Sauce Supper Club: Laurence and Claire, St Johns House, Lichfield.

I’m a bit of a Masterchef geek. Okay, I’m a huge Masterchef geek. One of my earliest TV memories was the Sunday evening version with the transatlantic drawl of Lloyd Grossman and his elongated vooooeeeeeweeeels. I have a hazy memory of some ageing French chef being a guest judge and talking about how a dish would have been more haute cuisine had they removed the vegetable garnish and just served the duck breast with the sauce. So one of my first TV memories is someone essentially saying that vegetables are bad, to which infant Simon concurred. Years later I enthusiastically tuned-in to watch Tomasina take the inaugral title of the rehash, and subsequently tuned-off when I tried the first Wahaca site she opened. I’ve seen every episode of every season since, the good, the bad and the ‘celebrity’ version. For me, the most interesting development has been the professionals format. This is where the real high and low points happen; the little bits of genius and the chocolate cake with guinea fowl. I’ve booked restaurants purely off the back of that show, I’ve watched a beautiful, bearded Greek almost crash out the first round and then storm through to the semi-finals, and I’ve considered my sexuality watching Michael Roux Jnr before Gregg Wallace opened that huge gob of his and confirmed I will always be heterosexual. I’d quite like Gregg’s job.

The chance to see two of the sucess stories from Masterchef The Professionals is too great to turn down, even if it means leaving the confines of Moseley for a forty minute drive to Lichfield. The winner of this years show, Laurence Henry, is joined by The Rematch champion, Claire Hutchings. Both sous chefs at two star restaurants, the former works at a restaurant in Nottingham which we’re visiting this summer, whilst the latter is based in Spain. We are seated on communal tables in the pristine St Johns House, on thick white chairs and heavy white linen draped tables. Snacks preceed the four courses, a delicate cone of salmon tartare which I am told is delicious (the stuff makes me gag), a gougere that is a tiny bit dense to be up there with the best, a pork croquette with kimchi puree, and most interestingly, a lightly spiced cracker with raw lamb and bulgar wheat that riffs on the Middle Eastern dish, Kibbeh.

Laurence is up first. The first course has mackerel two ways; a delicate fillet soused in a mixture involving beetroot juice which provided a copper sheen, and a panfried fillet which I’m not sure needed to be there. With this was beetroot thrice: as a puree, teeny raw discs, and beautiful cooked white beetroot, with a quenelle of horseradish tempered enough to stop it blowing everything out of the water. His next course wins no beauty contest, though for me was the best of the day: beef short rib, braised down until it retains just enough texture. The meat has a little underlying heat and the gentle funk of dried crustacean; it is a very refined take on some big, pungent flavours, delivered with skill and finesse. The roast onion puree, crispy onions, and shredded scallion it shares the plate with pull it back towards these shores. I could have eaten three more plates of this and left very happy.

Alas, that was not to be. Up steps Claire Hutchings with the dish that won the Rematch over Christmas. Lamb breast slowly cooked until only just holding shape, glazed in a curried sauce which pays homage to her Birmingham roots. It looks like a two star plate of food, with a row of neatly postioned cubes of mango and folds of cucumber, the latter alternating with pipings of mint yogurt and sweet mango puree. We get rice with crispy coconut and a jug of that curried sauce, with which I manage to transform my plate into a biriyani in record time. You can’t take me anywhere. But still, what a dish. Two different chefs, each with very different takes on spice. Both instantly marked out as ones to watch for the future.

Claire is on desserts today, with a set mousse of sheeps yogurt, sorrel granita, compressed apples in some herby liquor (I think), meringue, and dehydrated olives that had taken on a leather-like texture. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it – it took me back to the four ‘dessert’ courses at L’Enclume that featured parsnips and other stuff that should never end a meal. In short I loved it; the complexity and unexpected pellets of sweetness, the balance of it all and how the olive tasted almost candied when combined with the rest of the plate. We finish on wedges of salted chocolate, neck the wine and say our goodbyes to the rest of the table.

