259. Suns and Moons.

 

  I am happy to say that in the last year or so I have travelled around the West Midlands - Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and West Midlands - and dined at many of the region’s great restaurants, though not yet all of them, and of course there are some that have yet to be discovered. 

  Since the pandemic a couple of trends seem to be emerging - 

  Firstly, the Guidebooks are in a terrible mess. Well, to start, there are no guide books, just on-line listings with the odd three-lined comment, often nothing to do with the food, thrown in. Michelin has ended its forty-six year-long series of real paper books and replaced it with internet updates usually of restaurants in London or places Michelin inspectors like to visit and are generally often easy to get to,  such as Ireland, the Lake District, Oxfordshire, the Peak District, North Yorkshire, the Cotswolds, rural Shropshire, Kent, Suffolk, Cornwall and the West Country and the nicer parts of Scotland and Wales. Their tweeted messages are more likely to tell you about the smart places to eat in Reykjavik, Singapore, Copenhagen or Tokyo than they are about where to eat in Birmingham, Gloucester, Stafford, Hereford or Stoke. 

Michelin Guides 1974-2020, never any more for the bookshelf?

  In Michelin is largely unhelpful then The Good Food Guide is presently in a real mess. Again in this post-pandemic dining age, the editors of the publication chose to dump paper and go virtual. After a few days trial where the site featured just 300 UK restaurants it then began to charge subscribers about £30 p.a. for access to its list of recommended dining establishments with the promise that it would soon add many more restaurants to the list.

   In fact progress has been very slow and relies on its inspectors getting around the country and visiting likely places where they might track down good food. Instead of carrying forward all the names in the previous editions the editor seems to have started afresh and therefore many significant restaurants in Birmingham and the region in general are not yet listed so that if one consults the online Guide as to where to eat in Birmingham the current list will suggest just Dishoom, Tropea, Land, The Oyster Club and Tierra and then goes on to recommend Cheal’s of Henley, Tailors (Warwick), The Boat Inn and Upstairs by Tom Shepherd (both in Lichfield), Russell’s of Broadway, 33 The Homeend Ledbury, The Royal Oak (Warwickshire), Forelles, Old Downton Lodge and Charlton Arms (at Ludlow) and then the recommendations spread out into Derbyshire and Leicestershire. 

  I assume the full Birmingham listing will have to wait until the unfortunate over-stuffed inspectors have visited the five Birmingham Michelin-starred restaurants and all the others besides which seems ridiculous given that subscribers are currently paying a fair sum for a wholly inadequate list though presumably the list needed the subscriptions to come in before inspectors’ expenses could be paid. In all events it is a wholly inadequate listing at present and for any visitor to Birmingham whose knowledge of the city is very limited its advice is close to worthless presently.

  The latest list of 30 restaurants which was e mailed to me as I wrote this piece emphasises what a long way The Good Food Guide has to go with just two West Midlands restaurants featuring on it, both in Lichfield, the others generally in the areas I suggested the Guide inspectors might prefer going to.

  The second notable local trend is the rise of the out-of-town restaurant. There are a number of reasons why Birmingham has seen few fine restaurants opening in the city centre in the post-pandemic era - access to the city is by unreliable and, in the evenings, infrequent public transport and yet the left-wing socialist administration in the city with its Council Cabinet Transport member (a silly, twee cyclist previously from Oxfordshire who represents a ward full of silly, preening, well-off, pointless, middle-class socialists) is determined to freeze out the motorist and this coupled with rents that are far too high for independent hospitality businesses to afford but easily affordable to humdrum, mediocre chain restaurants. It is therefore not surprising that exceptional chefs have begun to open restaurants without the city walls (following Matt Cheal who opened Cheal’s of Henley several years ago) - Rob Palmer in Solihull, Tom Shepherd in Lichfield, Andrew Sheridan in Barnt Green, even Didier Philpott in Stourbridge and Glynn Purnell’s opening of his pub, The Mount, in Henley, and for the promising young chefs who want to stay in the city, very small establishments may be the only option - Kray Tredwell in 670 Grams, for instance, or venturing out to the suburbs where the cool young, well-off middle class abound, such as Opus’s departure from Cornwall Street and successful arrival in Harborne.

