Meat & One Veg

The village of Plaka sits above the water with the whitewashed houses, blue sea and mountains arranged in the background like scenery from a Greek island advert. It is Crete as you imagine it; here are tavernas with views that would be considered architectural features anywhere else, fishing boats bobbing below and enough bougainvillea to suggest that nature has been allowed to become slightly self-indulgent. It is beautiful in the uncomplicated way that some places are beautiful: stone, sea,…

I’m conscious that I can’t write about every nice meal I have in every nice restaurant. It would be boring for me, and boring for you to read about the same places over and over again. Truth is, we are creatures of habit who rarely leave Harborne. We saunter around the High Street, never with the decency to book ahead, eating and drinking in the same four or five spots. You could call it a perk of this, or you could see it as a perk of the postcode, either way, I come out in hives if I have to…

I’m guessing from the journey to Liverpool that I was too old for Creamfields at some point between 2003 and 2005. The train is filled with uni students, all dressed as if Ibiza was annexed by JD Sports, drinking buzzballs and talking in that one-pitch monotone that happens when regional dialect gets demolition derby’d. Given the torrential rain there is a worrying lack of wellies, whilst the tents that line the walkways are all two-man Temu jobs that won’t survive tonight, let alone the bank…

Back in May, I was judging coffee in Bournemouth, surrounded by the usual collection of over-caffeinated, over-excited people, when Steve Ashworth mentioned Grace and Savour over lunch. Steve is one of those people whose opinions about food you listen to, partly because he knows an enormous amount about it and partly because he has the irritating habit of being right. Grace and Savour is his favourite restaurant in the country. He visits more often than I do, which sounds reasonable until you…

Our plans for dinner were simple; drive over to Stourbridge to collect a present and go for a quick, one-course dinner at The Old Wharf Inn. Sophie wanted the chicken caesar salad, whilst I was going for the raviolo. Glass of wine for me, soft drink for the wife, fifty quid, done, and home in time to watch the last season of Succession. En route we found out that whilst the pub was open, the kitchen was not, mainly due to some utter woke nonsense that means chefs have to work normal hours like…

I think Sheffield might be my new favourite city. It’s managed to become cool without ruining itself in the process, refusing to polish away the bits that make it interesting whilst building a city that feels lived in rather than curated. There is also an impressive amount of great food and drinks for a city that once made its money turning metal into things. Independent restaurants, good pubs, hidden wine bars, proper bakeries and the sort of places where someone has decided that a…

Linda Greaves, the fashion icon who is single-handily propping up the economy and who also happens to be my incredible Mother-in-Law, has a theory that the combination of Brummie cakes and a glass of cold white wine on the terrace of Trillium might be the best light lunch going. She tells me this over a long lunch with her daughter, whilst eating a Brummie cake and trying to recall the name of the place that she used to pop in for a scallop and a glass of white wine at, which might not be as…

“It’s only F1 Arcade” says Mike as I tell him that I’ve had enough of the flatbread whilst removing another nugget of sinew from my mouth. And to a certain extent he is right; the arcades mantra of ‘Race Drink Eat Repeat’ puts the eating towards the bottom of the pile with only the food repeating on you afterwards any lower. In truth, the people come here because they love F1. They have managed to turn watching other people drive very fast cars into a form of tribal warfare usually reserved for…

It’s niche, but I am going to use the front of this review to say how much I dislike Canary Wharf. Having been two weeks in a row, getting lost on both occasions, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is London’s only neighbourhood that appears to have been designed by a management consultancy. Streets disappear into shopping arcades, arcades become office lobbies, office lobbies emerge beside fountains that seem to exist purely to reassure the very wealthy. Every building is taller than your…

I grew up watching Great British Menu with my Dad. Me, in my early twenties and still living at home, him mid-fifties, still working and beating me nightly at chess. The halcyon days of cooking TV; it provided a much needed juxtaposition to the viewpoint that you had to be a Ramsey-esque areshole to others in order to make it to the screen. We watched and I learnt, from Marcus Wareing making the custard tart in season 1, to Sat Bain’s snotty egg, Jason Atherton’s El Bulli-esque martini, Mark…

#Ad We took the train to London specifically for the media dinner at Latine. One, it’s very nice to get an invite to events in London, specifically new ones in Mayfair, and two, and far more importantly, it promised a style that intrigued me greatly. A blend of classic French and Latin cooking; one known for its discipline, the other its exuberance. One obsesses over technique, the other over fire. One refines, the other amplifies. It’s an unlikely duo, like Einstein and Chaplin, Woody and…

Hands up, I took too long getting to Samo. Blame the constant travel, and the bi-weekly excursions to London, and the fact that on paper that particular city is churning out brilliant openings every week whilst we take in whatever London has already churned, gone to Manchester, and then decided that Birmingham might do, which could be a strangely prophetic parallel with the new Prime Minister. Blame me for forgetting the wrong date in the diary with Jon when they first opened, and then not…

#Ad Fusion cuisine has acquired an unfortunate reputation because we’ve spent the last thirty years confusing curiosity with vandalism. Somewhere along the line, chefs began treating cuisines like children let loose in a dressing-up box: kimchi with everything; yuzu where lemon had done perfectly well for centuries. The result was less cultural exchange than culinary speed dating. But proper fusion isn’t a gimmick. It’s what happens when traditions travel, settle down and quietly borrow from…

There’s a temptation to think Brazilian barbecue was invented by a marketing team in São Paulo who wondered how many different cuts of beef they could parade past a table before someone gave up. In reality, churrasco began about as far from polished city restaurants as you could imagine. Out on the pampas, the gaúchos – South America’s answer to the cowboy, only with better cattle – lived off the land and cooked what they had over open fires. There were no marinades or sauces; just meat, coarse…