I’ve followed Sauce Supper Club for sometime, accidentally so on occasion (we’ve been eating in the same dining room twice in the last year), and I’ve wondered if these events really are for me. They undoubtedly bring a class of chef not usually found in Lichfield, though the travel is part of the fun for us. But these events are really something, delivering a very high quality for the £75 ticket fee. We ate four courses of their own food from chefs presently cooking somebody else’s menu on a daily basis. It was a glimpse into the the next generation of star chefs. If this lunch was anything to go by, the future of our restaurant scene is in very safe hands.

Thanks to A2B for getting us over the Staffordshire border and back

Asia Asia, Birmingham

Of all the many, many, many restaurants I write about, none conflict me more than those originating from Asia. Asia is my favourite continent by a distance. I love how it’s the Western world with the lid off, a place that is growing too fast for itself to handle in every sense. I get hypnotised by the bright colours and vivid smells, the lack of health and safety assesments, and the cheap beer. Every time I fall in love with the people that greed is yet to taint, the young who still dream in technicolour, and who would rather feed you than themselves. Let me choose where I want to go on holiday and it’s Asia (Sri Lanka next if any Sri Lankan PR companies are reading this and want to comp this multi-award winning arsehole a 50p hopper). Ask me where I’ll be living next and it’s either Singapore, Saigon, or Mumbai. But here is the bit I struggle with: for a food blog I know fuck-all about the food. Nowhere near enough. I lived on banana and nutella pancakes for two weeks in Cambodia, for Christ’s sake. So I am warning you in advance the next few paragraphs on an Asian food court in Birmingham might not be great. Now, if you are an actual expert on this matter you may want to stop reading here. It will hurt your eyes and I will give zero fucks on your opinion.

So Asia Asia, a continent so good they named it twice. Also the name of a food court on the peripherals of Brum’s very own China Town. It takes up the first and second floors of a space above another restaurant. Units are small and go from the familiar to stuff I’d not seen before like chicken chow mein and green curry. I jest. Payment is made via a pre-topped-up card which is irritating and presumably only in place to allow management to deduct the commission without that old British virtue of trust. On the night we are there was an arrest made on an old gentlemen. I’ll avoid the big trouble in little china town pun.

Now on to the food, which I was expecting to be universally brilliant, occasionally was, and often fell well short of expectation; though I should make it clear now that we hardly scratched the surface of potential dishes. We started on the top floor at Afandim, with skewers of lamb that taste faintly middle-eastern and another of thinly-sliced potato dusted with spice. Food nearly as intriguing as the less-talked-about Uyghur region of China it hails from – we’ll be back for more. We also really enjoyed the Pad Kaprow from Bangkok Kitchen that brims with fire and almost medicinal herbs, with rice and a fried egg I dont eat because of my awful morals with caged birds. We try the triple roast from Phat Duck which is not phat at all. The pork belly and char sui are good, though the duck is full of bone and sinew, with soggy, unappealing, skin. There are way better triple roasts in the city. Someone in the know really needs to do a definitive roast battle of them all. I’m on the case.

Down a level we visit a Japanese unit to try yakitori. I love yakitori; the hint of smokiness, those slightly charred bits where the marinade catches. This wasn’t very good. My first mouthful is full of cartiledge and sinew from a spongey bird. Two of these skewers are £6.80, one gets left unfinished. We use up the last of the £40 credit I have put on the card on seasame pancakes. Never again. The filling is claggy and bitter, leaving an unpleasant taste that lingers in the mouth for far too long.

And for all of this I’m not willing to write off Asia Asia just yet. I’ll go back and give it another thirty or forty quid of my wages and try something different. I’ll try the congee and the ramen, maybe the teppanyaki, and absolutely return to Afandim for those hand-spun noodles. There is too much potential here to not find brilliance. The key is to know what is good, and that is where us first-timers failed. Asian food; it’s clear that I still know nothing.

