76. New Stratford, Old Stratford.

  After a rather larger-than-I-expected Ploughman’s lunch at the the Old Thatch Tavern (see Blog 75) I used my afternoon in Stratford upon Avon walking Lucy The Labrador up to Holy Trinity Church, last resting place of possibly the West Midland’s greatest historical figure, William Shakespeare, and in the evening walked the 100 or so yards from the wonderfully atmospheric and ancient Shakespeare Hotel which is one of the few Stratford hotels to welcome dogs and their humans, to The Woodsman restaurant situated in the also ancient Falcon (now the Hotel Indigo Falcon) to see what dinner there would be like having previously visited there for lunch (see Blog 67) back at the end of September 2019.

  It too was very atmospheric as one stepped out of the dark late January evening Chapel Street with the vague feel of drizzle in the air into the lively, warm, brightness of the Woodsman’s dining room with its open kitchen giving full view to the two chefs toiling over the large wood fire ovens stirring  their little sauce pans and arranging the fruits of their work on plates and summoning the bustling waiters to deliver the service.

  There really did seem to be a veritable ant colony of waiting staff walking around in all directions like a scene from an Eisenstein film. I noticed an unfortunate stuffed weasel in one corner of the room. When I say stuffed I do not mean that it was content and overfed rather that it was dead, discontented and had experienced the attentions of a taxidermist with whom it would probably have preferred not to have had any contact. I thought it was a rather strange item to have in a dining room but perhaps people like to have stuffed weasels around them when they’re eating an expensive meal. And anyway he did look like quite a nice weasel with a pleasant little smile on his face - not at all like the nasty stoats and weasels you read about in Toad Of Toad Hall.

  The theatre of the drinks trolley took place - apparently the negroni is something to experience but I settled for a less thrilling Elderwood g and t - and then a young woman plopped a couple of slices of bread with some butter on the table with none of the usual detailed explanation - which actually I would quite liked to have been given - of the nature of the bread or the special peculiarity of the butter. The delivery of the bread, conducted in silence, contrasted with the dramatic monologue, RSC-style, delivered when the drinks trolley was doing its rounds.

  I chose as starter a very fine terrine of local game birds and root vegetables served with Yorkshire rhubarb and granola. I shan’t go on about textures and flavours save to say in all such quarters this was a splendid starter and, as can be seen, a pretty dish too.

  I knew I should have had some of the local game for my main course as that is The Woodsman’s true raison d’etre and one probably isn’t doing justice to the place if one opts for the fish but I did and that’s that. I chose the Grilled halibut tranch. ‘Tranch’ was the giveaway. Dishes at The Woodsman are relatively expensive but the diner can not complain about ungenerous helpings.

The halibut was well-cooked but the size of the portion was so great that I began to tire of it and the last few forkfuls were hard to accomplish. The fish was accompanied by a smidgeon of red wine sauce and more of the sauce would have helped and there was also some salsify which is a vegetable about which I have my reservations when it comes to the flavour department and black trompette mushrooms and some sea herbs. I congratulated myself on forgetting to order a side-dish of the Woodsman’s excruciatingly delicious ‘dirty mash’ which, although it is a wondrous creation, would have thrown me over the edge of excessive consumption. When I first saw the dish the word ‘magnificent’ came to my mind but, I learned, you can have just a little too much magnificence in your life. It was a very satisfactory main course but I shall be careful not to have something which calls itself a ‘tranch’ in the future. 

  For dessert I had a fine fool with slices of blood orange lurking delightfully in its depths. Again it was quite a generously sized dessert but I battled my way to an emptied dish nonetheless.

  I think the Woodsman has its faults though a true trencherman would find it difficult to agree with me. But I do like The Woodsman. I think it’s delivering the sort of food to diners’ tables which an English restaurant should be delivering at the beginning of the 2020s. The atmosphere, particularly on a dark winter’s evening, is absolutely spot on. All the tables in the area  of the kitchen were occupied and all my fellow diners looked rather pleased about things.