I feel like I’m on one of those generational runs at the moment, like Phil Taylor, the last four Beatles albums, Blackadder, Man Utd in the early nineties, and the John Lewis Christmas ads. Where I can do no wrong with what’s for dinner, where every meal is a great meal and there is not a dud in sight. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s a conscious choice to spend my money more wisely. The want to get to every new opening is waning; the need to get to everything first is gone. There are ones I’ll…

Sophie took three outfit options for our overnighter in Hay-on-Wye. It’s her prerogative and I don’t mind; I have two arms to load two bags into the back of the car, plus, generally speaking, if it makes her happy I’m happy. For the many people who follow me on Instagram and tell me the only reason for doing so is her outfits, she ended-up wearing the first one; an off-white waistcoat, blue jeans, and an impractical pair of wedges that required a knowledge of sailing knots to secure tightly. I…

Birmingham’s biggest restaurant opening this year is in London. Our biggest culinary export, a two Michelin wielding chef by the name of Aktar Islam, has opened a restaurant in the big smoke called Oudh 1722. And before you think about Aktar’s cooking, get this preposition out of your head; it is nothing like Opheem. They might share the same garam masala recipe, they might use the same customer intel, but that is it. Whilst Opheem is very much a two star restaurant that uses flashes of the…

Forty quid doesn’t get you much these days. Five pints and the right to stand outside The Devonshire. One and a half Domino’s pizzas. Half a tank of petrol and/or half an hour in an Uber. Sandwich, crisps, and a drink at Euston Station. Tom Kerridge’s fish and chips. A Deliveroo for one along with the general warmth of knowing the restaurant will see almost two-thirds of that. Right now forty quid feels like the kind of sum we forget we’ve spent on the day, wilfully pissing it into the air on…

I really like the Big Mamma group. I like that I can be in most places in Europe and know what I’m getting. I like that I can book under my name and they’ll be a negroni waiting for me, and I like that the privilege doesn’t just extend to piss poor food bloggers like me but also regulars like my mother-in-law who very much enjoys the treatment she gets whether in Birmingham, London, or quite recently, two days running in Madrid. I like how they understand that service is as important as food…

Nathan seems to think that he was at Opheem with me a year ago, whilst I happen to know it was four years ago, due to the wonderful time stamps on iPhones and restraining orders. It’s a Nathan appropriate gap; enough to treat one of my favourite people in the world whilst still upholding the minimal amount of respect I have with the team at the restaurant. And he’s a great lunch partner who understands the art of a long lunch. He has a healthy appetite for life that extends to both food and…

Dublin on a Sunday morning has the atmosphere of a theatre after the audience have gone home: the curtains still twitching, the perfume stale in the velvet, the city sheepishly pretending it didn’t spend the previous night face-down in an orgy of Guinness. In England, Sunday trading laws have long since been bullied into submission by commerce and hangovers, but Dublin still clings to a kind of ecclesiastical jet lag. The pubs, those civic cathedrals of stout and confession, seem to observe…

Two years ago Sophie took me to Dublin for my birthday. The plan was civilised enough: land at 9.30, abandon luggage at the hotel, drift about town for an hour and then lunch at Chapter One. A schedule built for adults. I, meanwhile, sat in Cuubo the night before drinking vodka martinis – extra dry, twist, freezing cold – with the kind of determination rarely seen. One became several, several became strategic memory loss, and the evening ended only just ahead of the airport taxi. We achieved…

Jim said we’re going to eat pizza at somewhere called Proven in Stone. Admit it, it’s a great name for a pizza gaff. The dough is proven and is cooked in a stone oven. It’s literally genius, as in literal and genius, and it makes me want to open a wine bar called Crushed in Bottle, or a pasta bar called Kneaded in Pan, though the latter does sound like a call for help at a retirement village. And then we get in his car from Yoxall and drive forty minutes to a small town called Stone and…

It’s weird being sat in Spingere. It’s my first time and yet it’s not; it’s a building I could navigate in the dark; one whose floorboards I know all too well. It used to be Laghi’s, my most regular of regulars, a place I’d come and sit at the bar in and have a negroni and a bowl of pasta. One that I’d treat like my own home by walking down stairs to the pasta kitchen and say hello to whoever was rolling it out to the correct thickness. My dear friend Luca opened it and ultimately closed it and…

The dim sum list at A Wong is an intimidating thing. So intimidating that half of the table that consists of me, Sophie, and her parents had printed the menu off weeks ago and worked out what we wanted to order to get a broad spectrum of it without over ordering. I’m sure you can guess which half. The other half whose name may or may not be Tony and Linda had opted to wing it a little more, taking advice from the server and also some unsolicited from the most amazing women on the table next…

I first went to a Blacklock in 2015. I wrote about it in 2022 for the first time. By my estimates I’ve been about a dozen times to varying sites in the last ten years, including the opening of Canary Wharf and, more recently, an ill-fated afternoon in Soho that left me a lovely scar on my forehead and a £300 Uber back to Birmingham. I like Blacklock. Must do given the amount of times I’ve been. And yet I’m struggling to reach the same fever pitch of excitement over the opening in Birmingham. I…

At L’Ambroisie, the first impression is not of arrival so much as quiet admission; like being allowed into a members club that has no interest in explaining itself. Tucked inside Place des Vosges, all symmetrical calm and aristocratic brick, it feels less like a restaurant and more like a well-kept secret that has somehow resisted the vulgarity of being discovered. There are no theatrics, no open kitchens clattering for attention, no earnest lectures about provenance. Instead, an atmosphere of…

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