Hardens Guide to the Best Restaurants in Birmingham
Hardens guides have spent 32 years compiling reviews of the best Birmingham restaurants. On Hardens.com you'll find details and reviews of 54 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. Sabai Sabai
Thai restaurant in Birmingham
25 Woodbridge Road - B13
‘A True Taste of Thailand’ is the promise at the original Mosely branch of this small local Thai chain (nowadays also with branches in the city centre, Harborne and Stratford-Upon-Avon). Feedback remains relatively limited, but is enthusiastic all-round.
2. Raja Monkey
restaurant in Hall Green
1355 Stratford Road - B28
Raja Monkey began as an authentic roadside café experience that pioneered the street food scene - that was to become so popular in later years – growing into into one of Birmingham’s best-loved Indian restaurants and b...
3. The Karczma
Polish restaurant in Birmingham
Bordesley St - B5
2022 Review: Lovers of kitsch should make a beeline to this well-established venue, not far from the Bull Ring, decorated like an old-fashioned Eastern European cottage – “highly recommended to anybody who would like to try Polish cuisine” or looking for a meal with “great character”.
4. Divide by 8
Sandwiches, cakes, etc restaurant in Birmingham City Centre
Unit 7, 8 Centenary Square - B1
Salutations, Divide by 8 is our afternoon cakes & cocktails bar exclusively designed to host guests wishing to “Eat The Best Cake & Drink Banging Cocktails” In the evening it opens its doors for pre & after diner drinks, which hosts our resident DJ & m...
5. Craft
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
The Terrace, Unit 10-11 The ICC, Centenary Square - B1
Funky outside dining ‘igloos’ are a key attraction of this city-centre destination – a well-known venue locally which makes for a fun outing if not an especially foodie one.
6. 8
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham City Centre
Unit 8, 8 Centenary Square - B1
‘One of the UK’s most progressive dining experiences’ is promised by Andrew Sheridan and his brigade – to the backdrop of a resident DJ – at his year-old and extremely ambitious city-centre venture which aims to allow you to ‘embrace an experience brought together by an immersive sensory and nostalgic story focused around food’. More prosaically, this centres around a 10-course tasting menu for £100. Initial reports are limited, but the AA awarded it a respectable three rosettes in their Autumn 2022 awards. More feedback please!
7. Divide
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham City Centre
Unit 9, 8 Centenary Square - B1
Divide is our exclusive restaurant uniquely created with privacy & intimacy for 1 – 4 guests or up to 16 Guests within our exclusive Private Dining Room, aptly named the Kin Table, Divide is uniquely hosted by our Chefs who Create a modern British micro- seasonal p...
8. Peel's
British, Modern restaurant in Hampton-in-Arden
Hampton Manor, Shadowbrook Lane - B92
Too limited feedback this year for a rating of this flagship dining room, whose many accolades have established it as a bastion of the Midlands hospitality scene. The property is currently emerging from major investment under long-term owners, the Hills, who have recently added ‘Smoke’ and ‘Grace & Savour’ – see also. BREAKING NEWS: In November 2022, it was announced that Peels will close in favour of a ‘comfort food’ formula.
9. 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...
10. Adam's
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
16 Waterloo St - B2
“Easily Birmingham’s top dining destination” (of the modern European variety), say fans of Adam & Natasha Stokes’s local luminary, which is entering its tenth year of operation. Its “exquisite and inventive food has evolved and reinvented itself over the years and just keeps amazing with new creations and combinations of flavours”. “Impeccable service” is “that lovely combination of being professional but also engaging” and “the general feel of the restaurant is classy with Art Deco influences”. All this plus the “comprehensive wine list” you would expect. Top Tip – “the kitchen table experience is a well-designed and great experience”.
11. 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.
12. Dishoom
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
Paradise, One Chamberlain Square - B3
The deservedly popular retro Bombay-themed chain has made itself thoroughly at home in Brum with this “busy, buzzy venue in the city centre” – “a very slick operation” serving “authentic and tasty” food with a “good variety of tapas-style small dishes and sharing plates”. Much is made of Birmingham and Mumbai’s shared histories of manufacture, commerce and craftsmanship.
13. Asha’s Indian Bar and Restaurant
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
12-22 Newhall St - B3
This city-centre venue wins consistently strong ratings – if not much feedback this year – for its classic “rich” cuisine from India’s northwest. It is part of an international group (with UK branches in Manchester and Solihull) owned by the prolific Bollywood singer Asha Bhosle and run by her son Anand; now 88, she is best-known in Britain from Cornershop’s 1997 hit single ‘Brimful of Asha’, which punned on her name, meaning ‘hope’ in Hindi.
14. 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”.
15. 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.
16. Sabai Sabai
Thai restaurant in Birmingham
8 Waterloo Street - B2
2019 Review: Fourth and most ambitious of this Thai mini-chain, established in Moseley in 2003 – it occupies a large Grade II listed, city-centre property that once housed the Legal and General Assurance Society. It opened in late 2018 – limited feedback so far, but all positive.
17. The Ivy Temple Row Birmingham
British, Modern restaurant in Birmingham
67-71 Temple Row - B2
“You wouldn’t go for ‘haute cuisine’, but as a jolly place to eat comfort food in a spectacular setting, it is hard to beat” – that’s the upbeat view, anyway, on this now-“ubiquitous” brasserie chain. Eight years and 40 openings later, the spin-offs increasingly eclipse the Theatreland original (see also), whose Edwardian features provide the style-guide for its nationwide ‘roll out’. “Even if the unchallenging food reaches no heights, there’s a consistent buzz”, which makes them a “posh”, “fun” choice for a get-together, if not a particularly foodie one. This is particularly the case at the landmark London off-shoots: at ‘Chelsea Garden’ (“gorgeous greenery”); Kensington (“slick”, with a “pretty glitzy crowd”); and on the Thames (“great views over Tower Bridge”). But while it’s always been acknowledged that the mass offering is “a shadow of the mothership’s” – with “average grub at not-so-average prices” – the feeling that the brand has become just “a chain that does not excite” is gaining ever-stronger currency. Service seems more “stretched” nowadays, and a sliding ambience rating is making the whole offering seem ever-more “overrated, for all its modern art and perky décor”.
18. The Oyster Club
Fish & seafood restaurant in Birmingham
43 Temple Street - B2
“The food is always great” – especially the oysters – at this “reliable” seafood outlet which is the more relaxed option from chef Adam Stokes, whose high-flying flagship Adam’s is nearby. But diners expecting the same standards as his main gaff might be in for a “disappointment”: ratings here are more generally good rather than outstanding and service has its ups and downs.
19. @pizza
Pizza restaurant in Birmingham
Unit 33 Grand Central - B2
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.
20. Opheem
Indian restaurant in Birmingham
65 Summer Row - B3
“The tasting menu is an exciting journey” at Aktar Islam’s increasingly famous dining room a little out of the city centre, which is “going from strength to strength” as Brum’s most commented-on destination; one of the top-10 most mentioned outside London in our annual diners’ poll; and with some claim on being “the best Indian restaurant outside of London”. The “elegantly presented” cuisine is rooted in the subcontinent, but might equally be described as “European with Indian flavours and spices”. However you define the kitchen, it provides “a great experience with subtle spicing and some unique touches and flavours” complemented by “outstanding wine matches”. The main dining room is a dim-lit, modern and stylish space and among improvements in recent times “the new lounge in particular is a fabulous addition”.
View full listings of 54 Birmingham Restaurants
Popular Birmingham Restaurant Searches
Birmingham Restaurant News