6/10

A2B ferried my phat ass about as ever

Toby Carvery, Hall Green

Imagine I told you there was somewhere you could eat a tasting menu of Yorkshire puddings. You’d be all over it, wouldn’t you? You love a Yorkshire pudding, it’s essentially an exploded pancake, and you really fucking love pancakes. You already don’t need a reason to eat a Yorkshire pudding, you’ll put it on plates it has no place on, which is every plate that doesn’t contain roast beef. You love its versatility; how the texture changes the higher it gets, and how the crevice can store a variety of treasures. Now imagine you can have one on every course. Hello? It’s Toby you’re looking for.

Sadly that is where the fun ends. Our sharing starter is a plate-sized Yorkshire pudding that serves as a plate for the plate it is served upon. Inside is nachos in notion, which translates as a bag of corn shrapnel glued together with cheese, a spoonful of lumpy tomato paste and one chilli cut into six chunks of shit-inducing misery. There was none of the listed guacamole or pulled pork, which I am now seeing as a good thing for me and the pig whose life would have been wasted. The Yorkshire pudding tasted as if it had been made of recyclable material, with the forced upturned lip of a reality TV star and as little point for its existence. More grim than Grimsby, this was an idea that should never have seen the light of day.

This managed to lower the expection of the carvery to Lost City of Atlantis levels. After standing in line for five minutes I eventually opt for another Yorkshire pudding to join a slice of all four meats on a slightly grubby plastic plate. I pile it high with veg and drown in Toby’s special gravy after removing the skin from the large communal pot. There are good bits in the gammon and turkey, the roast potatoes which would shame many a gastropub, a kind of root veg dauphinoise gratin, and that gravy, which goes straight inside the Yorkshire pudding that I’ve filled with crispy bits of the roasties (this should be on the menu). The Yorkshire pudding is okay, as is the pork and the stuffing that tastes suspiciously of Paxo. The rest is not good to damright awful. Carrots are woefully overcooked, the green beans now grey beans, chewy, overcooked beef, mash potato that could hold wallpaper up, and a shard of pork crackling that would broken every teeth in my mouth had I perserveered. And you can go back for seconds on the veg if you are that greedy or stupid.

I didn’t finish the roast and could easily have called it a day, though I can’t because they have A DESSERT WITH A FUCKING YORKSHIRE PUDDING IN IT. Yes, you read that correctly; they have A DESSERT WITH A FUCKING YORKSHIRE PUDDING IN IT. How could I not order A DESSERT WITH A FUCKING YORKSHIRE PUDDING IN IT? It’s shit. I shouldn’t have bothered. All sweetness and cream and milky things, it’s essentially a pimped-out milkshake for pimps who fucking love Yorkshire puddings. It’s not good and I suggest that you never contemplate trying it. I do these things because I love you.

Service is warm and kind, though they manage to mess up the bill by a few quid that I leave as a tip once they rectify the situation. Look, I’m going to be real and leave my conceited and snobby opinion alone for a minute. It was clear that the majority of the room were either not particularly well-to-do or ageing, and the carvery here is £7 on week nights, which is fair and affordable. There are far worse places to spend seven quid on dinner than here. It is honest, not cynical, and generous in size. Most of it is edible, some of it is even nice. I simply can’t hate it, even if I didn’t enjoy it. Would I come back out of choice? No. But I’d have no issue eating here if someone was insistent we came. It’s harmless enough for most, and pure heaven for fans of a Yorkshire puddings.