  The following evening, having decided to eschew the professional critics’ darling, Salt, on the grounds that I went a couple of times soon after it was opened and, while having been impressed with the food, was less so with the service whereby the young people waiting there didn’t really seem to get it. I won’t elaborate but merely state that instead I dined at the doyen of Stratford’s fine food, ten years old this year, Wayne Thomson’s petite but perfectly formed No 9 Church Street, next door to which Paul Foster chose to open Salt. It must be a challenge being the fine dining restaurant situated immediately next door to a Michelin-starred Restaurant even if you do have a Michelin plate yourself especially when you’ve been around a lot longer than the upstart neighbour. Luckily No 9 seems to have a long-established clientele and an accomplished restaurant manager in the form of Magda Maciaszczyk who charmingly makes one feel comfortable and welcome at the restaurant in a way that one does not experience next door at Salt.

  With a micro-bar downstairs one climbs an ancient staircase to arrive at the comfortable and pleasant dining room. One feels relieved to be sitting there waiting for one’s food to arrive rather than waiting there delivering the food to the diners’ tables and doubtless running up and downstairs all evening. To wait at No 9 you need to be fit.

  I’ve been dining at No 9 now for at least five years on and off. Wayne Thomson’s food is interesting - when it’s good it’s wonderful but not every new dish hits the mark and some ingredient combinations do not always work together even though on paper they probably should do. But it’s nice to have something new and original and to able to draw one’s own conclusions about what’s on the menu. There’s always a couple of slices of bread and some olives to start which see you through to the arrival of the starter. Mine was an excellent example of what to do with pigs cheeks - ‘Thai-glazed with pickled Asian vegetables and spiced pineapple’ which really made the dish. This was a bountiful plate of food, a generously proportioned pigs cheek (I’ve been served smaller pieces of the meat as a main course) with the meat perfectly cooked and the vegetables perfect accompaniments.

  The main course sadly, in contrast, did not really work for me - charred salmon, chorizo and red onion compote, crispy new potatoes and broccoli. I couldn’t find the salmon, very nicely cooked as it was, to be a happy companion to the chorizo and onion - it was a combination that really didn’t work for me - and the broccoli seemed to add to the confusion of the mixture. Most straightforward were the sautéed potatoes but the description of them as ‘crispy’ was wholly inaccurate. This was a main course of four parts sitting uncomfortably together on the plate.

  I finished off with two happy little scoops of homemade ice cream - a happy pairing of coconut and clotted cream flavours (several other flavours were available). I think the generosity of the size of the pigs cheek had rendered me incapable of having a larger pudding though I gazed longingly at the delightful-looking desserts which were delivered to the happy people sitting at the table next to me.

  I do like No 9 Church Street. It has been there for ten years so Wayne Thomson must be doing something right even when a talented culinary newcomer arrives and sets up shop next door on his doorstep. A new spring menu has just been introduced so I look forward to giving that a try soon.

75. Pondering The Ploughman’s.

  The Ploughman’s lunch. Served on a board in a 15th century pub which is dog friendly so that there’s a black labrador sitting in the hearth (fire unlit, it’s a relatively warm day for January). The photograph of it is so pretty and colourful it could be some artist’s still life effort.

  Much is written about the ploughman’s lunch. It’s an English and, so they say, recently invented little pleasure that conjures up pastoral music, think Vaughan Williams (my music knowledge is weak but Vaughan Williams sounds like the right sort of name for this occasion). Though they also say the English rural working man, including ploughmen, would have been eating it back in medieval times, well the cheese and bread bit anyway. They say that though the cheese and bread reality had existed for centuries someone clever in the ‘Cheese Bureau’ (yes, really) put it together in the late 1950s to promote the sale of English cheese after the end of rationing and it was felt that calling it something catchy like ‘Ploughman’s lunch’ would rekindle the flame of English cheese consumption.

