Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Birmingham
Hardens guides have spent 33 years compiling reviews of the best Birmingham restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 48 restaurants in Birmingham and our unique survey based approach to rating and reviewing Birmingham restaurants gives you the best insight into the top restaurants in every area and of every type of cuisine.
Featured Birmingham Restaurants
1. Itaewon Korean Restaurant
Korean restaurant in Birmingham
43 - 45 Station Street - B5
Welcome to Itaewon Korean restaurant in Birmingham city centre, a celebration of all things Korean. Our menu features traditional Korean dishes and Korean BBQ, paired perfectly with hand-made cocktails. Inspired by the vibrant Itaewon district in Seoul, we invite you to experienc...
2. Sabai Sabai
Thai restaurant in Birmingham
25 Woodbridge Road - B13
Torquil and Juree Chidwick’s Moseley Village fixture is celebrating its twentieth year (est. 2003) and continues to inspire solid feedback for its ‘true taste of Thailand’. Over the last twelve months, they expanded further with a new Solihull outpost, complete with outside seating.
3. Sabai Sabai
Thai restaurant in Birmingham
268 High Street - B17
Husband and wife team, Torquil and Juree Chidwick, first opened Sabai Sabai as a small, cosy, family-run Thai restaurant in Moseley 10 years ago. Proving a real hit with the locals they opened the Harborne restaurant, oozing a subtle eastern sophistication with carved wooden b...
4. Black & Green
British, Modern restaurant in Barnt Green
49 Hewell Road - B45
“A very small restaurant in the small, attractive, well-heeled north Worcestershire village of Barnt Green with tables and a counter at which some diners are sat in very close proximity of the culinary action”. With just 18 seats, it’s owned by chef Andrew Sheridan, and although he recently left Brum for his native Liverpool, he continues to show an interest locally with the August 2023 acquisition of nearby coffee and brunch venue, The Garrity. At Black & Green, his team “delivers a well-balanced six-course tasting menu, often with original ingredients. Many of the dishes are brought to table by the chefs themselves”.
5. Nuthurst Grange
British, Modern restaurant in Hockley Heath
Nuthurst Grange Ln - B94
A superb privately owned country house hotel, restaurant, conference centre & wedding venue, residing in the outstanding natural beauty of the Warwickshire countryside.The AA two rosettes restaurant provides a variety of menu options from a two course lu...
6. Raja Monkey
Indian restaurant in Hall Green
1355 Stratford Road - B28
This modern Indian street food restaurant (run by the Lasan Group) inspires only a limited amount of feedback, but such as we have suggests it’s a very good bet in this leafy burb. It must be doing something right, as in 2023 they announced the opening of a spin-off in Harborne.
7. Adam's
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
16 Waterloo St - B2
“Smart, chic, highly professional” – Adam & Natasha Stokes’s “commendably consistent” operation is “outstanding in every respect” and “one of the leading lights in Brum’s high-quality restaurant scene”: in fact the No. 1 in the city in our annual diners’ poll this year where European cuisine is concerned. “Not cheap but worth every penny”, its central location and “unfailingly impressive combination of brilliant cooking and presentation with excellent service” makes it “just the setting for a business meal” (the top option is to be “royally looked after at the chef’s table”). Top Tip – “the set menu at lunch is brilliant value”.
8. Rosa's Thai Cafe
Thai restaurant in Birmingham
2b Chamberlain Square - B3
2021 Review: The “lovely Thai food” at these reliable cafés is “impressively authentic given that they are a chain” – “excellent value” and “fast”, if occasionally let down by “iffy service”. Founded in 2008 by Saiphin and Alex Moore, who inherited the name of their first East End site, the group has 18 branches in London and expanded to Liverpool, Manchester, Reading (delivery only) and Leeds following the sale of a majority stake to US investors. The couple also have two spin-offs, Lao Café in Covent Garden and the new Chinese noodle bar Hoh Sek in St Katharine Docks.
9. Dishoom
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
1 Chamberlain Square - B3
“Excellent Indian food that’s amongst the very best in an area where such restaurants are plentiful” – this outpost of London’s smash-hit chain wins strong ratings, despite the local tradition of brilliant subcontinental cuisine, for its innovative – often “exceptional” – dishes and winning retro style (influenced by the Parsi cafés of 1940s Mumbai). It’s in a big, 330-cover site, overlooking Birmingham Town Hall from the city’s Paradise development.
10. Asha’s Indian Bar and Restaurant
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
12-22 Newhall Street - B3
A rooftop fire in July 2023 briefly shuttered this hugely popular hangout of stars, and offering northwest Indian food that’s packed with taste; it’s now back in business and while “not cheap”, you can expect “a stand-out meal every time with a proper cocktail bar and Bollywood ambience” befitting its owner – nonagenarian singer Asha Bhosle, who was namechecked in Cornershop’s hit ‘Brimful of Asha’.
