545. Black And Green, Barnt Green.

 

  Barnt Green, an extremely affluent village just over the border from south west Birmingham at the northeast tip of Worcestershire has a remarkably modest high street when one disembarks from the train from Birmingham (or in my case, from Longbridge, just 4 minutes away by locomotive). It’s remarkably unassuming and has two or three coffee shops and mostly independent businesses with the exception of a Tesco Local across the road from the local church. It isn’t hard to find Andrew Sheridan’s Michelin-listed Black and Green as the visiting diner turns out of the station approach and it looks back at you from across the building - a narrow front sandwiched between a charity shop and a private house.

  I was there for Saturday lunch as were just four other people on what was a very pleasant and temperate early summers day. I discovered that Ben Taylor, former Chef Patron of Le Petit Bois in Moseley, had just started work there as its Head Chef having passed what sounded like a very memorable year driving around a large amount of Europe with his partner Zsofia Kisgergely enjoying themselves at leisure as well as visiting places of gastronomic importance and gaining knowledge there. I asked him about a future version of Le Petit Bois and he was noncommittal but it was by no means not on the cards.

  The menu of Black and Green, in its simplest form, was shown on the wall to my left very much in the way that the word of God appeared on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast but with a rather more pleasing message spelt out by the letters. “JERSEY ROYAL TROUT LAMB STRAWBERRY TREACLE” it shone out

 The meal started off with amuses bouches - a delicious, powerfully flavoured mushroom parfait with port jelly and a pleasingly robustly flavoured Cotswold Cruncher cheese mousse  on a delightfully crispy cracker with truffle.

 Then  sourdough, crusty and crunchy on the outside and freshly soft and tasty on the inside, with a gorgeous, lavishly garnished Cornish cruncher flavoured butter.

    The first course was nicely cooked Jersey Royal potato in a verdant pea velouté and this proved to be very toothsome.

   Then there came  trout with whey split with cucumber and coastal herbs oil. I thought perhaps there had been too much whey covering the fish with its delicate texture but the trout was certainly full of flavour.

   The main was  Staffordshire lamb loin and belly - the belly more tasty than the loin I thought, exquisitely tender but there was a lot of unrendered fat - it appeared to have been cooked sous vide and then finished off when Chef took a blow torch to it. It was accompanied by tenderstem broccoli and a pleasing hint of mint which a nice plate of lamb always deserves to be accompanied by.

  The intermediate course highlighted sweet seasonal Cheddar Valley strawberries on a strawberry panna cotta and with basil and black garlic and this led into the dessert proper.

  This ‘treacle tart’, seemed to be somewhat misnamed, it having rather more the texture of a sponge made, it seemed, from bread with treacle and with it was an excellent yogurt ice cream, the acidity of which nicely balanced the sweetness of the rest of the dish.

  At the end a surprise little cheese course of a good sized piece of strongly flavoured English Brie on a fruit bread and honey aptly piped across the top of it all.

  I enjoyed my Saturday lunch at Black and Green and my chat with Ben Taylor and ambled across the road back to Barnt Green station for my train home.

30 May 2026

Rating:- 🌞.

460. Dan Lee At Eat Vietnam.

 

  Dan Lee was the winner of the BBC’s Masterchef The Professionals competition programme in 2021. Subsequently he has been working at the Digbeth Dining Club and the Hockley Social Club where he has recently ended a long term residency. He has also worked at a number of pop up collaborations at various restaurants, most recently, I think, with Kray Tredwell at the latter’s 670 Grams. I had not thus far managed to be free on any of the evenings for which these collaborations were advertised and Hockley Social Club is just too much of a pain to get to from where I live in the evening. Hence I had not yet had the opportunity to experience Dan Lee’s food though I did once sit two tables away from him at a Kray Tredwell/Le Petit Bois collaboration in Moseley one evening (Blog 295) where he, like myself, were enjoying what was being served from the kitchens there. 

Dan Lee at Le Petit Bois, January 2023.

  Recently, however, it seemed at last that my long wait to eat his food was to end when a Sunday lunch collaboration with Eat Vietnam in Stirchley was announced and I hurried to make a reservation. I was irritated to find that it was impossible to make a reservation for a single diner but I made a reservation for two and a good friend was happy to join me to see what Lee had on offer. It was also an opportunity to revisit Ming Nham’s Eat Vietnam (Blog 270) as more time had elapsed since I had last eaten there than I had intended.

Dan Lee, Masterchef winner in 2021.

  Lee’s website notes that he trained at University College, Birmingham and he has also gained culinary experience working in his aunt’s takeaway shop. He travelled to various parts of Asia as well as Greece, France and New Zealand and this coupled with his English, Irish and Cantonese heritage enabled him, he felt, to develop his own multicultural fusion cuisine which led to him winning Masterchef and now forms the basis of the dishes he serves.