   The Milk Marketing Board really got things moving in the early 1960s with its Ploughman’s Lunch promotion and I remember my very first, and what seemed wondrous, Ploughman’s lunch consumed outside the Old Hare and Hounds at the Lickey Hills not far from where I lived as a boy (and still do) with my father somewhere around 1962 or 63. To accompany it he drank half a pint of mild and I quenched my thirst with Vimto. Our discovery of the Ploughman’s lunch, albeit in so modest a form that it would be more easily recognised by a medieval agricultural labourer than a modern day pub luncher, set us on a road of father-son bonding over a weekly home-made Ploughman’s whilst watching the weekly episode of The High Chaperral on Saturday-evening BBC television. The Old Hare and Hounds Ploughman’s, which we copied, was simply a wonderfully crusty roll of bread with butter, tasty Cheddar cheese and rings of hot but sweet Spanish onion. Hmmm .... the sheer joy of delicious simplicity.

  Which brings me back to the 15th century (more specifically 1470) dog-friendly pub mentioned above where the subject of the Ploughman’s Lunch cropped up - the Old Thatch Tavern in Stratford-upon-Avon (the dog and I were passing a couple of lazy days in this gem of a West Midlands towns). Wanting a light lunch as I was going to dinner at The Woodsman (see Blog 57) in the evening I scanned the menu and was overcome by an overwhelming Ploughman’s Lunch desire. And what a magnificent piece of work was set before me - 2 good-sized wedges of what I took to be fine Red Leicester, an array of pickles (a pleasant Branston, a really rather good pickled egg but a brutally astringent large, halved pickled onion which had an unsweetened acidity rendering it beyond edibility and which could quite happily have been substituted by some sweet little silverskin pickled onions), a sadly near-flavourless mini-pork pie, a pretty little salad wherein lay the necessary slivers of red onion, the surprising but picturesque little bunch of grapes and what really made this a fine Ploughman's - two thick cuts of splendid ham as tasty a ham as one might ever encounter on the road of food pleasure.

  It was a great pleasure to sit in these ancient and cosy surroundings and eat this generally tasty version of a dish that the Stratford labourers might have been eating when this inn was first built and if a tastier pork pie could be found - I like a pork pie rendered more vigorous with the hit of pepperiness - and the aggressive pickled onion could be substituted then this would be an even grander Ploughman’s Lunch.

  As an afterthought I recall that the Ploughman’s Lunch is one of the few foods or dishes to gives its name to the title of a movie (others I can think of are Disney’s Ratatouille and Woody Allen’s Bananas). A movie of the 1980s by Richard Eyre was named after the dish and proved to be one of the great movies of that decade reflecting perfectly the England of the era of Margaret Thatcher.

  As a further afterthought I’ve decided that I’m going to make 2020 my Year Of The West Midlands Ploughman’s Lunch and have resolved to eat a Ploughman’s Lunch in any establishment in which I’m eating which is offering the dish and which looks like something fine is going to be served up to me. To compare I shall, unusually, give ratings so to start off I give the Old Thatch Tavern Ploughman’s a 7 out of 10 which is a pretty good score, just let down by the pork pie and the vaguely rebarbative pickled onion but strongly boosted by the delicious ham and the very pretty picture it makes when first served.

  

