I remember the first time I met Gareth Ward. Not the initial lunch – a steal at £55 back then – or the lengthy tasting dinner that same night he upsold us to. It was the bit after, that after service twilight where the counters are cleaned down whilst bills are settled and hazy friendships formed. We sat briefly in the bar, thumbing through record collections and discussing 90’s hip hop. Rum was involved, I think, though it could easily have been more wine. What struck me about him most was the single-mindedness of him even back then when the house was still white, the bedrooms like something ..read more

Stu Deeley is at Laghi’s. Kind of. Stu Deeley is very much still at Smoke, though he is at Laghi’s once, maybe twice a week, with a team at Laghi’s cooking Stu’s food when he is at Smoke, or being a Dad and a husband. Truth is I’ve known about this for a while, seeing, and occasionally eating the specials they’ve been trialling at Laghi’s, before going to one of the quite secret pre-launch services with a far better food writer than I. He loved it – obviously – as did I, for yet another fabulous lunch with a mate. But I couldn’t exactly write about it. Darn, I couldn’t really talk about it. Yo ..read more

I let Sophie do her top ten dishes on the blog last year, directly under my top ten, the top ten that people set yearly reminders for and openly weep in public about if they are so lucky to be involved. I let her do it because I’m a considerate lover, an extremely considerate and thoughtful lover, and also because she kept her own ten long before I waltzed in and sprinkled her life with fairy dust. Mostly the latter in truth. I’m not considerate at all. You can find her top ten directly below my top ten here. Whilst mine is a carefully thought out list of flavour bombs in an order used to curr ..read more

There is an identity crisis at large in La Vera. Its name and signage suggest Italian, as does the pizza oven to the left of the till, but there is more at play here. The smell is the biggest giveaway, the waft of smoke that hits you as you open the door, somewhere between malfunctioning car and burning flesh, creeping over from the right where an old man turns skewers of lamb and chicken over charcoal. And then the crowd; packed to the rafters at 1pm with I’m guessing eighty, maybe hundred covers, all tucking into the same four meat dishes with chips, rice, or bulgar. I count four pizzas bein ..read more

Omar wants nihari for breakfast. No, I take it back, he wants both of us to have nihari for breakfast. Because nihari, when done right, is the ultimate breakfast food. The slowly cooked mutton stew with the gelatinous meat trying desperately to part ways with the bone like a party with the one bloke in the kitchen who wants to talk about the virtues of Laurence Fox. There is protein, wobbly protein, from the sheep, and a broth that’s not heavy in the slightest but contains enough heat to get the digestion going in record time. Add some wholemeal roti’s and it’s a surprise you don’t see this Pa ..read more

I think we’ve arrived at Balans at the wrong two o’clock. Like we should be at the one where Soho picks up speed to a neon blur of wipe clean clothing fabrics, not the daylight one we are in of tourists who wouldn’t know what day drinking was if they were sat in the Devonshire having Guiness passed to them. It just feels like a place to get naughty in; a kind of cheekily debauched spot to while down the last of twilight with a good fill, maybe loitering around until breakfast service. Even now, post meridian, the first thing we’re asked is if we’d like a Bloody Mary. Be rude not to. But we do ..read more

For anyone who follows me on my bang-average social media (here and here, nudge nudge wink wink) you’ll know that I was very keen on a QBox. There were multiple reasons for this that can be shortened down to its proximity to my house of circa 100m, and the quality of the food which was nothing short of excellent. Not a week went by without a chicken burger, mac and cheese, or one of his legendary Sunday lunches. Truth be told, it never exactly found its footing within the area, yet it did everything it needed to in showcasing Dan Sweet’s cooking enough to successfully complete a kickstarter ba ..read more

Birmingham has its first two Michelin starred restaurant. As pathetic as it sounds, just typing that makes me a little teary. The dark, secret ways of the guide was a key reason for me getting into food. You see, nobody really knows how Michelin work, but each individual guide gives its own little clues. Service, decor and trends do matter even if they say otherwise, and neither do they promote or demote on impulse unless you happen to be Alain Ducasse in London. So on the Monday of the awards it was clear that only one restaurant in this city was possibly going to get a second star; the place ..read more

Chung Ying have a new dim sum chef. I know this because I bump into Co-owner James Wong on Harborne High Street and he’s very excited to tell me about him. Two days later I see Dan Lee at Hockley Social Club and it’s much the same chat, except Dan drops in the gossip that James can’t keep his mitts off the food in the kitchen. We make plans to record on the pod together and then the producer catches covid and I have a gig to go to and it’s Chinese New Year soon which is as good a chance to write it up as any. And then the crash happened. Can’t tell you much about it, other than a loud bang an ..read more

When done correctly, ramen is the sausage of the soup world. It all goes in. Feet, bones, flaps of skin, and fat; all the bits you don’t want to think about in this perfectly sanitised life, chucked in and simmered until the broth is so full of collagen it should set to a jelly at room temperature if left to it’s own devices. It’s a tale of time and patience, a slow rolling boil to a milky broth dotted with fat. It takes skill to do ramen well. The broth is the best bit of the ramen at Ramen Don, a smart new restaurant in the spot behind Broad Street that I still describe twenty years on as w ..read more