  The frontage of Eat Vietnam remains odd and still bears the name of Munchies, the greasy spoon café which had been located the as well as the large red and yellow poster with the sphinx-like inscription, “FISH SAUCE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE”, neither of which is helpful with locating the restaurant if one is a stranger to the area. But inside it was warm on a chilly, miserable damp day and the welcome was even warmer from a front of house staff member who had previously worked at The Wilderness. I spotted Ming Nham beavering away in the kitchen and then Dan Lee at the pass, the restaurant was filling up rapidly and the steam was rising in the kitchen. It was really quite thrilling though a tasty Saigon Gimlet proved to be a pleasingly soothing libation to counter the increasingly building anticipation of it all.

  This was to be a six course menu - a Sunday ‘Family Feast’, though this was more service à la Française than service à la Russe. The opening act of three dishes was served as one, then the two mains with accompanying plates together and finally the dessert. It was to be hearty, beautifully cooked and delicious. But I run ahead of myself.

  First came a platter of lettuce cups with pork ends, a completely delicious sandwich with lettuce substituting for bread, with brilliantly cooked pieces of pork belly, admirably crispy and tasty, possibly the most successfully cooked example of that meat I can recall being served to me, wrapped in a lettuce leaf (surely, the only useful thing you can do with a lettuce leaf apart from shredding it to use as part of a base of prawn cocktail or just feeding it to the pet rabbit), magnificent crispy butterflied prawns - such stuff as dreams are made on - and a scintillating papaya and pomelo salad. Who could ask for anything more? Well there was more to come, and no-one was sad about that.

  

  The highlight must have been the supremely perfectly cooked whole battered sea bass served with a delightful sweet and sour sauce. The fish was lovely - its beautiful white flesh exhilaratingly moist and tasty - and with it came individual dishes of plump, unctious slow cooked short rib, enhanced with fish sauce, caramel and coconut water with a perfectly cooked quail’s egg alongside it. In addition to these gems were dishes of lap cheong fried rice (with its tasty slivers of pork sausage) and a tofu skin salad which for the first time in my life, made me feel there there might be some use for tofu after all.

  These had been generously portioned dishes but there was still good reason to make room in my abdomen for the intriguingly flavoured dessert of mango and pandan cheesecake. The cheesecake was very well made - nice and smooth and just on the right side of the borderline of sweetness with, er, non-sweetness (I wouldn’t say savoury). The smallest flies in the ointment were the tiny cubes of unripe mango garnishing the cheesecake - they were flavourless and while their extreme firmness may have given a degree of texture to the dishes, it was not a particularly nice one. How I should have liked a real full-bodied hit of sweet, soft mango to seal the deal. Still, this was a small fly in the ointment and in the great, grand sweep of a very fine south east-style meal, it mattered but little.

  This had been a memorable meal with some very fine dishes - rustic but triumphant. The combination of Dan Lee and Ming Namh would appear to be a culinary marriage made in heaven.

Rating:- 🌞

9 February 2025.

400. Events, Dear Boy, Events. 2024 Part 1 January To June.

 

 The four hundredth blog. 

 This seems like an excellent opportunity to highlight the most important Birmingham and West Midlands dining out events of 2024 - what has happened so far and then a rolling diary of what else occurs during 2024 providing a complete West Midlands dining out history of what occurs during the year up to 31 December. New, notable events will be added as 2024 progresses. Already, on 29 April, there is much to record….

5 January - Chef Ash Heeger and Erin Valenzuala-Heeger open the remarkable Rabbit, initially also known as Riverine Rabbit, in Stirchley.

20 January - The Bower House in Shipston on Stour announces that it has appointed Leo Kattou as its new Head Chef. Kattou had previously been Chef st Simpsons in Edgbaston and at Laghi’s at Five Ways In Birmingham.

29 January - Michelin announces its 20 new Bib Gourmand restaurants - there are no West Midlands restaurants featured in it.  In the previous year’s list of 116 Bib winners only one West Midlands restaurant was recognised with the award - the Charlton Arms in Ludlow which retained the award in 2024.

30 January - Good Food Guide announces its awards for 2024. Two West Midlands restaurants are rated Exceptional - Grace and Savour and Harborne Kitchen. Very good awards are made to The Wilderness, Purnell’s, Tropea, Opheem, Adam’s, Folium, Smoke, Yikouchi at Chancer’s Cafe, Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, Le Champignon Sauvage and The Walrus (Shrewsbury).

31 January - First episode of the Central region heats of the BBC’s Great British Menu features four chefs who do not work in a Midlands restaurant. There are two West Midlands-born chefs, Sam Ashton-Booth originally from Worcester and who works at Muse restaurant in London, and who is eliminated at the end of the first round and Birmingham-born Adam Smith, Chef Patron at Woven by Adam Smith in Ascot, who eventually goes on to be chosen to cook the fish course at the banquet.