74. Fictional Chef Fumes, Changes At The Wilderness..

Beef Wellington, Craft Dining Rooms, 2019

  A couple of episodes ago, Ian, the chef in the the BBC’s radio saga, The Archers, which is the longest running radio soap opera in the world and which tells the story of nice middle class mostly English people who are decent and honest while the working class, also mostly English but generally mildly dishonest as well as being comedy characters, denounced the changes in the menu introduced by the locum chef in his restaurant at Grey Gables Hotel. The locum is filling in for him while Ian is on paternity leave to spend time with the child he and his husband have had by a surrogate mother. Why was Ian so disgruntled?
  Well Ian was furious that the locum head chef, whose name I forget and which probably isn’t important anyway, had introduced, daringly one presumes, Beef Wellington and Steak pie on to the menu. Ian was full of fury saying that the locum was taking the restaurant back to the 1970s. It didn’t help that these vintage dishes were proving popular with the guests and even his husband said how much he was enjoying the steak pie.
  Frankly I think it was Ian who was out of touch. I drift back to a stupendous and memorable beef Wellington I luxuriated in at the end of last year at Craft Dining Rooms. And despite Ian’s misgivings the dish was as elegant and modern as one could hope. How much more excited I could feel about having the dish again rather than a plate of foams, pine nuts, anaemic sous vide-cooked pork belly and nasturtium flowers. Ian and a good many other chefs (real and fictional) need to rethink their strategies as we enter the third decade of the 21st century. As do a lot of professional food critics.
  Of course this amble into fictional Ambridge, the village which these characters inhabit, is highly relevant to this Blog as the village is based on elements of one not far from Birmingham in Worcestershire. It in fact finds itself in the fictional county of Borsetshire which I believe is theoretically squeezed somewhat improbably between Warwickshire and Worcestershire which would be a rather tight fit. I’ve no idea if Ian’s cooking is so good that Michelin or The Good Food Guide have graced his restaurant with a mention in their guides - probably not as I don’t ever remember Ian mentioning it and I’m sure he would have done if they had.
  Perhaps, and this could be rather enjoyable, the locum chef will win the Grey Gables restaurant a Michelin plate or a mention in the Good Food Guide, an achievement previously undreamed of in Ambridge and never achieved by the self-satisfied Ian. Borsetshire does seem to be a culinary desert though a couple of years ago a celebrity female chef did open an expensive fine-dining restaurant in, and I can’t remember which, either the county town of Borchester or the large town of Felpersham. It’s a place to be seen in apparently and the programme’s most snobbish characters, Brian and Jennifer Aldridge, who fancies herself as a bit of a cook and hostess, have dined there on at least two occasions. But mostly local people eat out at the local pub, The Bull (recently renamed The B At Ambridge in the face of considerable local antagonism) or at Grey Gables where there’s often a mishap in the kitchen or in the dining room itself.
  So I must try to remember that the West Midlands has not seven counties (Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire,  West Midlands and Worcestershire) but eight (Borsetshire to be added) and to look out for food events there. Perhaps Grey Gables with its Beef Wellington and Steak pie really is at the cutting edge of West Midlands cuisine in the early 2020s despite what Ian thinks.
 The producers of The Archers have for years produced books relating to the programme and one popular aspect of such publishing has been cookbooks. Jennifer Aldridge has even had her own cook book as the programme’s doyenne of cuisine and entertaining. The books are aimed at linking the programme’s rural and farming background to food that is fresh, local and seasonal which the books potentially quite interesting I suppose.

Published 2019

1994 edition

2009 edition

1977 edition

 Changes continue apace in Birmingham’s more important restaurants. At Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness, following the departure of Stu Deeley, the restaurant’s former sous chef, Marius Gedminas, has been appointed as the new Head Chef.

Marius Gedminas

  Meanwhile, excitingly, after leaving Purnell’s where he had worked for 10 years (see Blog 71),  Sonal Clare is taking up the post of General Manager and Head Sommelier at The Wilderness in preparation for the restaurant moving to a larger site in and to enhance the wine aspect of the restaurant (Clare won the GQ Sommelier Of The Year award 2018). Doubtless this is all part of Alex Claridge’s effort to try to make sure every possible action has been taken to persuade the Michelin inspectors that this is the year The Wilderness finally finds its place among the stars.

73. Starting Off 2020 At Folium, Legna Closes.

  For the first gastronomic self-indulgence of 2020,  a regular lunch companion and myself set off for Caroline Street in the Jewellery Quarter, stopping off at Ginger’s Bar in Purnell’s Bistro in Newhall  Street for a couple of wonderful cocktails (I’m rather hooked on Penicillin at present), to have lunch at Ben Tesh’s sublime Folium. It’s a while since I’d last been able to go there much to my regret and it was with excited anticipation that my friend and I stepped into the calmly decorated restaurant which sadly was rather quieter than I should have liked to have seen it - the excellence of Ben Tesh’s food should really ensure that the place is packed with diners for every service

  Two very happy hours of feeding followed. Many of Tesh’s dishes are exquisite with beautiful if sometimes rather understated presentations at times. A set lunch was all that was on offer but there was no need for regret as every dish was very fine, frequently delicious and a pleasure to have set down before oneself.