5/10

A2B got us from A to B

Lunch at Arch 13. Jewellery Quarter

It wasn’t so long ago that I waxed lyrical about Arch 13; a place that I have huge amounts of love for. And now I’m back, albeit this time in a much shorter format, to wax lyrical once more, about a lunch offering that I’ve tried and believe justifies a couple of hundred words and a few minutes of your time. Let’s talk toasties. Cheese toasties in particular. A lunch that optimises the produce of the fridge, puts them between bread slices and applies heat. A toastie doesnt require skill to make, but is a sum of its parts. Use cheap cheese and it will leak the fat of a cow spent clamped down in a shed; put in baked beans packed with preservatives and watch that filling’s heat rise to the point that it is preceded by a pyroclastic flow. Fortunately the fridge here has the best of cured meat and cheese. I know this because it is where I buy my cheese from for home.

Claire and I go on a miserable afternoon and decide the only way to proceed is to share all four options. I take the optional wine pairing with all of them because Dry January is a marketing ploy by ISIS to gradually move us all to a Sharia State, or at least that is what the drunk man in a Tommy Robinson t-shirt at the bus stop told me. They have a vegan one made with vegan sheese (this is a real word) and chargrilled vegetables that works because vegan sheese (I know) tastes of nothing and the chargrilled vegetables taste great. The rest are sheese (sorry, I cant stop) free. We add chorizo to the goats cheese and chilli jam one and congratulate ourselves on our excellent taste, and marvel at a mutton, Lincolnshire Poacher, and farmhouse chutney one that is all intense oozy notes. My favourite is the bresaola style beef with blue cheese and caramelised onions. It works, but then you knew that as soon as you read the ingredients.

The matching wines are brilliant because Abigail really knows her shit. And also a little bit about wine. There are Turkish reds, a smart semillion from Chile, a beefy red from Spain for the beef, and rather brilliantly a white from Romania that more than assisted the washing down of the sheese (Sheesus Christ). It’s a fiver for the toasties and an extra £3 for the matching wine, making it an absolute steal for a feed and watering. It’s yet another reason to love this wonderful wine bar. I’ll see you there.

A2B insist all their drivers do Dry January so you don’t have to.

The Backyard Cafe, Kingswinford

Is forty minutes too long a time to travel for brunch? I don’t think so. I’ll often hop on a train for a good lunch, or drive three and a half hours to remote Wales for a dinner, so why not an earlier meal? We have inbuilt in our psyche a notion that the first meal of the day is less lavish than the latter ones; that it is more convenience than occasion. It is nonsense: breakfast is the basecamp of the day, the very foundations to build upon. Get it right and the rest simply falls into place. Get it wrong – or even worse miss it – and you spend the rest of the day playing catch-up. ‘We march on our stomachs’ said Napeleon, and he was named after three blocks of layered ice cream, so he must know a thing or two about food.

So last Saturday we left Moseley and took the drive to Kingswinford, all for a morning feed. It wasn’t a blind expedition; I know Richard Alexander can cook given his previous CV of street food and the client dining floor of my girlfriend’s work, but this is my first visit to a small town inbetween Stourbridge and Dudley. The new place is set back from the road, on a row of shops adjacent to Morrisons. Inside it is modern and fresh, with white-washed walls and foliage creeping out between the bars in the ceiling. On the counter where you pay is an inviting selection of lacquered cakes and patisseries. We’ll get to those in no time.

The resulting meal is one I’d travel for on a frequent basis. One that is not only pitched ideally for it’s location, but has enough in the cooking to make it stand-out amongst any of its competition across the West Midlands. A welsh rarebit sandwiches clumps of ham hock between the cheese mixture and a thick slice of toasted bread, with a fried egg that oozes its bright orange yolk at the nudge of a fork. This is my kind of breakfast; a dish that is built upon the principles of flavour and nothing else. Opposite me is a sandwich packed to the edge with soft roast pork, stuffing, and apple sauce, served with a shard of crackling, roast potatoes, crispy onions, and a pot of gravy for the leftover bread. It is happiness on a plate, though at £7.50 there can’t be much in the way of profit. It is mind-bendingly good; honest cooking that is full of technique which is not going to be fully appreciated (I’ve had worse crackling in two star restaurants). Sure, it is never going to win awards, but it will win hearts, mine included. This is food for everyone, cooked by someone who just happens to do it better than most.