  So important changes are happening - central Birmingham is losing out to the suburbs and the surrounding more rural communities- and at the same time national food guides are not keeping abreast of events.

  Therefore to pick out those restaurants worth dining at in Birmingham and the West Midlands region I shall do what I have never done before and give those which I feel worth listing, a rating and quite a detailed one, that does not take into account the standards which a ridiculously wealthy Kensington dweller visiting Singapore might expect for his several hundred pounds off expenses but what an experienced, fine food-loving Mercian diner might hope for in our region. 

Stars being already claimed by the French tyre makers, I shall retain a celestial theme for my ratings but use a sun and moon theme so that - 

4 suns 🌞🌞🌞🌞  Exciting original faultless food, exemplary service, perfect atmosphere and setting

3 suns 🌞🌞🌞       Exciting, original, precise dishes throughout, very good service, pleasing setting

2 suns 🌞🌞.            Finely cooked, interesting food in the main, very good service, pleasing setting

1 sun 🌞                    Finely prepared and served food, attractive setting, good atmosphere

4 moons 🌛🌛🌛🌛 Food is well prepared and tasty, good service, pleasant environment

3 moons 🌛🌛🌛    Solidly prepared pleasing dishes in the main, service may have a fault or two

2 moons🌛🌛          Good cooking resulting in pleasing food served satisfactorily 

1 moon 🌛.               Mostly enjoyable food, service generally unproblematical, comfortable setting

So looking at restaurant visits over previous months how do the restaurants in which I have eaten rate?

