Turners 69 High Street, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 9NS Tel: 0121 426 4440
How could something so right go so wrong...?
So sung soul brother and Big Brother contestant Jermaine Jackson in the 80s’ schmultz-fest hit Do What You Do. For those unfamiliar with this four minutes and 15 seconds of wrist-slitting self-pity (an essential track on late-night radio shows like The Quiet Storm), it’s all about jilted love. The thrill has gone. Passion has left the building.
Sitting in Turners restaurant in Harborne High Street, I couldn’t get the song out of head. The trigger for it? Peanut soup. Yes, a soup of peanuts.
(Another well-known phrase not dissimilar to, but punchier than, “goodness gracious me” was dancing unspoken on my lips.)
The soupe des cacahuètes, swizzled with sage oil, was served as an amuse bouche. It followed a spruce sorbet. If the sorbet was out there, the potage was another couple of galaxies to the left. What was going on?
For the little that it’s worth I happen to think Richard Turner is one of the most naturally gifted chefs to have come out of the Birmingham culinary scene.
He picked up a Michelin star within a few minutes of opening his first self-run restaurant in south Birmingham and rightly so.
He cooks peerless French-inspired cuisine and some of the dishes I have eaten under his roof are among the best I have tasted in this city, the West Midlands and way further afield. So the boy’s good, borderline stupendous, the Lionel Messi of caramelised sweetbreads.
The thing is, there comes a time in a chef’s career when he or she feels the need to “freshen things up,” to push the boundaries on the à la carte. It’s part of cheffing DNA; they can’t help themselves.
This, I suspect, explains the spruce and peanut. The taster courses were preceded by some very good nibbles – cheese choux bun-ettes and enamel-shattering pigs’ skin.
As we munched, we admired the restaurant’s new grey carpet that has replaced the ceramic floor and given the dining room a softer ambiance. The velvety high-backed chairs, on which the chef has been known to sit, reverse-legged, Christine Keeler-style, remain.
Two more tasters – a salmon ceviche and a beef tartare, again all good – turned up. Then the spruce on a spoon. I quite liked it but couldn’t entirely see the point of it.
It wasn’t at all like eating frozen Christmas tree juice, it was more appley and a bit medicinal. My unfestive co-diner demurred.
Then came the peanut potage. It tasted of peanuts with a hint of a meat stock and cream. (I’m bound to be wrong on this.)
As peanut soups go, it was first rate and is probably highly rated in the Congo. It could work in a south-east Asian place and was technically accomplished.
Did it scream “I am the very essence of Richard Turner?” No. Had someone kidnapped him? I shivered.
Another lyric from Jermaine’s ditty was going through my brain (“Did they steal you away like a thief in the night?”) when normal service was resumed with a delicate confit mackerel, tomato and zings of lemon. We were safe. Turner had returned from Planet Peanut. My shoulders relaxed to the horizontal.