  The menu offered ‘Tart of Cornish crab and frozen duck liver’ - the first of the many delightful dishes to be brought to our table (I do like the service at Folium), the inevitable sourdough bread - but a fine example of this little pleasure, a perfectly delicious Tartare of mackerel with little balls of marinated cucumber and wasabi (a dish that proved once and for all that cucumber does have another role other than to put in one’s glass of Hendrick’s or Pimm’s no 1), a happy but delicate chunk of cod with cured pork fat and preserved white asparagus with which we indulged ourselves on paluga caviar though afterwards we thought that perhaps we needn’t have, a fabulous short rib of wagyu beef cooked over Binchotan with flowingly smooth Inca gold potato and black garlic, perfection in the memorable form of ‘sheep yoghurt sorbet, frozen spruce and lemon thyme’ with a conclusion to the meal in the form of ‘Madagascar chocolate, frozen burnt cream and cobnut crumb’.

  Folium is undoubtedly one of Birmingham’s finest restaurants whether or not it has a star. Ben Tesh’s cooking can not be praised enough. Perhaps he’s a little quiet in projecting his restaurant and other more outward-going chefs are getting more attention than they deserve in comparison with him but those who have dined at Folium must know that the restaurant really does offer exceptionally fine dining in the city of an increasing number of fine restaurants.

  Unlike many others, I was not surprised by the result of the general election in December. Similarly I was not surprised, though others were, to read that Aktar Islam has closed down his Italian-style restaurant, Legna. Why was I not surprised? Birmingham has too many expensive restaurants and to keep going in the face of such competition means you have to be really very good and based on my one visit there (recounted in Blog 50, 1 March 2019) Legna was not as good as it needed to be (though we might note that it was awarded a Michelin plate in the 2020 Michelin Guide and listed in Harden’s Guide 2020 but interestingly was not mentioned in The Good Food Guide 2020).
  Aktar Islam blamed costs associated with the building in which Legna was situated as the reason for its closure and said that he would concentrate on two new restaurants that he plans to open soon including the Argentinian- style Pulperia due to open in two to three weeks time in Brindley Place.

Legna’s scruffy ‘Bolognese’

72. Craft Dining Rooms.

   And so, a quick mention of my pleasurable visits to Craft Dining Rooms in the International Convention Centre.

 My first trip to Craft Dining Rooms was in mid-November 2019 for an early dinner and I derived such pleasure from the whole meal that I have returned twice since then - for lunch and for Sunday lunch. Such joys! Since my first visit Andrew Sheridan has moved in as chef (see Blog 71) but before his time I found the food to be delicious and excellent. The only real fault with the restaurant was the chilly atmosphere (literally not metaphorically) and I do hope the heating problems will be soon sorted out.

  The meal which captured my attention and ensured I was to become a devotee of Craft Dining Rooms was made up of a starter of Roast diver-caught scallop with bacon, apple and baby gem (a delight), ‘Arthur Wellesley 18615 Beef Wellington’ with caramelised onion, creamed Duke potato and Wiltshire truffle which I thought was a magnificent dish (I read a review by a food critic in a Wolverhampton newspaper who had obviously been in a grumpy mood the evening he’d dined at the CDR because he found no pleasure whatsoever in this splendid Wellington - a lesson to us all to take the opinions of professional critics with a pinch of salt) and then a highly original carrot cake trifle which was enjoyable but not the best dessert I have had (I’m not a dessert person and to really thrill me a pudding really has to come up with something extraordinary) but still very edible.

  A couple of weeks later I had lunch at CDR with a regular lunching companion. Again the food was enjoyable though we learned that English red wines still have some way to go.

  This restaurant is high on my list of places to dine in Birmingham and I look forward to experiencing Andrew Sheridan’s fayre as he settles in. These are exciting time for Birmingham food lovers.

