The Coach, Marlow

I started the week convinced I had COVID, which is regrettable in every way apart from the symptom of lack of taste and smell, which I was intrigued to experience so that I can know what it’s like to be other food bloggers. It turns out I don’t, which is a result given that it was my birthday weekend and tracking would have been a nightmare. Last week we did the Rishi thing, then the pre-birthday drinks in the cocktail bar, then the other cocktail bar, then the hotel cocktail bar because everywhere else is closed. Then the birthday trip away, then back for the birthday dinner with my mate, before the inevitable trip to a couple of pubs. Sunday went back to the pub, and the cocktail bar, and then the different pub. Then Monday night it’s like, okay, this doesn’t feel right at all. If anything it’s made me realise that I should slow down at the moment. Less groups of people over less locations and time from now on for me.

The trip away started with lunch at The Coach. Marlow is a pretty place with pretty ex-London faces spending pretty sums of money on pretty much anything. There are houses that sit on the banks of the Thames with boats just for the hell of it, and butchers which promote their wines of the week for the paltry amount of £40 a bottle. It is a mix of old Buckinghamshire money and new London money with the common denominator of money. Tom Kerridge has a two star pub here which I’ve been to before, and a one star pub which I’m about to write about. To call either the Hand & Flowers or The Coach a pub is a statement I’m not going to back-up with substance here.

It’s a nice spot. Cosy and well appointed, the palate of Victorian green and white so de rigueur, to join the small plates menu that is a very easy way of scaling up a bill quickly. Knowing that we have dinner in a few hours time we keep the order small, and it proves to be a wise choice.

I can’t pretend to love everything we eat. A venison chilli is a wholesome bit of cooking, but is a bit gritty and over seasoned, whilst the caramelised onion and Ogleshield cheese scotch egg is technically sound but the Parmesan veloute it sits in is underwhelming stuff. If it sounds like I’m giving it a hard time, I’m not, but this is a pub with one Michelin star that is presently ranked no.5 on the Top 50 Gastropub list.

When it’s good, it is so very good. The strongest dish of the day is chicken from the rotisserie. Brined and cooked until it’s borderline done, it comes swathed in opaque sheets of lardo and crisps of Jerusalem artichokes. Hidden underneath the lardo is a scattering of seeds and finely chopped herbs, whilst at the base of the dish are a dice of the Jerusalem artichoke bound in, I think, a purée of the same veg. It’s cohesive and rich, the poultry an ideal companion to the earthy, buttery tones of the veg. A chicken Kiev relies on the same meat and one veg (not me, stupid) tactic, using courgette this time as the foil. A courgette purée spun with basil is the highlight of a very nice plate of food.

A word on the chips. I’ve said for years that I consider the chips at Hand and Flowers to be the best chips I’ve ever eaten. These are better; chunkier, with a different cut that benefits the triple-cooked process and gives more potato. You might sniff when I tell you they are £7.50 for a portion including bearnaise sauce, but we’re paying and you’re not. And I’d pay it a lot more frequently if I was local.

Dishes are mostly over a tenner and all under £20, and whilst we escape with a bill under a ton, slightly bigger appetites should allow a bit more including wine. Overall I enjoyed it; the standard is similar to that of Kerridge’s other pub, and the menu is appealing. The best dishes are very good indeed. And those chips. You have to try those chips.

The Crown at Burchetts Green, Berkshire

I’d like to think that a place like The Crown could only exist under its own circumstance. How the unconventional approach of having chef patron Simon Bonwick completely alone in the kitchen allows him to play out the Escoffier tribute without another chef whispering otherwise in his ear. How the front of house, made up of a third of his nine children, are able to talk through the tiny wine list, haggle on the extra bottles on the blackboard, and explain the eccentricities on the menu like a ‘rather nice sauce’, or that day’s ‘nice’ dish. Right down to one of the team jokingly telling us that their Dad would not be happy to see a prawn topple from a main course, it’s an experience which defies convention in its usual sense.

The overall effect is a timeless restaurant that focuses on the roots of fine dining as opposed to the ever changing colours of the leaves on its many branches. The endless towers of cookbooks which litter the bar area have each served a purpose to take the restaurant to the heights of a Michelin star, via a special recommendation from the same guide the previous year. Not bad for a space of just six tables and one chef.