The Walrus   Shrewsbury 🌞🌞

Forelles    Ludlow 🌞

Fishmore Hall Bistro    Ludlow 🌛🌛🌛

Opheem   Birmingham 🌞🌞🌞 

670 Grams   Birmingham 🌞🌞

Tropea   Harborne Birmingham  🌛🌛

Café de Paris by Didier    Stourbridge  🌛🌛🌛

Upstairs By Tom Shepherd    Lichfield  🌞🌞

Purnell’s    Birmingham  🌞🌞🌞

Adam’s   Birmingham   🌞🌞🌞

Black And Green   Barnt Green  🌞🌞🌞

Folium    Birmingham  🌞🌞

Isaac’s The Grand Hotel    Birmingham    🌛🌛🌛🌛

Simpsons    Birmingham    🌞🌞🌞

The Wilderness    Birmingham    🌞🌞🌞

Pulperia    Birmingham    🌞

The French Pantry   Ludlow    🌞

Lulu Wild  Birmingham    🌞🌞

Pick Thai  Stratford upon Avon    🌛🌛 

Cheal’s of Henley   Henley in Arden     🌞🌞🌞🌞

The Mount   Henley in Arden   🌛

Oyster Club   Birmingham     🌛🌛

Sabai Sabai   Stratford upon Avon 🌛

Lambs of Sheep Street   Stratford upon Avon 🌞

Toffs by Rob Palmer    Solihull  🌞🌞

Butchers Social  Aldridge 🌞🌞

Grace and Savour at Hampton Manor   Hampton in Arden  🌞

The Woodsman   Stratford upon Avon   🌛🌛🌛

Peel’s Restaurant at Hampton Manor    Hampton in Arden  🌞🌞🌞

Rajdoot   Birmingham    🌛

Lunar   Stoke on Trent     🌞🌞🌞

Harborne Kitchen   Harborne Birmingham  🌞🌞

Carter’s of Moseley   Moseley Birmingham   🌞🌞🌞

Chakana     Moseley Birmingham   🌞

Craft   Birmingham    🌞🌞

Larder    Lichfield     🌛🌛🌛🌛

Boat Inn   Lichfield     🌞🌞

Land    Birmingham      🌛🌛🌛🌛

Smoke at Hampton Manor    Hampton in Arden    🌞🌞🌞

Qavali    Birmingham     🌛🌛🌛🌛

Charlton Arms     Ludlow   🌞

Dishoom    Birmingham   🌛

Docket No. 33    Whitchurch    🌞🌞

Asha’s    Birmingham    0

About 8    Birmingham    🌞🌞🌞

Salt    Stratford upon Avon      🌞🌞

Russell’s of Broadway     Broadway     🌞

The Lygon Arms    Broadway    🌛🌛🌛

Le Champignon Sauvage     Cheltenham     🌞🌞🌞🌞

Mortimer’s    Ludlow   🌞

The Bookshop     Hereford     🌛🌛🌛🌛

The Cross    Kenilworth     not visited recently

Chapter    Harborne Birmingham     not yet visited

Le Petit Bois    Kings Heath Birmingham     not yet visited but on my way there later in the week. See Blog 260.

Wild Shropshire    Whitchurch      not yet visited

Lumière     Cheltenham   not yet visited 

Penson’s   Tenbury Wells    not yet visited

Haughmond     Upton Magna     not yet visited

Tailors    Warwick       not yet visited

  Of immense significance in the history of modern English gastronomy and therefore of how we eat here in the West Midlands now, Chef Alastair Little, who died on 3 August 2022 in Australia, should be mentioned here. He first worked as a waiter and then moved to work as a chef at the notable London restaurant L’Escargot in 1981 at a time when English gastronomy was really on the move. In 1983 he cheffed at the restaurant 192 in Notting Hill and then in 1985 opened his own restaurant, Alastair Little, in Frith Street in Soho where the kitchen opened out on to the dining room, the tables had no table clothes and had paper napkins and the menu changed twice daily - years before these became regular features of restaurants as we know them today.

  The cooking  under chef and Head Chef Juliet Peston was immaculate and strove to remove itself for once and for all from the French cuisine which had dominated fine English restaurants since the days of Escoffier and earlier. Little brought to English restaurants the cuisine of simplicity and subtraction in which he investigated what could be removed from a dish to enable the remaining ingredients to be even more effective. He opened a second restaurant, also called Alastair Little, at Ladbroke Grove in 1995 and his two openings 1985 and 1995 bookended the appearance of other landmark London restaurants which all pointed English cuisine in the direction in which it should travel - St John, The French House and The Blueprint Cafe. Little ended his work as an active restauranteur in 2002 having stamped his mark on English cuisine as notable as the contributions of Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay but far less flashy.

258.The Walrus.

 

  Back in Ludlow, it seemed a good idea to venture forth elsewhere in Shropshire to eat somewhere I have been intending to visit for a long time - The Walrus in Shrewsbury. It’s always an adventure putting one’s trust in Transport for Wales-run trains which makes a very good argument for governments, particularly the Welsh one, never being allowed to run public transport, especially when their hegemony extends itself over the border into the Marches and England. At least with privately-run West Midlands Trains we can rely on them being hopelessly unreliable and not have any false hopes that the train will arrive on time or even that it will turn up at all.

  Still, I did indeed put my trust in TFW and it did indeed manage to convey me relatively uneventfully, the half hour journey from Ludlow to Shrewsbury, through empty green countryside and looming hills, dotted with sheep or cattle, past the towns of Craven Arms and Church Stretton. What a pleasure it is to visit Shrewsbury with its links with Charles Darwin and how exciting to be visiting a much loved dining establishment to discover how high-end food had evolved in this part of Shropshire and The Midlands

  I was pleased with my welcome at the restaurant, which had opened in October 2018 and is listed by Michelin, and happy to be seated downstairs in full view of the kitchen where Chefs Ben Hall and his partner Carla were going about their work quietly and efficiently. I was also impressed that, apart from Hall himself the restaurant appeared to be run by an excellent all-woman crew. There were obvious problems with the restaurant itself in that the toilets are located up steep stairs making them inaccessible to some customers and in particular anyone in a wheelchair. I liked the soothing grey and blue decor with the portrait of a walrus looking down on the lower dining room. Which begged the question of how the restaurant got its name. On enquiring I was told it had been named after the Beatles’ record, “I am the walrus”, an apparent favourite of Chef’s which sent me running (metaphorically) to the internet to look the song up and I was fascinated to find that the lyrics have a number of allusions to food items which may or may not have some relevance to Chef’s interest in the song.