Some further pretty gems:-

71. TV Star Achievers Associated With New Developments.

  Birmingham’s  food reputation keeps moving onwards and upwards. Much has happened in the past 2 months or so.

  I have visited the Craft Dining Rooms situated in the International Convention Centre and really must get around to reporting my experiences there but quite what those have been can be judged by the fact that I have paid three visits there in just a short period of time. This chicly decorated (the theme is centred on gold and silver) spacious dining area spaced around an attractive, large bar and only marred by its rather low ambient temperature (its management is working on ways to solve the problem) was opened on 15 July 2019 by Birmingham-based Sam and Emma Morgan with Tom Wells from Birmingham who had worked with Tom Aikens among others as the first Chef Director. The emphasis of the restaurant has been very much on British food and British drinks to accompany.
  British wines have been highlighted and the menus have been fascinating to look through as they give a full description of the wines and the British vineyards from which they originate. There has also been a lengthy list of gins from which to select though on my last visit I was told that the list was going to slimmed down a bit.
  It was announced that Karl Martin, formerly chef patron of Old Downton Lodge at Ludlow, would become Executive Chef there from November but subsequently it was announced that Great British Menu finalist in 2018 and 2019 (as well as North West Chef of the Year in 2011), Andrew Sheridan, would take over the role of Executive Chef which he did in early December 2019. It is planned to open an outside canal-side terrace garden in January 2020 (let’s hope it’s warming than the interior restaurant) with the involvement of Akhtar Islam of Michelin star-winning Opheem and Legna) fame.

  More television-related news of significance to the Birmingham food scene was the awarding of the title Masterchef The Professionals Champion to Brummie chef Stu Deeley in late December 2019. He had been working most recently at Alex Claridge’s The Wilderness and has now left the post in
preparation for becoming head chef at a new restaurant to open in spring 2020 in the Jewellery Quarter. That’s something to get excited about.

  In his training Deeley had studied at Halesowen College and later worked at Simpsons. In the Masterchef finals Deeley beat another West Midlands chef - Olivia Burt from Worcestershire.
  I’m sad to write that after 10 years of working at Purnell’s, the brilliant Manager/Maitre D’  Sonal Clare has left the Cornwall Street-based palace of dining to prepare to work at another restaurant here in Birmingham. A sublime performer of his art, he will be missed by Purnell’s customers as no-one in Birmingham can schmooze his diners in the way that Sonal can. I look forward to visiting his new place of work.

70. Disappointment In The Wilderness At Star Result.

   Kray Treadwell, the young Brummie who latterly worked in Michael O’Hare’s Leeds restaurant The Man Behind The Curtain and made a notable impact in the 2019 Great British Menu BBC television programme, did some pop-up cooking at The Craft Dining Rooms in the International Convention Centre (ICC) in the city centre on 13 September 2019 and was due to repeat his appearance there on the coming Friday, 11 October 2019 but has now pulled out from the commitment. He made a similar no-show when he was due to cook with Alex Claridge at Nocturnal Animals in mid-July 2019. Both appearances were advertised to the public so we will all hope that an expected appearance in November will actually take place.

 Clearly feeling the need to express his feelings publically at having missed out on a Michelin star at last night’s awards ceremony Alex Claridge, Chef patron of The Wilderness, has sent out an e mail to his customers mentioning his and his staff’s profound disappointment and thanking his staff for their continued support and pledging to keep turning out fine food for his customers.

  The reasons for the award or non-award of a Michelin star are as mysterious as the Schleswig-Holstein question or the solution to the Brexit conundrum. Likely as much there is no solution. Stars mean a lot to a chef and quite rightly too and Claridge would probably be more likely to be awarded a star if his restaurant were in London, the Lake District or Dublin - places where the London-centric (plus a nice trip out-preference) inspectors want to be (not poor old Birmingham). But he can draw reassurance that at least he’s not in the Michelin-star deserts of Manchester or Liverpool. Let’s just hope that he keeps beavering away here in Birmingham and that his efforts are eventually recognised and rewarded by a passing Michelin inspector breaking his journey on the road from London to the Lake District.