A little canapé arrives alongside the champagne we start with; a delicate thimble of pastry holding a purée of chickpea, lemon, and smoked almond, then a cup of chilled squash soup with clusters of seeds and a hint of spice. Bread is a hot pillowy affair, a little dense, served with slivers of butter pinned together with spikes of lavender and rosemary. A trick we’ll be stealing for dinner parties in our home.

For starters we take a huge cylinder of dressed white crab meat, thatched with batons of apple and a solitary tomato petal. There is a dressing of something sweet and acidic, and a few spiced cashews for good measure. The result is up there with the very best crab dishes I have ever eaten, a tribute to the beauty of the more subtle white flesh. A terrine of pork belly studded with lentils is lovely yet not on the same level. Acidity to cut through the fatty pig is everywhere; a blob of something mustardy, a teeny quenelle of chutney, or the bite of the pickles. They all work.

A beef main is ‘cooked on a string’ and, I’ll be honest, I’m still none the wiser as to what that involves. My guess from the texture of the fillet, is that it is both poached and steamed, resulting in an excellent piece of meat that is very rare but not the slightest bit bloody. With this is spud squared; a fondant and the most buttery of mash with a little confit garlic, some spinach, and mushrooms cooked in plenty of butter. But what makes it is the sauce, reduced so heavily you could varnish a fence with it, and so glossy it could serve as a mirror. Full of bovine notes and with something piquant lurking in the background, it reminds me of the sauce I had with beef at The Ritz, only better.

If I’m launching into hyperbole it’s because we were both having the best time. There is something magical about being somewhere so at ease with itself. The other main of halibut owes much of its majesty to the Breton prawns it shares the plate with, being some of the freshest and tastiest I can recall eating. Like the beef it has the mash and the spinach, though this has a verdant pesto and a little tomato concasse to bolster the summer flavours it speaks of on the menu. A really outstanding dish.

Saint Marcellin cheese gives me happy memories of Mere Richard in Lyon, so when it’s on the menu as cheesecake, I’m ordering it. In truth it’s the one dish I’m not mad on. The cheese flavour comes through nicely, but it’s a little dense and the base is a little chalky. Lovely raspberries though. But frankly who cares when they have steamed syrup sponge as good as this. A light, pillowly bosom, sweet and unforgiving to the hips. A proper dessert. I get a macaron with a candle in because it’s my birthday. It’s a good macaron and a great birthday.

Starters and desserts sit mostly in the teens, whilst the mains above are £40 and £44 respectively. The total bill of over two hundred for two including wine isn’t cheap, but it is worth it. We simple loved The Crown. It defies trends and fashions to serve the food which they are comfortable with, in an environment which they have curated to suite them. With the exception of a few other favourites of ours, it stands out for having a true identity. I can see many other visits happening in the future.

Fazenda, August 2020

To write about Fazenda post apocalypse feels like writing about a new restaurant, more so than anywhere that I would consider visiting for pleasure. I’m not going to overlook the struggles that all restaurants have faced in the last eight weeks to reopen, but I’m specifically referring to the model that this business previously ran on. This is a place that pre-COVID involved having the whole cuts of animal carved at the table, whilst the gaps in between were filled with trips to a vast salad bar; the latter simply not possible at present, whilst the former has its own issues. When the government closed restaurants part of me feared that we’d never see Fazenda again.

They are back and it’s clear that they’ve considered the right way of going about things before they did. They’ve dropped a lot of covers – 50 or so – meaning that tables are well spaced and mostly behind screens, and whilst the meat is still carved, it is done from a safe distance with individual prongs to collect it as flops from the skewer. The biggest change is with sides and the wine, now accessed via a link and ordered from phone to table by a dedicated server.

I think I preferred the new way. I think. Certainly not the face masks and the distance, but the side plates that are now cooked to order and have improved. After the opening board of cured meats, cheeses, and other bits, we get mushrooms pan fried in lots of garlic and a little cream that benefit from fresh preparation, as do fries straight out of the fryer dusted in parmesan and a little slush of truffle oil. We both love the dinky balls of mozzarella and tomato dressed in the spiky green of chimichurri, and the red peppers roasted until the skin blackens and makes the flesh sweet throughout. Perhaps the Brazilian black bean stew isn’t quite as deep a flavour as I remember, but that’s okay because now we have a purée of sweet potato so soft it could be baby food. That purée is given bags of character with feta and mint, crunch from sweet potato crisps, and would be ordered again later in the night.

