Moseley Restaurant Guide

2022 Review: One of a quartet of Syrian cafés, serving up “authentic” Middle Eastern titbits and more – including ‘fuul’ fava beans, pastries and flatbreads – from breakfast until late. This is the first branch, opened in Moseley.

“The best Peruvian restaurant in Birmingham!” – chef Robert Ortiz produces “seriously interesting food”, according to fans of this converted bank building in Moseley, where the “delicious tasting menu is very affordable”. Formerly of the Lima group in London, he has opened an offshoot in Hackney’s Broadway Market.

2022 Review: With its “good home-style Indian vegetarian cuisine”, the Joshi family’s canteen and sweet centre has developed into a Hall Green institution over almost five decades. Specialising in Gujarati and south Indian cooking, it lists no fewer than 72 main dishes… none of them is priced at over £5.95.

The original of what is now a duo of modern Indian venues (run by the Lasan Group) which now has a Harborne sibling – this attractive modern operation offers an affordable menu rooted in street-food dishes.

“Brilliant sushi, always creative and beautifully served” is the attraction at this venue that is quite open about not being authentically Japanese – ‘gaijin’ means ‘foreigner’. A tiny 10-seat counter operation when it opened eight years ago, it took over the tattoo parlour next door to add additional table seating, and these days MasterChef: The Professionals 2021 champion Dan Lee (Brummie-born of English/Irish/Cantonese descent) offers what is billed as Birmingham’s first 15-course ‘omakase’ tasting menu.

“Love the rawness of this restaurant – it’s all about what makes Birmingham’s restaurant scene!” – You eat next to funkily graffitied walls, listening to a carefully curated playlist at Kray Tredwell’s well-known destination: “one of the city’s most interesting restaurants serving fine food prepared by a real, committed culinary artist”. Occupying Digbeth’s Custard Factory (and named after the birth weight of his premature daughter), “the extended restaurant is more spacious than previously and now has a comfortable bar area for preprandial drinks before guests are led upstairs to the main dining area where some of the tables still allow diners to watch the chef and his assistants prepare their dishes”. “Kray has altered the style of his menus several times in the past couple of years or so but has once more returned to serving a multi-course Tasting menu” and the result is “extremely well cooked and presented dishes” (“veering more towards being less eccentric and experimental than in the past and probably none the worse for that!”). Top Menu Tips – “the best barbecued Hispi cabbage ever, perfectly accurately cooked, glistening cod with smoked ham and delightful venison with maitake and a spot-on massaman sauce”.

“Simpsons remains the doyen of Birmingham restaurants and Luke Tipping continues to serve menus made up of lovely, often unimpeachable, dishes”, according to fans of this very long-established hotspot, which has been a go-to destination for celebratory Brummies for over 30 years. “To hold a Michelin Star for 26 of those years is an amazing accomplishment, and the kitchen team led by Luke and the wonderful front of house team create a memorable experience not to be forgotten”. Occupying a fine old Georgian house, “the spacious interior with the view of the leafy Edgbaston garden is delightful” and the service is “friendly but with just the right level of formality to ensure the diner feels that he/she is dining somewhere rather special”. “There are menus to suit all pockets” (starting from a lunchtime à la carte for £49.50 per person) but some say “the full ‘Prestige’ tasting menu [for £140 per person] is highly recommended as it usually contains the best dishes and the team are long practiced in delivering many great pleasures to the table”. Not quite all diners are bowled over though. A London visitor found “perfectly executed food, but no wow factor” and a more local long-term fan thought it “not what it was, if still a good night out”. Some slight disruption is maybe to be expected, as the restaurant went on the market in 2025 (no buyer announced as of October) – a number of reporters opine that “even with Andreas retiring, hopefully Luke will continue to lead the kitchen brigade for a few more years” and “carry on reaching the heights of excellence”. Top Menu Tip – “excellent lobster and king prawn raviolo with salsify and lobster and pepper sauce, magnificent roast sirloin pavé with all the usual Sunday lunch accompaniments well prepared and then a perfect soufflé (passion fruit) with Chantilly cream”.

This 15-strong London noodle chain (now with branches in Brighton, Birmingham and Bristol) is “a good stand-by” – perhaps it’s “not as good as some of its competitors”, but it is widely seen as “good value”: in particular “the lunch-time meal deal” is a winner.