We were supposed to eat a selection of cakes to drag this post out, but then the sticky bun happened. It arrived on the table, the crust full of dark lamination, with a side pot of something sweet and buttery that had hazlenuts bobbing on the surface for good measure. We pour over the glaze and eat before deciding that sharing is never going to happen in this circumstance. We order another. Eat another. Debate ordering a third and decide that would be excessive even for us. The bun could be served anywhere in Birmingham; at any of our brilliant coffee houses, in any of our fine restaurants. It is technically perfect; sweet and delicate, the layers peeling away with ease. It is £2.75. Honestly, the people of the Black Country have no idea how lucky they are.

Coffee is good if not spectacular, and service is well meant and cheery by a young team. The bill comes in at less than £25, which is embarassingly cheap for the skill that has gone into the cooking. On the way back we discuss what could be bettered, whereupon we both agree nothing. The Backyard Cafe is the end point for a chef and his partner who want to cook modest food in a location a stones throw from where they live. It just happens to be exceptionally well done. Right now this for me is the best of its kind in the region. It may or may not be close to you geographically but that should not stop you from hunting it down. This is food worth travelling for.

9/10

Before anyone gets on my back, they don’t have a website.

Ngopi, Birmingham

Remember Modu? You are lucky if you do. The slow burn restaurant on the edge of town slowly gathered a reputation for uncompromising authentic Korean food from an ageing lady who spoke little English and her daughter. Everything was made in house; fermentation was used to full effect, sweet potato transformed into transparent noodles, chicken wings painstakingly deboned and rolled. It was unlike anything else in the city. Word slowly got around and they got busy. Opening hours extended and just as the success they deserved started to come, Mother Modu fell ill. The heartbeat of the restaurant was unable to cook and they never reopened. Modu is one of the saddest stories of recent years for the hospitality in this city. They deserved far more.

In a way Ngopi reminded me of Modu. Of how the Saturday lunch was mostly full of those familiar with the cuisine, and how the majority of westerners would pop in to look at the menu and then leave. The food is Indonesian, a cuisine I know little about other than rendang and nasi lemak, neither of which feature on the menu. Prices are kind; twelve dishes with nothing over a fiver.

Lets get the big one out of the way first. The reason I’ll be coming back is for the Batagor, a dish that could easily become a cult classic. Fried prawn wontons mingle with fried tofu and meatballs under a blanket of peanut sauce. Every forkful is a lottery; one where it could be bland tofu, dense beef, or sweet prawn meat, all in a satay-style sauce that grows in prowess. On the side is treacle-like ketcap manis and an umami fueled sambal, both of which get thrown in to the mix. The result is a plate of food unlike any other I have tried before. It is worth a visit for this alone.

I probably won’t order the Indomie again, but I think my girlfriend may. The combination of noodles, grated cheese, poached egg, crispy onions, and corned beef is a bit student dinner for my liking, and melted cheese on noodles is something I’ll never fully get on board with. Instead I’ll take more of the Martabak, which is essentially a Findus crispy pancake, and really gets going with a lick of the chilli sauce. Likewise I’ll gladly have more of the Bakwan, which is kind of rosti/bhajii hybrid of vegetables. It’s greaseless and bright in both colour and flavour. We order prawn and chicken dumpling that get eaten before I take a picture. They are good as far as dim sum go.

The bill for all of this is £30, including two very nice cups of Indonesian coffee. Look, I have never been to Indonesia and I know very little about the cuisine. I can’t tell you that it is the greatest of it’s kind because I don’t know that. But what I can tell you is that for the first time since Modu I felt fully immersed in a style of food that was both new to me and extremely tasty. It might not all be as great as the Batagor, though at fifteen quid a head anyone with an interest in food should be paying it a visit to see for themselves.

