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.

253. Upstairs.

 

  After my last visit to Upstairs by Tom Shepherd, happily sited in old and lovely Lichfield, (Blogs 188 and 194), I wrote the above. 

  And so it came to pass, Michelin did award the restaurant a star only a few months after it opened. To be fair it wasn’t all that difficult to predict but I did not miss the opportunity to make the prediction. And then of course the inevitable happened and the bookings poured in and it became impossible to make a reservation for months ahead. They tell me they’re now fully booked until Christmas. Nevertheless there I was out to dinner at Upstairs having previously had lunch twice there in October and November. 

  The welcome and service by the front of house staff was, as before, immaculate. 

  And so to the food. The amuses gueules - the little tart and stupendous red cabbage gazpacho with horseradish ice cream - appeared at the table like dear old friends revisited. 

  Then the first starter of finely cooked Orkney scallops with peanut satay, very enjoyable but was a contrast to the sweet scallops needed in place of the sweet peanut flavour? Food for thought. Then, after a wonderful, freshly baked brioche-like Parker House roll was served with herb and Marmite butters, there came a beautiful slice of cod, cooked sous-vide and then finished in the pan with an excellent crust, a dreamy champagne velouté with mussels, samphire, caviar and celeriac tagliatelle. An unimpeachable dish if ever there were one.

  The next dish was veal sweetbreads well-cooked with goat curd and various pea elements. Peas can be so exhausting to eat in anything like a polite manner and this was my least favourite dish though it was finely executed and presented as prettily as sweetbreads could be. 

  The main course of Herdwick hogget with lamb neck and morel and turnip purée brought deeply tasty meat to the table. The neck meat, served in a little bowl exuded a pleasingly powerful flavour. Again the cooking was immaculate but I found the overall flavour to be profoundly earthy, almost autumnal, and without a contrasting element in it to really bring it to life. Not for nothing has sheep meat been served with mint for many years.

  There was an excellent predessert where mango was the main element (the signature ‘Thai green curry’) and then the dessert proper where white chocolate parfait was paired with strawberry, an unnecessary and flavourless tuile, and slivers of marigold leaf. A pleasant and highly seasonal ending to the meal though not a top rank dessert I think.

  Tom Shepherd has established his restaurant as a place to seek out fine food and he is not unwilling to challenge his diners with classic combinations with 2020s twists. All tables were full which is quite an achievement considering, as I walked back to Lichfield station, I passed several restaurants at about 9.45PM, not one of which had a single diner in them. I fear a restaurant cataclysm is drawing close as the day to day challenges of pandemic, post-pandemic, manpower and Ukraine war-related economic factors weigh increasingly heavily and many diners feel unable or unwilling to go out to dine. The comfortably well off, like the poor, will be with us always and they will sustain high quality restaurants such as Upstairs through these economic calamities but many others may well be lost. In many ways the highly upmarket restaurant probably represents the genre most likely to survive and even flourish in these upcoming times but  the restaurant has to be in sited in the right place, has to be prepared to serve luxury ingredients with flair and charge high but not ridiculous prices (we’re not London) and has to have a great chef. And Birmingham city centre which the city’s council is making a determined effort to ruin is no longer the place to locate such a restaurant - better to wander a little distance across the borders to the surrounding towns and countryside. The flight from Birmingham centre could well be the next stage in the history of Birmingham food.

252. Sazerac. Adam’s. Michelin. Good Food Guide.

 

 

 I was going to dinner at Adam’s a short walk, as anyone would know, from The Grand Hotel where Lucy The Labrador and I were staying. It was too good an opportunity not to have a Harvey Wallbanger in Madeleine bar before heading off to Waterloo Street and Rich the barman there does a very good HW. He was telling me he previously worked at Fazenda and mentioned what he judged to be his own favourite classic cocktail, the Sazerac, of which I was previously ignorant which was a gap in my knowledge which should not have existed. The sazerac, said to have originated in antebellum New Orleans (pre-Civil War) though possibly more fin de siècle, is claimed to be the oldest known American cocktail.  It is named from the Sazerac de Forge et Fils brand of cognac which was combined with absinthe, Peychaud’s Bitters and sugar. There was nothing to do but try one of Rich’s sazeracs. Golden amber, clear, stately, adorned with an appropriately restrained tiny slice of orange peel - as refined and mature a drink as can be found on this earth and crafted by a master of his trade - the antithesis of the drink - the negroni - of vulgar, self-regarding hipsters. The negroni is fine but in the hands of Rich at least, perfected I should think by much practising and experimenting, the sazerac is the final word in cocktails for people of style and good taste. Will there be a sazerac revolution? Time will tell though perhaps it’s something that would lose its position at the head of the elite cocktails if the secret gets out.. And so to Adam’s.

