Bromsgrove Restaurant Guide

2024 Review: “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”.

2023 Review: This grand Victorian manor house hotel on a 70-acre estate offers both tasting menus and a conventional 3-course format in its elegant Chaddesley Restaurant – “have eaten there several times in the past few months and the food never disappoints”.

The black-and-white timber building dates back to 1430, but this beamed rural restaurant has operated in its current guise since 1998, and serves a straightforward, rather traditional and old-fashioned menu that’s consistently highly rated in our annual diners’ poll: “always reliably good food” with “a successful combination of flavours and complementary sauces plus good house wines; all alongside more innovative specials changed daily”.

“Another one of Birmingham’s fine suburban restaurants located in the comfortably off area of Harborne” – this “real neighbourhood gem” is “situated in an old butcher’s shop and tiles on the wall depicting a pig date back to the restaurant’s former existence”. You can just opt for a modestly priced modern bistro menu or push the boat out and have eight courses for £100 per person. In either case, all reports acclaim “beautiful food” that’s “deserving of its popularity and reputation”. Top Menu Tip – “Signature Malloreddus, Orkney scallop with chorizo jam and lovely salt aged Herefordshire sirloin with roasted onion and unctuous beef cheek”.

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.

“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”.

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.

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.

“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.

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?

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.

“I hate Birmingham… This is worth going to Birmingham for!!!” – “Aktar’s cooking sets the bar for modern British Indian cuisine” nowadays (especially since Michelin gave it a second star in 2024) and – as one of our Top-10 most commented-on restaurants outside London in our annual diners’ poll – all reports on his “smart, chic and spectacularly lit” Jewellery Quarter HQ acclaim it as “an amazing experience from entering the restaurant to the final delicious mouthful”. His food “is a clever take on Indian food as we have come to know it in the UK”, “redefining our expectations” and “taking it to an entirely new level”; and is “enhanced by the distinct style of the matching wine flights of head sommelier Stefan”. “You feel in good hands with the staff” (“such kindness permeates through all that they do”) and “the meal is unrushed” with “small, exquisite dishes served over the course of the evening”. You are advised to choose the five-course menu or ten-course one based on how long you want your meal to last: the former is £140 per person and the latter £185 per person. Top Menu Tip – “The apple macaron with chutney and liver parfait snack is the most amazing thing”.

“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?

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”.

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”.

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.