8/10

A2B got me here, just like they always do

Ngopi don’t have a website per se, though you can find them on Dale End

Tiger Bites Pig, Birmingham

Without wishing to be too hyperbolic, I had decided that Tiger Bites Pig was a new favourite of mine from the very first mouthful. It was a bao with fragrant poached chicken, a thick and pungent chilli oil, spring onions, ginger, and a shard of chicken skin roasted with sesame seeds. It was pleasingly salty with a little heat and acidity; the work of a kitchen that understands how to pack flavour into three mouthfuls whilst still retaining the dominant flavour of the chicken. The bao was textbook in flavour; light and fluffy, with any inherent doughiness left long ago during the proving and subsequent steaming. It was absolute delight. I swivel around from the stool in the window and eye up the tiny room for which the open kitchen takes up almost half. They have more chicken skins on the prep counter, sitting there like pork scratchings in a pub. It makes me long for more of them to smear inch-thick with the chilli sauce.

The menu is concise and inviting from which we order three more baos and a rice bowl. Pork belly bao has deep fatty notes, loads of umami and the pleasing crunch of peanuts, which makes the one with duck breast and XO sauce look way too polite in comparasion. A bao with braised short rib and cured egg yolk draws smiles all around. It is reminiscent of scooping up the bottom of a casserole with shit white bread. The tangles of meat dissipate in the mouth, whilst the bottom half of the bun becomes saturated with cooking juices lifted with a little vinegar. The addition of the jammy yolk only adds to the fun.

Despite being less than a month old it appears that some have questioned the value of baos at the price of between £4.50-£5.50 each. I can’t get on board with that, though those looking for more bao for their buck should ditch the buns and have a rice bowl. At seven quid it is a colossus. We have more of the pork belly, greens, hot and cold pickles, aubergine, and another of those absolute filth egg yolks, all on more rice than is sensible for two people, never mind one. This is the not the order for the carb-considerate. We take the leftovers home and still don’t finish it.

So I liked Tiger Bites Pig. I liked it a lot. It takes skill to create bao this good, skill that has thus far eluded anyone in this city, including the substitute teacher in Stirchley. Our bill hits thirty quid for the above with two soft drinks, though you can add a bit on to this is you indulge in the Japanese spirits or beer. Either way it is a bargain that I will indulge in as often as possible. Tiger Bites Pig is another quality addition to an already bulging independent scene, which in time could prove to be the best one so far.

9/10

Transport provided by Bao-minghams best, A2B

Greggs, The Battle of The Sausage Rolls.

The farce that has recently occurred over the Greggs vegan sausage roll is truly an accurate representation of where this country presently is. I half expected there to be a singular man outside the Kings Heath branch; bald-headed, with his Costa Del Sol burnt bonce protected by a cap. He would be assessing the customers joining the back of the queue, staring each down with his bulging, bloodshot eyes and occasionally screaming a muffled ‘SAUSAGE ROLL MEANS SAUSAGE ROLL’ through the Stone Island scarf that blocks out the bottom half of his face. He wasn’t there of course, though I admire the tenacity of anyone who can get so passionate over something so trivial. What a set of absolute lads.

My first and possibly only trip to this branch of Greggs is to try a sausage roll made of sausage, and another sausage roll containing no sausage. To see what the hysteria and twitter meltdown is about, and why the gammon of this country are getting so protective about a pork product. As a bit of background, this would be only my second and third Greggs rolls, the first being in late November of last year when a colleague dumped one on my desk. I don’t have much to go on.

The appearance difference is notable in that one is greasy, the other is not. The meat version secretes a fattiness that you wouldn’t want near a nice item of clothing, whilst the vegan version looked like the sausage roll that you forgot to egg-wash, which it is. They taste pretty much identical: of pig, which is both alarming and surprising. The Quorn version perhaps a fraction higher in black pepper, and with a more sturdy texture. I prefer the vegan version. Repeat. I prefer the vegan version.