  And so to the menu. On Friday evenings only a six course tasting menu is available - at the very reasonable price of £60  (though a wine flight will add another £90 to the bill). To start, three pleasing amuses gueules were delivered to the table - all with crispy textures in them - one a fine cheesy mousse another with bresaola and the other with artichoke crisps on an excellent potato salad base that worked very well for me. A flying start.

  The first starter was delicious - an oblong of delightful, subtly flavoured smoked eel with sweetly pickled cucumber and slices of carrot, the mild heat of thinly sliced radish, Exmoor caviar and hints of horseradish.  It was an excellent summery dish and the next course was, if anything even better - drapes of very thin slices of very tasty Lancashire porchetta, the flavours heightened by Shropshire truffle and gooseberries. For me the dish was unimpeachable.

  On to fried spinach pasta dumplings with crispy kale, Parmesan and onion. Delightfully cheesy and the crispy kale brought with it the pleasures of Chinese-restaurant-style ‘crispy seaweed’. Then the meat course - Goosenagh duck cooked perfectly to my tastes and accompanied by a fabulous little square of brilliantly conceived duck leg and squash lasagne which raised a fine plate of duck breast to a legendary status - eternally memorable and complemented by glazed plum, an excellent sauce, mushroom purée and cabbage - none of these ingredients were out of place.

  Oh wow! That lasagne.

  There were two desserts. The first was very pleasing - slices of macerated cherries, buttermilk semi-fredo, shards of meringue and cherry sorbet - everything had its place and helped the dish along. I very much enjoyed too, the second dessert of aerated dark chocolate (the aeration was that little touch which raised the dish above what some chefs often produce) and miso caramel mousse, both paired very happily with delicious coconut ice cream. It was all such a pleasure.

   I had the feeling that this had been a meal of items which Chef himself really enjoyed and perhaps that’s something other chefs should do - prepare the meal as though they were going to pay £60, £70, £80 and so on for it so that they could sit back with relish and indulge themselves with it and emerge from it content and happy they had something not only that little bit special but also just plain fun and pleasurable.

  

 

  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip to The Walrus and thought it a restaurant well worth making a special journey to eat in. I note that the restaurant will close at the end of this month and will be relocated elsewhere in Shrewsbury. In some ways this is sad - it is a lovely  restaurant but clearly the single upstairs lavatory is a real practical problem and may be one of those non-food issues that causes the Michelin inspectors to hold back from awarding The Walrus a Michelin star.

  I look forward to visiting the new Walrus and eating Ben Hall and Carla’s cooking again.

257. Tropea

  Tropea is a popular neighbourhood Italian restaurant situated in well heeled and self-regardingly cool Harborne. The journey by public transport from my home about 6 miles away on the edge of southwest Birmingham is tiresome and the food on offer in any restaurant I visit in Harborne needs to to make the journey worthwhile. So did Tropea’s offering indeed make my journey worth enduring?

  Firstly a little background. Tropea is one of only five restaurants in Birmingham currently mentioned on the nascent Good Food Guide list of recommended restaurants. It has a ‘good’ rating. It is not to be found, yet at least, in the Michelin Guide. The restaurant was opened in 2021 by Ben Robinson-Young and Kasia Pietkowska, who had met each other while studying at University College Birmingham in 2010 (and graduated from there in 2014). The restaurant is named after the Calabrian coastal town of Tropea. 