11. Fazenda
Brazilian restaurant in Birmingham
55 Colmore Row, Barwick Street Entrance - B3
2021 Review: “Latino steak restaurant in the heart of Birmingham city centre” – this well-appointed new branch of the expanding Brazilian chain offers its trademark “generous meat and buffet” formula. It’s tipped by one or two reporters as “good for business meals”.
12. San Carlo
Italian restaurant in Birmingham
4 Temple Street - B2
2022 Review: Sicilian-born Carlo Distefano founded his now international chain thirty years ago with this Brum institution, creating a template of classic upscale Italian food served with immaculate professionalism in a smart and “romantic atmosphere”. He now has 22 restaurants in England and branches in the Middle East and Bangkok.
13. The Ivy Temple Row Birmingham
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
67-71 Temple Row - B2
With the “lovely decor” replicated from the Theatreland icon for which they are branded, Richard Caring’s “always buzzy” spin-offs have found a gigantic audience nationally. But “these places live off the name for sure” and “it’s the ambience that keeps them going” – while fans say the food is “reliable”, more sceptical types dismiss it as “conveyor-belt cooking”; and say service is merely so-so. Some branches are better than others: best in London is ‘Chelsea Garden’, which has the same “distinctly average” standards as the others, but reliably offers an “uplifting” atmosphere and “great people watching” (and “on a sunny afternoon there is literally NO WHERE ELSE TO BE but its large garden. HEAVEN!!”). Also worth mentioning is the outlet by The Thames in SE1: “excellent views of Tower Bridge”, “even better if outside in summer and convenient for The Bridge Theatre”.
14. The Oyster Club
Fish & seafood restaurant in Birmingham
43 Temple Street - B2
Adam Stokes’ more casual – but still very posh, down to the marble-topped tables – offshoot to his acclaimed Adam’s, on nearby Bennett’s Hill; it “not surprisingly specialises in fish and seafood dishes”, reflecting the name, and while ratings tend to be rather up and down, there are early reports of some “lovely” cooking since the 2023 arrival of new chef Stuart Langdell, whose CV includes Simpson’s in Birmingham, and MPW’s Pear Tree Inn in Whitley, Wiltshire.
15. @pizza
Pizza restaurant in Birmingham
Unit 33 Grand Central - B2
2023 Review: Rectangular pizza cooked in 90 seconds is the draw at this top local pizza pit-stop, which is consistently well-rated: choose a base sauce and cheese and then zhoosh it up with various toppings.
16. Opheem
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
65 Summer Row - B3
“Just wow!” – Aktar Islam’s city-centre HQ reliably “lives up to expectations… and more!”; and remains Brum’s most commented on and highest-rated destination in our annual diners’ poll. “His unique twist on his family’s ancestral dishes with superb matching wine flight provided by sommelier Stefan” (Liperowski) “magnificently takes Indian food to the highest possible level” – “flavours are off the scale” – and “the range and variety of each distinctly different meal is glorious”.
17. Tattu
Chinese restaurant in Birmingham
18 Barwick Street - B3
2021 Review: “Arresting” design is a big feature of Adam and Drew Jones’s stunning-looking Chinese-themed yearling: the city’s biggest basement bar and restaurant situated in the recently reopened Grand hotel (built in 1879, and refurbished after over a decade’s closure). Too few reports for a rating as yet: its menu contains a “theatrically presented combination of small bites and larger dishes”. The next stop after this is Edinburgh, opening late 2019.
18. Purnells
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
55 Cornwall St - B3
An “enjoyable if slightly flash” Birmingham “icon” that “continues to deliver fine cuisine with wit” – TV chef (and ‘Yummy Brummie’) Glynn Purnell’s “guvnor of West Midlands cuisine” continues to win high praise with “on-the-ball service” and “clever” cuisine that’s “thoughtful, robust, balanced… everything you’d hope for”. One or two diners this year noted that “there can be a tendency to place too many old favourites on the menu, albeit often with a new twist”, but even they feel that quality is “still consistent”. Top Tip – “an extremely fine long lunch” wins tips for this it as “the best place to do business in Birmingham”.
19. Tonkotsu
Japanese restaurant in Birmingham
Selfridges Foodhall, Upper Mall East - B5
“Tasty, good-value noodles” in a “relaxed environment” make this 12-year-old London chain (14 branches, plus Brighton and Brum) “worth a visit”. The “ramen is deep and fabulous” if “limited in range (no fish-based dishes except prawn)”, and is augmented by “quite acceptable katsu curry”. Aficionados should head to the Haggerston branch to watch the noodles being made.
20. Lasan
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
3-4 Dakota Buildings, James Street - B3
This “glitzy post-modern Indian” in the Jewellery Quarter serves “solid accomplished food” in a “stunning dining room”. Now 21 years old, it was an early pioneer of ambitious modern British-Indian cuisine but these days faces “lots of competition” in this field – not least from founding chef Aktar Islam, who left to open Opheem (see also).
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