Such is this feat of engineering from Greggs HQ, I am confident that you could serve the vegan version at a buffet and pass them off as the meat equivalent. But this is the bit I don’t get: Veganism is a movement that has animal welfare at its very core – I don’t understand why a vegan would want to eat something that tastes of cooked pork. I am a conscious meat eater; we eat less meat at home to ensure the animal we do has had the best life possibly, and I’ll eat every cut and organ out of respect. From this perspective the vegan roll appeals to me. I can’t imagine the pork in the meat version is free range for the price they charge, so the vegan is a success for replicating the taste without the slaughter. I’m talking myself into a vegan lifestyle here. I should stop this immediately.

Birmingham’s Top Eight Dishes For Under A Fiver

Last January I gave you Birmingham’s top ten dishes for under a tenner; a well-researched ensemble of culinary treats that wouldn’t break the bank. It is still a very good list one year on, showing that when it comes to useless lists that you’ll almost certainly never use, it is I who truly separates the wheat from the chav. But a lot has changed in twelve months. A new threat has emerged, with a long winter ahead of this country looming in the vague shape of Game of Thrones season 8. Brexit, also. I want to give you even more value. So back once again like the renegade master, here is eight dishes in Birmingham for under a fiver with not a Greggs vegan sausage roll in sight. And if eight seems a funny number, you’re right. I had more than five but less than ten with zero filler: these really are the best dishes in town if you’re looking to save the pennies.

Tamworth Pork Sausage Roll, £3.75. Kilder.

This is how you do a sausage roll. Pork from an animal that has lived off the land, spiced with black pepper, and a good fat to meat ratio. The pastry is buttery and flaky. You get a choice of sauces whereupon you should consider brown and then choose brown. And don’t believe them for sticking this under the ‘snack’ banner; this is a lunch for one by itself. Website

White Cut Chicken Bao, £4.50. Tiger Bites Pig.

It was about this time last year that Birmingham went into meltdown over a new opening that specialised in bao. They were rubbish; these most certainly are not. Fluffy pillows of joy filled with smart flavours, my pick of the two under a fiver is this one with poached chicken and crispy skin. Keep an eye out for the forthcoming full review; its a cracker. Website.

Aloo Tikki Chaat, £4.50. Zindiya

This and the chicken tikka have been my go-to order for almost two years, and this dish in particular is probably my favourite vegetarian plate of food in the entire city. Essentially a chickpea curry with a spiced potato patty in the centre, it has bags of attitude. I eat it at least once a week. Website

Pork and Fennel Scotch Egg, £4.50. Pint Shop

But the scotch egg at Pint Shop is an onion bhajii, I hear you say? Correct, young whippersnapper, but there is also one downstairs at the bar that you might like even more. Given the choice I would plump for the more conventional of the two which has more flavour of pork. But what does this multi-award winning nobody know? Quite a lot, actually. Website.

Slice of Pizza, £3.00. Baked in Brick.

I would love to have included an entire pizza in this list but pizza doesn’t grow on five pound trees in this country. Instead I would like to draw your attention to probably Birmingham’s best pizza, which also happens to be the only one I know of which does pizza by the slice. Whatever is on will do; a large wedge of the good stuff and some chilli oil to dredge the crusts through. Website.

Batagor, £5.00. Ngopi.

Thank Farah for this. She took my girlfriend who got all excited and insisted we go. It’s one of the most intriguing dishes in Birmingham that could go on to become a cult classic. Fried chicken and prawn wontons join fried tofu in a peanut sauce marriage of harmony. I honestly never knew Indonesian food could be so interesting. Another full review incoming.

Smoked Beetroot, goats cheese, horseradish and watercress salad, £5.00. Purecraft Bar.

It’s January, you want to be healthy and frugal, right? Purecraft have got your back. Like everything else they do, this is loaded with flavour. The ideal light dinner. Website.

