chocolate (a savoury, not a sweet). Unfortunately it all ended in tears as Monteczuma took his violent revenge out on me which resulted in me loosing acutely about 9lbs in weight and for some reason or the other, to develop a dislike of the smell of coffee for some weeks following. It also cut short my ability to eat any food during my remaining days in the Mexican capital. 

  Well that was then and this is now. And the Mayan looked very exciting with what was clearly a large amount of money having been spent on it to give it a glitzy Mexican look with gold, though more probably gold plate, everywhere. The Mayan does for Mexican food what Qavali does for Persian and what Lulu Wild does for Chinese. Excellent, if perhaps somewhat overbearing, decor. Sadly I was the only diner that lunchtime, there to enjoy it.

  I started with a ‘signature cocktail’ - a combination of tequila and mezcal and other ingredients called God of the Sun. It looked pretty but lacked punch and was disappointing at a cost of £14. 

  To begin I had guacamole with tasty, crunchy totopos. Avocado is not the tastiest ingredient available to a chef and this needed more salt at the very least to take away some of the blandness of the dish. But it was perfectly edible.

  I had a starter of tortilla soup which proved to be a bowl of the tasty, hot and spicy soup with thin strips of tortilla and a very generous amount of tasty shredded spicy chicken and to balance the heat, cooling avocado and sour cream. This was very good but enough to make a meal in itself.

  The main course was made up of three very well cooked pieces of sea bass with nice crispy skins and a single prawn with chick peas and a coconut, mango and tamarind sauce. While the sea bass itself suggested that the chef who had prepared it really knew how to deliver a perfect piece of fish, I’m afraid that the sauce did not really do the fish justice - where I wanted citrus the sauce was sweet and failed to complement it.

 This had been a very filling meal and there was nothing on the very short dessert list to make me feel I wanted to add to sense of total repletion. I did however have a very spicy chocolate drink epwhich certainly gave my taste buds something to think about.

  The front of house staff were very nice but for the price bracket this restaurant locates itself in, they need to be doing more things - filling my glass with water rather than leaving me to do it myself, paying attention to my napkin when I leave the table, offering to take my coat when I arrive and opening the door for me when I depart. Early days yet but all this was possible on my visit as I was the only diners in the restaurant that lunchtime.

  This is a spectacularly decorated restaurant, probably quite thrilling when there are more diners there, but it is expensive, so the diner’s expectations must be high even at this stage so early in the restaurant’s life.

Rating:- 🌛🌛

59. Recently Opened, Renewed Or Closed.

   In the warm summer weather of mid-July it seemed a good idea to troop off to one of Birmingham’s newest most-talked-about restaurants which trades particularly on its pretty location in Sutton Park - the previous Boathouse restaurant now reopened and named The Bracebridge. The new restaurant had been opened by Chef owners, the brothers Steven and Scott Lewis who trained under Michel Roux Jr at Le Gavroche and previously had been students at the Birmingham College Of Food with stints also at Quaglinos and Tante Clair between them.

  The food, when served, seemed remarkably unphotogenic so I gave my camera a rest and as all three of us thought that the gazpacho was a good idea on a hot day it seemed a pity that we all found it to be rather bitter and not all that pleasant. The other courses we found to be more pleasant but hardly memorable and we summed our experience up as not being Fine Dining but priced to be Fine Dining - the food really is quite expensive doubtless because of the restaurant’s location in well-heeled Sutton Coldfield. This was a generally disappointing experience but the location was pleasant enough.

A companion and I lunched at Maribel soon after the end of the one year Richard Turner era and thoroughly enjoyed sampling the food prepared by the restaurant’s new Head Chef, 24 year old Harvey Perttola who had been working there under Turner for some months and previously had worked at Opus as a chef de partie under David Colcombe before going on to work at Swinfen Hall in Lichfield and at Hampton Manor in Hampton-in-Arden when it received its Michelin star.

  Maribel is said to now have a new ‘more relaxed’ approach to Fine Dining and my companion and I certainly felt very comfortable in the bright, pleasant dining room. I thoroughly enjoyed my starter of asparagus and as a main course, deliciously moist poussin with a perfectly cooked carrot on a bed of spicy dhal. After we had eaten Chef came out to hear our reaction to his efforts and he was very personable and pleasingly enthusiastic. It contrasted somewhat with the previous Head Chef who more than once I spotted with his head around the kitchen door seeming to glare at his customers rather unnervingly. The absence of Richard Turner’s stare certainly helped to make the restaurant atmosphere somewhat more relaxed.

  Maribel should find its way into the guides to dining out in Birmingham as they are published as the latter part of the year goes by.

   The event to unveil this year’s Michelin awards which precedes the publication of the Michelin Guide will be held this year on 7 October at an as yet undisclosed venue.

 In Birmingham, as elsewhere, restaurants come and go. I wasn’t surprised to read an article in the 6 June edition of the Birmingham Post that Harden’s recommended Tom’s Kitchen, founded by celebrity chef Tom Aikens and situated in The Mailbox, had just closed only 2 years after it had opened. It just wasn’t special enough and when I lunched there, just the once, I had the feeling of sitting in a giant works canteen though the food which was said to be ‘British comfort food classics in a relaxed and informal brasserie setting’ was perfectly tolerable - I recall having a crab cake with an inadequate amount of crab flavour which was further suppressed by an incompatible taste of mint, a generously sized, tasty pork chop with black pudding and very acceptable crepes served filled with a rather good marmalade. As I said, all very edible but not mind-blowing and when it comes to comfort food the diner does not really wish to find it sold at un-comfort-able prices.

  A couple of nice pictures taken during lunch at Purnell’s at the end of May posted here purely because the dishes gave me so much pleasure, the trifle was about as good as a trifle could hope to be. It isn’t surprising that Purnell’s has survived for 11 years when lesser establishments have gone to the wall:-

  Moving on quickly to Noel’s Restaurant which opened in June 2019 close to the Mailbox and with a canal view its home page describes it as “a modern restaurant and bar boasting high-end dining and an inspired cocktail menu to be enjoyed in an opulent and relaxed setting. Our chefs offer creative cuisine using fresh ingredients inspired by the Mediterranean. Noel’s ambition is to be the best charcoal fired grill in Birmingham, offering a range of specially sourced fine cuts from master butcher Aubrey Allen. Our pasta and ravioli is made fresh every morning by our artisan pasta makers and dressed with beautifully paired sauces”. 

  Given all that perhaps it was a mistake for myself and my two companions to choose fish dishes. Yes, it was certainly a mistake. I started off with a pleasant-looking prawn and avocado salad served in an old fashioned martini glass. The sauce had a minimum of flavour and the dish was edible but little more. By the end I felt like I was just going through the motions so as not to waste any food. The main course was worse - I chose sea bass (depicted below) which was ruthlessly overcooked - the skin was rubbery and not crispy and the fish was dry. It was satisfactorily seasoned - a point I make so as not to be wholly negative. Nothing else on the plate was memorable and additionally charged side dishes were an unnecessary expense and added nothing to the meal. The dessert on the other hand was excellent - a delicious tiramisu. My companions both had starters of spicy prawns which they found to be very average and their monkfish main courses were again over cooked with the fish being rubbery and the whole lacking in flavour. One described the main course as “horrible”.

  The service was excellent and we had a delicious reasonably priced wine which, along with the tiramisu, was the best part of the meal.

  I have not found any backstory to the restaurant and I do not think there is a named chef. I do not know who is ‘Noel’. The restaurant is pleasant and bright and we may have had a much better opinion of the place if there were evidence that it employed a chef who knows how to cook fish. I fear that the long-term future of this restaurant is far from certain.