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.

Nisha Katona’s Liverpool-based operation has two branches in London (Charlotte Street and Westfield Stratford) offering her “very tasty” Indian street food – “with the occasional hint of raw spice”. The Lancashire-born former barrister launched the business in 2014 and now has 28 outlets around the country, whose “enjoyable, authentic food” is “really great for a chain”.

“Birmingham’s finest restaurant in a restaurant scene increasingly dominated by mediocre and unimaginative offerings” is, say fans, Adam & Natasha Stokes’s “understated, smart and professional” destination, which is celebrating its tenth year in these three-storey premises (incorporating private dining and chef’s table) in the city-centre. Under chef Adam and the ‘other Adam’, head chef Adam Wilson, it produces “complicated” and accomplished cuisine, be it from the à la carte menu (for £89 per person), the five-course or seven-course dinner menus (for £109 and £139 per person respectively) or cheaper lunch menus (with three or five courses, for £60 or £85 per person). All reports this year again rate it well, but a striking number of basically positive accounts also include drawbacks in our latest annual diners’ poll. One regular feels that “recently, it’s begun to feel too cool and elegant and the impeccable service can be slightly intimidating” creating a more “sterile” ambience. Or that, “the food is very good but less striking than before” (“some dishes risked the fine main ingredients being swamped by the punchier flavours of some of the subsidiary flavours”). Just a rough patch?

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.

“Well-cooked seafood in the centre of Birmingham” wins solid (if scant) feedback on this “consistent” outfit, where you can eat in the “quiet and relaxing” downstairs dining area or “smart” Aphrodite’s Bar above. The name is a clue to their speciality (coming either natural or dressed), but there’s also a “good range” of other items (“not all of them fish”), and one reporter who admits “succumbing to the delicious and very reasonably priced Chateaubriand roast Sunday lunch” has no regrets. There’s a pricier older sibling, Adam’s, on Bennetts Hill, if you really want to push the boat out.

Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan was – as of mid 2025 – rumoured to be on the verge of buying a £1 billion stake in Richard Caring’s restaurant empire, of which this famous brasserie chain is the crown jewel. Presumably, he’s more interested in ‘rolling out’ the brand in The Gulf and beyond rather than dropping by for a Salmon Fishcake and ‘Ivy Chocolate Bombe’, but if he’d asked the opinion of our annual diners’ poll, we’re not sure that he’d sign on the dotted line. “How can a restaurant with this heritage produce such uninspired, tick-box food?” is a question merited by its poor ratings, ditto what explains the “very slow and disinterested service”? The answer may be that “you don’t come here for the food, obviously” but for the “gorgeous” interior design and “picturesque” locations that continue to underpin their appeal. Let’s hope for the Sheikh’s sake that the middle classes of the Arab World are as undiscerning as those from the UK!

In a large (300+ covers) unit at the foot of a modern block near Birmingham’s town hall, this scion of this all-conquering chain lacks the period interiors that so often characterise the group’s successful spin on the theme of 1940s Bombay, but still inspires high ratings for its ambience nonetheless. But perhaps as a result, ratings in Brum are a fraction more middle-of-the-road than in some other locations, albeit with very consistent feedback that it’s an “efficient” operation, with “a good variety of flavoursome choice at good value prices” (“especially their breakfast/brunch”). Or, perhaps, when it comes to curry, Brummies are just hard to impress?

Veggies should take note of this ‘Modern, Plant-focused, Casual Dining Restaurant’ – a five-year-old venue, within Great Western Arcade in the heart of Birmingham City Centre. Chefs Adrian Luck and Tony Cridland provide tasting menus, all meat-free, of either four courses for £50 per person or six courses for £70 per person, and at lunchtime there’s also an ‘express’ option.

Nonagenarian singer Asha Bhosle, who was name-checked in Cornershop’s hit ‘Brimful of Asha’, owns this large, “high quality Indian restaurant in central Birmingham” (which also has siblings in Manchester and most countries in the Gulf); and which is “beloved by a roster of celebs, whose pictures adorn the walls”. It inspires a mixed bag of feedback – reports generally agree the food is “interestingly spiced, if somewhat pricey”. Less reliable is the service, which is at times “hopeless”.