Bao, £4. Little Blackwood.

They are going to murder me for this. The baos are a dessert option as part of a set menu, but get them individually and they are billed at £4 each – I know this because I have paid for them. You’ll probably only get away with this doing what we do, which is by drinking wine on the stools and begging for them. The only dessert on the list, these deep fried bao are similar to donuts when cooked, sliced open and filled with whatever flavours are on: it could be rosehip, salted caramel, champagne, banoffee, or numerous others. The ideal way to finish a meal, and indeed this list. Website.

Want to do this as a food crawl? I’ll join you. Let’s take an A2B. Seriously, let’s do this.

Ocho, Jewellery Quarter

It’s 2019, which is remarkable for being the highest number so far in my existence. It’s the ‘new year, new me’ time of prosperity, when we replace a deflated bank balance with false hopes and self-deceit, only to be broken when Julie from accounts offers out the dregs of her Quality Street. I don’t ‘do’ resolutions in the same way I don’t ‘do’ Broad Street’s Revolution, and for more reason than just idle illiteration. Both involve lying to myself that it will be worth it and involve me wasting money I don’t care for. Both make me feel a little bit dirty.

For this blog I can’t see much in the way of change the forthcoming year. It will continue as it has been for the last seven months: free from the mass blog-by-number press dinners, PR invites to coffee shops and salad bars. I will restrain from introducing myself to business owners as ‘the prick who writes Two Bollocks and a Meat’ in the hope of blagging a free burger, and I absolutely promise that this blog will remain ferociously against the culture of emailing begging letters. It’s not and has never been a collaboration. It’s a scam to get free dinner.

We ended the final days of last year with a trip to Ocho, a kind of pop-up that looks like sticking around. The inside is quaint and comforting, with tasteful art and low beams. The menu is tapas in notion, if not in authenticity, from a chef whose CV includes a stint at Purnell’s. In many ways it reminds me of Rico Libre when they first started, when the ties to Spain were more obvious, before the chef was let loose on a more global cuisine. Dishes are between £3.50 and £8. Everything we eat feels like value, and we eat a lot.

The chef clearly has talent and, moreover, tastebuds. Every plate is boldly seasoned with not a grain of salt or twist of pepper required. Lean and spicy merguez sausages are made onsite, simply grilled and garnished with a dice of mango and pink peppercorns that add bite, further heat, and a little sweetness. A square of pork belly is a late replacement for the cut of cheek that hasn’t arrived on the day’s delivery. The fat is rendered down, the skin delicately crisp: it takes skill to cook this part of the animal so well. The sticky beer reduction may not the be a Spaniards traditional choice of sauce but it adds a nice level of umami that we enthusiastically mop up with foccacia made here that morning. Another bowl of pork meatballs is heavy on the black pepper in a good way. The arrabbiata sauce less so; it is thin and lacking both depth and heat.

In a plot twist that neither of us saw coming the meatless dishes were the best things we ate, even forgiving that arrabbiata sauce making another appearance on the-not-quite-there-yet patatas bravas. Top billing goes to a vegetable stew that is hearty and deep in flavour which cleans the soul from the inside-out, and roast wedges of butternut squash with quinoa (it’s pronounced kin-noah) and goats cheese, that straddles the line of sweet and savoury brilliantly. Even the faux pasta dish of courgette ribbons with a refined take on red pesto works because they understand that the veg still needs to be toothsome. Desserts are a baked cheesecake that I find too sweet and a chocolate mousse with raspberry that leaves me swiping out the last with my finger. Finish off with the mousse; it’s a winner.

With the uncertainty of the next six months I don’t blame anyone for testing the market with a pop-up, but I hope that Ocho makes this a permanent fixture. With a few minor tweaks (better wines by the glass for a starter), this could be a lovely addition to an already thriving Jewellery Quarter. You could start 2019 far worse than by paying Ocho a visit to show them we want them to stay.

8/10

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