January - Baloci, a “Silk Road” cuisine opens in Highfield Road in Edgbaston.

5 February - Aktar Islam’s Opheem is awarded TWO stars at the annual Michelin awards ceremony. Birmingham, as a result, has three ONE Michelin star restaurants - Simpsons, Purnell’s and Adam’s. At the ceremony, Salt in Stratford upon Avon loses its single Michelin star while other West Midlands restaurants - Grace and Savour (Hampton in Arden), Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (Lichfield), Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumiere (both in Cheltenham), The Cross in Kenilworth and The Royal Oak in Whatcote all retain their’s. Hence, at the start of 2024, the West Midlands has 10 Michelin-starred restaurants.

10 February - Dan Sweet opens Cuubo on Harborne High Street at the same location as his former ‘fine dining takeaway’ establishment. 

11 February - Chef Brad and partner Holly Carter open their pop-up restaurant Carter’s at 18 on the eighteenth floor of 103 Colmore Row. This is to remain open until the end of April.

27 February - Chef Andrew Sheridan, previously Chef Patron at the now closed Craft and About 8, who reopened the latter in Liverpool in 2023, participates in BBC’s Great British Menu North West regional heats but is eliminated at the end of the first day.

12 March - While retaining his Chef Director role at Smoke Stuart Deeley also takes on the role of Executive Chef at Laghi’s at Five Ways. Patrick Hukins becomes Head Chef at Laghi’s.

15 March - Adam Bateman leaves his post as Executive Chef at the Grand Hotel. On 15 April 2024 it was announced that Bateman had been appointed Executive Chef at the Pan Pacific London Hotel in Shoreditch.

2 April - It is announced that the former Pensons near Tenbury Wells will reopen on 22 May as Native at Pensons with Ivan Tisdall-Downes as Executive Chef.

6 April - Glynn Purnell announces that he has appointed a diarchy of Head Chefs at Purnell’s  - Sam Luck and Tom Blakemore, both with long records of working in the Purnell’s kitchen.

7 April - The Observer publishes a review by critic Jay Rayner of Cuubo in Harborne. He pronounces that Cuubo is, ‘as exciting a restaurant as I’ve encountered in a long time”.

15 April - The Hockley Dining Club serves as host to the West Midlands Mayoral election hustings where the present Mayor, Andy Street, takes on his Labour opponent. Two fast food stalls are serving food - both fried chicken producers.

20 April - The annual Shakespeare Birthday Lunch is held in Stratford upon Avon and celrbrities attending include Dame Vanessa Redgrave, Alexander Armstrong and Dame Floella Benjamin. Dishes served are - burrata and beetroot salad, roast chicken and Wye Valley asparagus and deconstructed Pavlova.

21 April - Chef Rob Palmer announces that his Solihull restaurant Toffs will close on 2 May and relocate to Hogarth’s Hotel in Dorridge.

25 April - Michelin includes Rabbit in the Michelin Guide.

27 April - Chef Patron Ben Taylor and his partner Zsofia Kisgergely close the much-loved Le Petit Bois in Moseley.

20 May - It is announced that Niall Keating left his role as Chef director of Stoke on Trent’s Lunar on 19 May by “mutual agreement” with Craig Wilkinson, the restaurant’s co-founder. It had previously been announced that Keating would take up a new role in a Manchester hotel in June. A few days previously, Head Chef Craig Lunn had left his post at Lunar.

Craig Lunn & Niall Keating

23 May - It is announced that Carl Riley, formerly Head Chef at the George in Alstonefield, Michelin-listed from 2011 to 2023, has been appointed to a similar role at Lunar.

May - Phil Kerry, Head Chef at Forelles in Ludlow, departs his job there following Fishmore Hotel being taken over by a West Bromwich-based hotel chain which places the emphasis very much on cost cutting. Subsequently, a previously Cayman Islands-based chef, Joshua (Nicky) Hull-Saldhana is appointed Head Chef in June 2024 but is moved to work in the hotel chain’s Droitwich hotel in late June. Two Romanian chefs are appointed to take charge of the kitchens at Forelles.

Nicky Hull-Saldhana

May - Michelin’s May list of newly recommended restaurants includes Cuubo in Harborne. 

15 June -Alex Claridge’s Albatross Death Cult opens to paying customers in Newhall Square.The restaurant serves 14 diners around its wide metallic counter, mostly sea food with a Japanese-style emphasis. 

26 June - Michelin announces its June list of newly recommended restaurants and among the eight named is 1919 at The Cottage in the Woods in Malvern Wells.

27 June - After the change of ownership of Fishmore Hall and departure of Head Chef Phil Kerry, Forelles restaurant ceases to be included in the Good Food Guide.