  I started with a rather good cocktail called Paper Plane served with a degree of wit in the form of, er, a paper plane. Whilst sipping it I was able to observe how popular this smart, modern, relaxed restaurant with soothing decor seems to be. The service was very good and I received excellent advice on how much to order to satisfy my needs - I was pleased to see that half orders were available for many dishes. How very wise especially when old men with faltering alimentary systems are sitting at the table with the menu in their hand.

  The choice of antipasti was pleasingly varied but I could not resist ordering two of the battered fried courgette flowers stuffed with goats cheese and mint, the bitterness of the cheese balanced gloriously by oozing streaks of honey. These were highly commendable and should be indulged in on a daily basis. I also had a second antipasto of Devon crab crostini with lime mayonnaise and pink grapefruit but I thought there was a little too much bitterness, I guess from the grapefruit, and this spoiled the otherwise excellent flavour of the crab.

    On to the pasta. I chose ravioli stuffed with ricotta and served with a pistachio and fresh herb salsa and topped with Parmesan. The ravioli were very good and tasty and the pistachio added a bit of crunch to ii all which enhanced the dish. If anything the dish was just a little too salty for my taste and the half portion I had was sufficient.

  For the main course I chose rolled lamb shoulder with white beans, samphire, salsa verde and confit lemon. The meat was lovely - tender, lean and tasty - but everything accompanying was either not contributory (the beans had little flavour) or downright antagonistic. Lamb and lemon are a classic combination but while the lemon counters any fattiness of the lamb, lemon flavour - to me at least - is unpleasant paired with lamb. The samphire too seemed out of place and like the beans had surprisingly little flavour and no bite to it) and the confit lemon was plainly ruinous to the flavour of the sweet lamb. I ate the course and gained pleasure from the lamb but had my reservations about the whole dish.

  

  For dessert I enjoyed affogato with a glug of Frangelico. 

  So, a decent enough meal with some satisfying pleasures and I think dining there will always be a rewarding experience but plucking up the courage to battle with Birmingham’s dire bus service may mean some time may elapse before I return. Meanwhile the restaurant is not short of local customers to keep it busy. There’s just that thought gnawing away at the back of my mind - I must have some more of those remarkably enjoyable fried battered stuffed courgette flowers. So perhaps the city’s buses will have to be battled with again after all.

254. 670 Grams.

 

  My history of dining at 670 Grams is one of always arriving there as a downpour begins and secondly being depressed by the appalling state of Digbeth as unending roadworks cause mayhem for the traffic as it tries to escape the city centre. But once I’m there at 670 Grams life gets a lot brighter.

  The first course is ready and waiting to drink down and to nibble at. Immaculate flavours from the word go. It’s impossible to recall the details of everything that was delivered to the table during the following 170 minutes as 16 courses eventually ended up on my table. There was a danger, at least to start, that this might look like series of a canapés but Kray Tredwell is far too clever, far too astute, far too tuned-in not to make this an experience which built up to a sturdy and memorable and utterly satisfying meal. There was no menu, dishes came along in a steady flow of happy surprises, some of them with the most luxurious of ingredients - scallops, lobster, wagyu, some of them as witty little twists on classics such as cauliflower cheese and New York pastrami sandwich, often surprising and novel but totally apt combinations of flavours. It’s hard not to find at least one course you didn’t enjoy in a tasting menu but it is true to say that I enjoyed everything that came across the counter from the pass even though there were no fewer than 16 opportunities for me not to do so.

  Tredwell hit the flavour button with just about everything -  the opening chunk of grilled pineapple set the scene as it became much more than a chunk of pineapple. And gradually I worked my way through, pleasured every time at the clearing of another fascinating ceramic till what I suppose might be described as the main course came along, Tredwell’s fine and witty take on char siu. After that, no less than four predessert/desserts/petit fours, each a delight and the the 16 course tasting menu had come and gone. This was a tasting menu in the true sense, soupçons of flavour (not for getting textures), original frequently delicious and all admirable. This restaurant remains unique in Birmingham. It’s vaguely anarchic, elsewhere it would be served in a grand dining room where it would be ceremonious rather than that little bit cheeky. You have only to catch sight of Chef, driven and in the zone, putting his dishes together to see that something truly great is hatching in this little restaurant in the Custard Factory.

