Credit Crunch Lunch - Simpsons

Jan 23 2009 by Richard McComb, Birmingham Post

PLACE: Simpsons, 20 Highfield Road, Edgbaston. Tel: 0121 454 3434

WHY GO?: Because it’s the granddaddy of the Birmingham business/celebration lunch.

PRICE: Three-course set lunch £30, includes canapes, a pre-dessert and terrific petit fours. There are two set menus to choose from, you can mix and match.

THE MEAL: Everything about this lunch is spot on. The balance, flavours, portions and timing are impeccable. If you’re paying top dollar it’s what you expect but 30 quid for this sort of fare really is good value for money, crunch or no crunch.

For starters, the pretty tartare of Loch Duart and Severn & Wye smoked salmon came with a quail egg, a delicate avocado sorbet, Avruga caviar and beetroot syrup. Better looking still was the pumpkin tortellini, poached corn-fed chicken thigh, blue cheese foam and the sort of vegetable and herb broth a grown man would walk through icy rivers to slurp.

Cheaper, richly flavoured cuts of meat are all the rage (hurrah for that) and my main course of slow-cooked pork belly showed how “artisan” cooking can be given an haute cuisine leg-up. Sweet and juicy with sufficient fat, it was served with winter-warming choucroute and “compressed” pineapple, smoked sausage and vanilla pomme purée. I’d have preferred plain mash but I’m a pleb. The pork, on this occasion from Birmingham butcher supreme Roger Brown, of Harborne, was a delight. Who’d have thought the tummy of a mud-snuffler could be so tasty?

My guest had the fillet of gilt head bream which was served with a layer of dinky, and crunchy, fine potato scales, mimicking the fish’s conventional outer wear. It’s a classy take on fish and chips, served with creamed leeks and red wine sauce. Great lunchtime eating.

The puddings included vanilla panna cotta, poached rhubarb, streusel and rhubarb espuma. It looked lovely and I’m told it was very nice, but I declined a spoonful as there was no way on God’s earth I was going to part with an atom of my chocolate spiral, cherries and pistachio ice cream, especially when I discovered it had sprinkles of “space dust”. The magic chocolate at Simpsons, conjured into existence by the copiously talented Jacqueline Keenan, has got to be among the best in any British restaurant, and if there’s a finer combo than choc and pistachio (the classic that it is) I have yet come across it.

Sitting in the lounge, sipping a very uncredit crunch like glass of 1986 Armagnac, it really was hard to think what all the economic fuss was about. But that’s kind of the point of places like Simpsons. And investment bankers can’t afford to go here any longer, which is reason enough to visit.

For wine, we had a glass of Ruinart rose champagne, a glass of fruity Calvarino Soave Classico Pieropan – Veneto 2003 (also available by bottle, £40) and a knock-out glass of Rully 1er Cru Les Cloux – Domaine Jacqueson 2003 (bottle £44).

BREAD WATCH: Inclusive. Exemplary baking.

VERDICT: Birmingham’s trail-blazing first Michelin star restaurant continues to set the benchmark.

RATING: * * * * *

BOWLER HAT RATING GUIDE:
Bowled over * * * * *
Hat’s the way I like it  * * * *
Hat-trick   * * *
Hattie Jacques   * *
Old hat *