I’m well aware that very few customers book Fazenda off the back of the side dishes (RIP salad bar 2018-2020). Its draw for most is the meat, and so it should be. Over the two or so hours we eat long slivers of rare beef sirloin and rump that glisten a ruby haze when cut, and generous chunks of fillet cooked almost blue. Lamb cutlets are smokey, tender bites whilst Brazil’s favourite cut of beef, picanha (rump cap is as close as you’ll get here) is cooked with absolute precision. Indeed all the meat is nailed-on for accuracy tonight. I’ll be nitpicking if I told you that the sausage was way too salty, which it was, but fine for pointing out that the gammon was correctly high in salt. Pork collar with honey was all kinds of excellent.

Front of house was flawless from start to finish, and I’ll fight anyone who tells me that there is a better place to drink the wines of South America in Brum than here. The price of £34.50 per person in the evening can quickly spiral when desserts and booze are factored in, but this is money well spent. We leave the restaurant and head to the hotel over the road for an extended night cap. In a world where every movement is restricted I’m pleased we are able to still have these experiences. Fazenda, it’s great to have you back.

Apologies to the A2B driver I had drive us around at 1am looking for a pool table

Bop Kitchen @ The Juke, Kings Heath.

I was told about Bop Kitchen’s pop-up first by one of the city’s best chefs, who knew one half of the team, and then by my girlfriend who knew nothing other than she wanted a kebab. Both are perfectly valid reasons. So back to Kings Heath we go; first to the wonderful Grace & James for some cold rosé in the bright heat, then across the road to the equally wonderful Juke for a G&T and a kebab. That classic flavour combination.

It’s thriving. It would appear that the duo on the grills have brought most of South Birmingham with them. The Juke has never been the biggest of spaces and today they are open purely outside, with tables stretching out across York Road.

I’ll save you my pitiful pictures but these are the best kebabs I’ve eaten in Birmingham. Soft, pillowy flatbreads enclosing flavours that are reminiscent of everyone’s favourite pissed food yet skilled enough to have come from someone who knows their way around a chopping board. They remind me of a more polite Black Axe Mangal. The mutton kofta is pleasingly dense and full of ovine flavour, with hummus that’s retained a little texture and the occasional bite of pistachio. But it’s the chicken that you need to order. The pomegranate glazed bird and the hot sauce and apricot dukka, with the filthy addition of shards of chicken skin which crack between teeth. I’m in love with it and refuse to share.

They sell out by the time we finish up, which is excellent for a set-up only trading for the second time. I hope The Juke get them back and soon. It’s perfect beer food. I’m too old and grey and flabby to live somewhere that cool anymore, but it’s great to dip in and out of York Road. I really like The Juke. I really like Bop Kitchen. They make a great couple.

A2B took my drunk ass home for free.

Eat Out to Help Out, Week 1

It turns out that Rishi Sunak, the former hedge fund manager who personally profited from the collapse of RBS to the tune of many millions, is an actual angel. A tiny, 5’7″ angel, sent from the heavens to sit atop of my Christmas tree. First the furlough scheme which has allowed me to complete Netflix over the last four months, and now the salaciously named Eat Out to Help Out incentive. I went out several times this week to get Rishi’d, fully embracing the 50% off food (and soft drinks) to the maximum tune of a tenner. And here, my gift to you, a super quick post about what I ate. I won’t give prices because you’re all adults and frankly I can’t be arsed to look on the internet. In your face, RBS.

Arch 13.

What’s that Rishi? No discount on vino? Damn you and your insistence on taking all that sweet sweet alcohol tax. We had a cheese board, couple of meats, and some mighty fine hummus. It was all in stellar condition, hand picked from the best possible suppliers. I’ve missed Arch 13 a lot. It’s a bloody great bar.

Zen Metro.

People are shits. Absolutely horrid shits. Zen got stung the weekend before with 25% of bookings not showing. Horrid shits. The power of the internet meant that one tweet later Zen had twenty or so jaded readers of a food blog in for dinner. Claire had a very serviceable salmon dish, whilst I went for the Zen Inferno, a mild curry in no way steeped in Birdseye chillis. I finished it with sweat pouring off my brow, holding in the internal burning by not coughing. My arse still hasn’t recovered. Service by Jaimon was as sharp and personable as ever.

