Former Hampton Manor head chef Rob Palmer opens his ambitious first restaurant in Solihull on the outskirts of Birmingham next Friday, 18 March. Toffs by Rob Palmer will have an open kitchen and just 26 covers, including six at a bench overlooking the chefs at work. Rob grew up nearby in Castle Bromwich and has […]
Glynn Purnell, whose Purnell’s in Birmingham city centre is hailed as the second best restaurant in Britain in the new Harden’s 2022 guide, is to open his first venue outside the city in Henley-in-Arden next month. The Mount by Glynn Purnell is a refurbished historic pub – formerly the Butchers’ Social – on the high street […]
Gino D’Acampo is planning to launch a string of Italian restaurants under his Luciano brand this year, with venues in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield all in the pipeline. The celebrity chef, pictured with Cheshire reality TV star Christine McGuiness at the opening this week of Luciano – named after his first-born son – in Alderley […]
The trio behind long-running Birmingham city centre restaurant Opus, which closed down in the face of pandemic losses after 15 years in May, have launched a new venture in Edgbaston, appropriately named Chapter. Ann Tonks, Ben Ternent and Irene Allan (pictured above) say the new venue, in Greenfield Crescent, Edgbaston Village, will focus on top-quality […]
Albert’s Schloss, Manchester’s Bavarian-inspired beerhall and Alpine restaurant, opens a spinoff in Birmingham on Monday (6 December), in the city’s Paradise Forum. Billed as an ‘escape from the modern world’, the Schloss will offer live music and cabaret, a wide range of beers, wines and cocktails, and a menu of rib-sticking classics such as cheese […]
Qavali, a glamorous Indo-Persian restaurant, opened this month in Birmingham’s Brindley Place, inspired by the ecstatic Sufi singing tradition (also known as qawwali) whose adherents stretch from Turkey across Iran and Afghanistan into India and Pakistan. With a menu that takes “the best dishes from each cuisine” in this region, the 250-seat venue features a […]
When Grace Dent reviewed The Langham’s new ‘pub’ The Wigmore, she decided she never, ever wanted to go there again. We would hazard a guess that The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin would be quite happy to go back any time…“Silly? A bit. Delicious? Oh yes.” “Creative cocktails in their own weeny tankards… pies and roasts and toasties… reimagined […]
A new Indian street food restaurant will open on the original site of Adam’s (it moved to Waterloo St last year) in Birmingham later this month. Indian Streatery will offer grab-and-go grub by day and dining and cocktails by night. Its founders have already made a name for themselves in the city as Indian Rasoi with […]
Chef-entrepreneur Atul Kocchar will open his first UK restaurant under the Not Real Indian (NRI) brand in Birmingham this September, serving cuisine developed by Indian cooks living abroad. Born in India and trained with the Oberoi group, Kocchar made him name at Tamarind in London and in 2003 opened his Mayfair flagship Benares. He launched NRI in Mumbai last year, and […]
⦿ AA Gill of the Sunday Times opened his review of The Magpie Café 5/5 in Whitby with the bombshell that he has cancer, an announcement that – uniquely perhaps for a restaurant review – was trailed by a front-page report. “I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English,” he wrote, promising to let his readers know […]