Sorry, That one got away before I could get around to photographing it.

Beef on my first shiso leaf.

Tredwell’s twist on char siu pork and egg foo young 

256. Café De Paris by Didier.

  The dog and I have committed ourselves to touring the West Midlands in easy bite-sized journeys. Over the decades I’ve experienced the horrors of international travel to 115 countries, visited some wonderful places, stayed in some remarkable hotels and dined rather well but on the other hand I have also endured trips to pretty awful spots on this globe, stayed in cockroach infested hotels, been offered food to eat that the dog would most assuredly have turned her nose up at, been in a city where a coup was taking place, been in Kuwait just before the Iraqi invasion, been given rides in lorries along roads on sheer cliff faces where the road has been half washed away, been close to being arrested in Eritrea for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, stuck in Athens for days on end when I needed to get home because of that wretched Icelandic volcano … the list goes on. Frankly I can’t do it any more. So touring the West Midlands in bite-sized chunks of journeys is just up our street. 

  And we’ve covered a lot of ground. So where to go next? Well I hadn’t been to Stourbridge for about fifty years. So Stourbridge it was. And what did I discover there quite by accident? The newly opened Café de Paris by Didier. Didier, I thought, could that be Didier Philpott whose Toque D’Or was listed by Michelin 20 years ago and who was also chef patron at Edmund’s? A quick google revealed that yes it was - it was the legendary Didier Philpott, now 44 years in the business. So there was nothing to do but reserve a table and head back to Stourbridge for dinner to see how this chef was faring in his new venture.

  Serendipity had resulted in my discovering the Café de Paris’ existence and sometimes the best things happen as a result of serendipity. Firstly there was the fun and bemusement caused by Stourbridge’s own, probably unique, rail service which involves travelling by a normal train to a station called Stourbridge Junction and then boarding a strange little one carriage train on a single track which dawdles backwards and forwards pleasantly and uneventfully to Stourbridge Town.

  And so to the restaurant. Bright, modern decor and a pleasant welcome awaited me and I rapidly settled into feeling comfortable and relaxed. Chef and his kitchen staff could be glimpsed through a large window which gave him as good a view of the diners as they got of him. The menu was simple, broadly French and appetising.

  A pleasingly fresh and crusty baton was served with butter from Netherend Farm, the origin of it being indicated by the foil paper containing it (probably best served without I’d have thought though all very honest in this era of cultured butters with various additions inserted in them). Personally I like good honest salted butter. Then the starter of Coquilles St Jacques - very spot-on cooking of the gorgeous scallops served here with pea purée and nicely salty bacon and a herb butter sauce. Rustic, less simple than it looked and enjoyable.

  For my main course I chose boudin noir - delicious blood sausage - with pork shoulder steak which was a little more chewy than I might have wanted, and caramelised apple, 3 little mounds of lovely mashed potato and excellent mustard sauce. Then, for dessert, a finally crafted tarte Parisienne with summer berries. 

  Chef came out of the kitchen and spoke to all his diners. It was interesting to talk to him about the Toque D’Or and Edmund’s and hear his thoughts about where restaurants are now.

  This was a relaxed and satisfying meal. None of the mad scramble we’ve got used to with multiple tiny dishes flying out of the kitchen, front of house staff reciting inaudibly a string of ingredients making up each course, an excess of glasses of wine ushered in as a ‘flight’. It did feel very French. And unpretentious in a well-judged sort of way. It was as though Chef had decided this was his approach, it suited him regardless of the daft madnesses of modern fine dining and if it didn’t suit a Gallic shoulder shrug was the answer. The food looked like it should do - basically it looked like food rather than a post modern piece of art. Happy recognisable flavours. I think that Didier Philpott might just be on to something with his Café de Paris.