Purecraft Kitchen.

Behold the greatest bar snack in the world! Smoked potato, crushed and then crisped up in fat, doused in beer cheese sauce. Whatever beer cheese is I want it my belly. All the beer cheese time. Add the best scotch egg in Brum, a killer sausage roll, burgers of beef and of chicken (have the latter), and you have an extremely enjoyable lunch. Praise be to Rishi, my little gnome friend.

Little Blackwood.

Is there a better way to spend a Wednesday evening than at Little Blackwood? How about bao and ramen at Little Blackwood. Twenty quid (well a tenner because of Rishibabes) gets two of the former and one of the latter. We eat them all; the salmon bao and the duck bao wolfed down in record time. The spicy laksa with just-cooked prawns bobbing on the surface and the ramen with its chewy noodles and a broth with a dashi base and the texture of long simmered bones. Do it.

Baked in Brick.

Not technically on the scheme yet, but we went on Thursday when pizza is two-for-one all day, thus effectively adding one more day to destroyer of banks Rishi Sunak’s scheme. Lee has been working on his dough all lockdown and it shows. This was the best pizza I’ve eaten at Baked in Brick. I’m reliably told that you should keep your eyes peeled for a special pop-up in the next week or two. See, you come here for dreadful writing and I give you an exclusive. Ain’t that grand.

I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure I heard Rishi say everyone should use A2B

DDC at Coventry Cathedral

There is a very serious conversation to be had about the future of hospitality. I know you haven’t come here for serious conversations – I haven’t either – but it needs to be said, so you’ll be quiet and listen whilst I talk. The landscape has evolved, though nobody seems sure to what extent, given that the government changes its mind more frequently than Boris changes partners. You may have noticed that your favourite restaurant or bar has yet to open, and if they have it resembles nothing like it used to. One way routes like it’s the canteen at IKEA lead to santitiser stations and tables with paper menus and staff in ice hockey masks. Sheets of Perspex divide tables and eating out divides opinion. Is it safe? We used to cough to hide a fart; now we fart to hide a cough. It’s been that kind of year.

What we do know is that rents still need to be paid. The ‘Rishi for 2024 PM’ juggernaut has covered employee wages to a certain extent yet has done nothing to stop the landlords raking it in when the soil is arid. Businesses are left with little choice but to operate with reduced captivity and increased scrutiny, or close. Except there is another option. One that involves closing the bricks and mortar and switching to a street food model that puts the customer in an open air setting which has significantly lower transmission risk and allows a greater flexibility of getting out to the people as opposed to the people getting to them. For years those in the know have said that street food is the future: right now it feels vital to the industry.

Digbeth Dining Club know this. They also know that space is a huge factor in successful distancing, hence why the original site is presently sidelined whilst they work on bringing food to Warwick, Longbridge and Coventry, perhaps the most beautiful of them all. I’ve never been to the cathedral before, its morbid ruins a reminder of the devastation of WWII with an altar still in place and the windowless arches in its stone skeleton. It’s beautiful. The shadows cast under this bright Sunday afternoon stretching out across the tables which sit where pews once were. Hitler was an awful man who did awful things, but it appears he was great at providing excellent al fresco locations in the sunshine.

And what an afternoon. A stellar line-up for an interstellar location. We can’t choose between the traders so aim for one each, and fail admirably after just three dishes. First fried chicken and chips from Yardbird whose operation has got better and better over the last twelve months. Chicken strips that have likely been given the flour-egg-flour treatment for a crunchy salty hit of batter, with a buffalo sauce that’s the right blend of vinegar and chilli, and chips dusted in Cajun spice. It’s a bloody good start.

Then over to Dicks Smokehouse where I annoyingly go off-piste and ask for a side of nachos topped with both the beef and pork (I told you it was annoying). Soft, slightly yielding and smokey meat, crunchy nachos. Back of the net. Then to Dim Sum Su for battered chunks of chicken with salt and pepper chips and a curry sauce that has me begging for the recipe. Then even better, a huge bao of panko breadcrumbed portobello mushroom from the same trader, that’s meaty and dense, with further interest from the rock sugar, chilli, and spring onion which adorns it. We abandon any hopes of eating from Buddha Belly or getting the Bournville Waffle we intended to finish on.

