The future's bright, the future's Ginger ... Glynn Purnell gives Richard McComb an exclusive peek of his new bar and restaurant.

Glynn Purnell catches me looking at the battered old sink that lies beached in the middle of his new restaurant, The Asquith.

The back room at 11 Newhall Street has wallpaper but that’s about it as far as interior decor goes.

Country Life won’t be visiting for a while yet although a 1980s-era commercial sink unit does make for an interesting centrepiece. Spray some rust on it and it might make a companion piece of Antony Gormley’s Iron Man up the road in Victoria Square.

“It’s the new chef’s table,” says Purnell, slurping from a mug of tea. “Good, innit?”

I am being taken on a tour of the chef’s latest business venture, a combined restaurant and cocktail bar, whose imminent opening is the biggest story on Brum’s gastro-grapevine. Workmen permitting, Gingers Bar will open in the second or third week of this month, The Asquith to follow a week or so later.

But The Asquith? Isn’t the name familiar?

The Asquith represented Purnell’s short-lived return to Montague Road, Edgbaston, where he had first won a Michelin star at what was then Jessicas several years before.

The Asquith, Purnell’s project to launch outstanding young culinary talent in the city, only lasted six months after the chef suffered a little local difficulty with the landlord.

The story is well documented and acrimonious and left Brum’s most well-known chef £40,000 out of pocket in lost trade and legal fees.

Purnell is keen to stress that it wasn’t the restaurant or the food that killed the place but an unhappy business relationship with the landlord.

To prove his point, and show his faith in the team that opened The Asquith, Purnell has carried the name over to the Newhall Street site, which used to occupied by Must dim sum bar and restaurant and has been refurbished at a cost of £150,000.

He could have rebranded his concept of a neighbourhood restaurant (albeit the new site is slap bang in the city), washed things under the carpet, rewritten an uncomfortable part of the Purnell culinary history.

But the 36-year-old chef likes nothing better than coming out fighting, and that’s not just when he is doing battle in the boxing ring, one of his hobbies.

“Since the day I had trouble and had the solicitors in, which cost me a fortune, I have been looking for a new site for The Asquith.

‘‘At the end of the day, I had to shut down the restaurant for my own reasons but I was determined to reopen. That is why I kept the name. I want to give the same people an opportunity and show them I had faith in them.”

The head chef will be Jason Eaves, brother of Marcus Eaves, of London’s celebrated Pied à Terre, and Julie Tonsgaard will be restaurant manager – just as they were in Edgbaston.

The 35 to 40-cover restaurant menu will again be classically French inspired, serving as a relaxed, more informal counterpoint to Purnell’s, the chef’s Michelin-starred flagship restaurant, which is a two-minute stroll round the corner in Cornwall Street.

Purnell will continue to cook every day at Cornwall Street and will keep a watching brief on drawing up menus at The Asquith.

Purnell’s pastry chef Peter Casson will also oversee the pastry at The Asquith, which the chef insists “will be the same standard as Purnell’s.”

Lunch will be about £18 for three courses; à la carte starters will be £5-£6 and £16-£17 for mains.

“It will be the same style of food as we did before in Edgbaston but slightly more flexible,” adds Purnell. “You will be able to have a main course and a glass of wine and go.”