  Adam’s. As serene as a sazerac. Calm, precise, formal but comfortable. I was planning to choose to eat from the tasting menu but was lured away by the à la carte with the thought that I might add the extra dish - crab with yuzu - to what looked like excellent dishes.

  First an array of fine appetisers including the tiny but memorable beetroot meringue and a speck of mackeral tartare. Next excellent sourdough with two types of butter and then take off with an excellent starter of scallop with grilled pea purée plus other pea variants, cuttle fish and chamomile. Fine food.

  Next came the extra dish of crab with yuzu. It looked very pretty but for me, the yuzu was far too powerful and the flavour of crab was all but lost. For me a disappointment and a dish that the chef really needs to reflect on.

  

  

  But rough seas were soon calm again with a main course of stupendously delicious aged beef served with smoked curds, bone marrow sauce and somewhere marigold though I am not sure I would recognise its flavour as marigold is not exactly a regular ingredient I have with my beef. The meat was, as it should be, the star of the course, tender, full of flavour, nicely seasoned.

    There followed a delightful predessert of blood orange granita with frozen yogurt and olive oil and then a very fine raspberry soufflé as dessert. This was a soufflé about which no complaints could be raised, light and tasty, pleasingly memorable. The petit fours included a charming miniature Paris Brest to lift the soul. 

  This was a Wednesday evening, for restaurants now the start of the working week. That day the country was being tortured by having its public transport assaulted by a rail strike courtesy of an unpleasant trade union leader who sees himself as a new Arthur Scargill and inflation is roaring away shooting up the price of food, basic commodities and one expects, soon, demands for big wage increases. The hospitality business has had a nightmare two half years - floods in some parts of the West Midlands, then repeated lockdowns and restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and now the fragile economic situation and all this seems to be having an effect endangering our recently burgeoning restaurant industry. There were only  ten people dining at Adam’s the evening I ate there - only about half the tables were in use in the main dining area. I suspect that that did not reflect the usual state of affairs even on Wednesday evenings. On social media various restaurants are having to publicise last minute availability where cancellations have occurred in an effort to fill their restaurants - even Adam’s see below).

  One hopes that our excellent restaurants are not going to go under now having survived the protracted period of the pandemic. Still there is some good news - indeed a historic moment - the Michelin Guide has finally included a West Midlands restaurant in one of its monthly listings - in the most recent it has featured Solihull’s Toffs by Rob Palmer (see Blog 231). A well-deserved recognition.

  Meanwhile The Good Food Guide has now gone live on the internet charging almost £30 for access to it and its recommendations. This is quite a lot more than the price of the last printed edition (it is no longer sponsored by Waitrose) and presently there are only about 300 recommended restaurants featured on it with many notable restaurants to be added. However in many ways it is much improved and now has an excellent rating system. So I have paid my fee and have the access to the Guide which I want but to give value for money the editor really needs to get moving with adding many more restaurants.

The West Midlands restaurants listed so far are:-

  Tropea (Harborne Birmingham) Good

  Dishoom (Birmingham) Good

  Tierra (Birmingham) Good

  Oyster Club by Adam Stokes (Birmingham ) Good

  Land (Birmingham) Good

  Cheal’s of Henley (Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire) Very Good

  Tailor’s (Warwick, Warwickshire) Good

  The Royal Oak (Whatcote, Warwickshire) Good

  Russell’s of Broadway (Broadway, Worcestershire) Good

  The Homend Ledbury (Ledbury Herefordshire) Good

  The Cider Barn (Penbridge Herefordshire) Good

  The Kilpeck Inn (Kilpeck Herefordshire) Good

  The Bell at Selsley (Selsley Gloucestershire) Good

  The Woolpack Inn (Stroud Gloucestershire) Good

  Forelles at Fishmore Hall (Ludlow Shropshire) Good

  Old Downton Lodge (Ludlow Shropshire) Good

  Charlton Arms (Ludlow Shropshire) Good

  There does indeed seem a long way to go with this project at present. 

  The scores so far are:-

  Gloucestershire - 2 Good

  Herefordshire- 3 Good

  Shropshire - 3 Good

  Staffordshire - nil

  Warwickshire - 1 Very Good

    

                           2  Good

 West Midlands - 5  Good (all Birmingham)

  Worcestershire - 1 Good.

  The problem currently is that with only 17 restaurants listed so far in The West Midlands the reader is paying for a completely useless list (unless the visitor is planning to dine in Ludlow and even there omissions are obvious). The list will need to be expanded almost exponentially to make it of any real use to the diner who has paid a lot of money to have access to it.