Sessions are capped to roughly 300 people each time, and everyone has their own table in which to enjoy their time. It’s rather perfect, so much so if I were unable to open my restaurant yet I’d be on the phone begging for a spot at further dates. None of us have any idea what the future is going to be like, but we do know that outdoors is better than indoors, and that’s where DDC do what they do best. I’m paying Warwick a visit next. I’ve got a summer to enjoy.

Dishoom, Birmingham

The interior of Dishoom is a throbbing hive of clinking cutlery and conversation. As I peruse the menu a waiter passes me bearing a tray full of chai, then reappears, as if by magic, from the same side bearing more. It is an atmosphere which echoes the Iranian style of cafe in Mumbai from which Dishoom is modelled, a city within a country that I have visited and love. My girlfriend knows more about the city previously known as Bombay than I do; understands it’s culture far more than I ever will. She has been to Mumbai on multiple occasions. She sponsors the education of a child she has never met at a school there, one whose grades are deteriorating by the year and who she perseveres with when I suggest otherwise. She has an internal commitment to the betterment of the area, just like Dishoom, who donate two meals (one in India, the other in the UK) for every meal purchased.

That opening paragraph was tough, but I think I’ve covered most of Foodie Boys guide to writing a food blog, and if I haven’t, then I’m sorry, I’m just really not very good at this. I went on a press trip with Dishoom in January and whilst others were asking important questions, I was doubling-up on the free drinks and standing under signs in the Kings Cross site that read ‘Simon Go Back’. What I did get was the sense of a business wanting to do things the right way; to give back to those in need, and to bring communities together over food. When Simon eventually did go back, he did so drunkenly muttering about wanting to work for such inspiring owners. Yes, I did just reference myself in third person and kiss the arse of the business I’m about to write about. I’m pathetic.

So the food. We’ve been a few times now, twice for breakfast (one time far superior to the other) and once for lunch. All three over soft launch periods with 50% discount on food that will make me overlook the bits they fell short on. At breakfast they have quite the reputation for the bacon naans and so they should, given the quality of the bacon, and the supple bread which houses cream cheese and the addictive tomato chilli jam. Don’t overlook the eggs on chilli cheese toast that is kejriwal, or the akuri scrambled eggs that punch with spice. We have the Big Bombay that has parts we love and parts we don’t. Of those we love we build our own buns of peppery sausage and more of that scrambled egg. At £12.50 I’d suggest more enjoyment would be had from two bacon naans.

Lunch brings more happiness. Murgh malai is an ode to tenderising chicken thighs over lengthy marinades, and produces a must order of soft, slightly smokey meat. Likewise the black daal must be taken; a dark and brooding affair, cooked slowly overnight until the lentils fray at the shell and offer no bite. It’s rich and addictive and worthy of the individual box on the menu. I could take you to other places in the city for better chana, but none that I’m aware have the foresight to serve it with sweetened carrot halwa and batons of pickled veg that when loaded on to the puffy fried bread add contrast and depth to the gingery chickpea curry. It’s a genuine game changer.

Back in January Naved Nassir, the group’s executive chef, spoke of the pressure of coming to a city that has curry at its very foundation. Perhaps it’s why they choose to put a curry as the Birmingham special. The base, a gravy with heady notes of clove, cinnamon, and cashew, is the vehicle for slow braised mutton that quite literally falls from the bone. To say it reminds me of a korma cooked by a very young Aktar Islam gives you an idea of how highly I regard it. The same for the technical workmanship involved with making the roomali roti that holds the chicken tikka. The detail is as impressive as the taste, which, given the size of the operation, is impressive in itself.

Three separate meals each with 50% off, the most of which is around £40 without booze. And herein lies my personal conflict; am I likely to pay the full £80 at lunch when the same sum gets me food and wine for two at the immaculate Opheem? Probably not. But I can see it being a permanent fixture for breakfast, a regular stop off for a one-dish lunch, and the occasional dinner with friends. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Birmingham finally being taken seriously by the big-hitters from the capital, how it’s still attractive in the middle of global pandemic to be here, and how the city have already repaid that faith by packing it out before they properly open the doors next week. Dishoom could have played it safe and yet they’ve gone all in. I have a feeling the hand is going to play out well.

We take A2B to get from A to B