4 Excellent Places We Ate In Birmingham.
Traditional Japanese and Korean dishes, a fancy French restaurant and some excellent Bao in Brum.
Our last (probably - never say never!) ‘trip’ this year was a short, semi-working few days away in Birmingham at the turn of the month where we rented an AirBnb, had some truly terrible Deliveroo breakfasts (even the old fail-safe of a McDonald’s muffin was ruined by a careless delivery driver, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of their hash browns so flat!), but otherwise had some excellent meals I need to tell you about. Shall we crack on?
For more of my food-focused travel diaries here on ingredient, do check out my adventures in Vienna, Mexico, Tuscany, Barcelona, and the West Country.
I love Birmingham for the food. Heading North, I adore (and therefore will never say no to a trip to) Newcastle, and whilst I’ve never quite understood Manchester’s ‘vibe’, I always know that excellent food will be had in Birmingham. Last time I was there we had some truly excellent modern-Indian food and I experimented with plant based fine dining, but this time most of my focus was on hunting down excellent East Asian food.
Mount Fuji
I think Mount Fuji, an unassuming Japanese restaurant tucked away in the outside bit of the Bullring surrounded on all sides by big chain restaurants is a (not so hidden, with it’s location) gem. I spied it when I first got off the train, and even though all the music seemed to be Disney show tunes, I otherwise had an absolutely lovely, tranquil, delicious time sitting by the window for a few hours with my kindle.
They’re also a green tea shop, and the selection is exceptional: I enjoyed three excellent cups with my toasted rice green tea tea bag (free water refills) before moving onto the good miso soup that came with my lunch. A good clean flavour with excellent quality tofu, miso soup does not have to be complicated to be done well (far from it in fact) but it does need to be done like all good Japanese food with care and a thought to the quality of the ingredients.
The other part of my lunch was a sashimi donburi (raw fish rice bowl) with well seasoned rice, fresh, generous, flavourful fish and two slices of the best tamago (rolled and seasoned cold Japanese omelette) I’ve ever had. I would say get this, along with the soup it was fantastic, but the traditional bento and noodle soups on other tables also looked like things worth going for.
Do leave room however for the homemade matcha chiffon cake with red bean whipped cream. Light, delicate and with just the right level of sweetness, it was the perfect example of Japanese sweets done right.
Tiger Bites Pig
Recommended to me by my friend (and excellent home cook and professional gardener) Gem, Tiger Bites Pig is a tiny, unassuming cookhouse in the streets between the edge of Chinatown and New Street Station which does big business in takeaway bao, but also has a couple of places to perch inside for lunch or dinner.
My friend Jon and I ordered up a storm with fried chicken bao (excellent he said, with a good mandarin hot sauce and spring onions), a red braised pork belly one (with sour mustard greens, blitzed peanuts and coriander which he also really enjoyed), duck (cured, steamed and fried, and served with xo duck sauce and pickled coriander stems which was utterly fantastic - get this), and beef shin which I seemed to have forgotten to photograph, tasty but underwhelming compared to the duck, rescued by the addition of oyster mushrooms, crispy shallots and a cured egg yolk.
Their cold fragrant aubergine salad on the side is also worth a shout if there are more than one of you (full of textures and contrasts with a vinegary sauce), and for the train on the way home I shunned station Wasabi or Itsu in favour of one of their rice bowls: white cut poached chicken, house pickles, greens, sesame rice and another cured yolk. I was unsure about the mustard greens, but the rest was exactly what I needed.
Topokki
Unless I’ve got a distinct craving for bibimbap, or someone is dining with me which always means barbecue (which in Birmingham unlike in London is still cooked over proper flame), my go-to order at any Korean restaurant is a plateful of tteokbokki (rice cakes) stir fried in a spicy gochujang sauce with veggies and fish cake ribbons, and a kimchee pancake (my BBC Food recipe for these should give you some idea!) Whilst I believe that the peak of both of these dishes in the UK can be found at Little Korea in London’s Chinatown, I do want to recommend Birmingham’s Chinatown versions at Topokki to you.
The restaurant is unassuming with second hand classroom chairs and tables, the green tea is again excellent, and the food is cheap (even cheaper in fact if you pay by cash instead of card). The tteokbokki are toothsome, saucy and home-style with a generous amount of fish cake (though if you’re getting this as a group rice is needed to mop up all that sauce) but the true triumph is the pancake: sweet, caramelised kimchee nuggets, a tender, almost gooey middle, and with a crisp outside with whatever the griddle pan equivalent of wok hei (the name from the smoky taste you get from cooking in a traditional wok) is adding that final special touch.
Of course I could not eat that amount of heavy carbs by myself in one sitting; get the rest of the pancake to takeaway as it always makes an excellent breakfast the next morning.
Orelle
Shall we throw a French restaurant in for good measure?
Orelle is where I’d recommend in Birmingham for something fancy. Excuse the dotted out face-of-J, but I wanted to show you the beautiful view and the general fancy-luxe vibes. The wine list is excellent, and has lots of good price points (which have no impact whatsoever on if they decant your red for you or not) and all the food was excellent. It was a late sitting so we skipped starters, but J’s fillet of beef with miso carrot, potato puree and peppercorn sauce was exceptional and much enjoyed whilst I luxuriated in the first of the new season porcini mushrooms in a flawless risotto.
If it’s still on when you visit whilst the creme brûlée with shortbread was traditional and good, the confection of chocolate mousse and yuzu on a walnut brownie base is something to savour. Whatever the banana rum thing was on the cocktail list was also exceptional… but apparently deadly, because it was very much time for bed after that!
The only thing better than eating vicariously by reading salivatingly about meals (better only in that it never puts on weight) is following up great tips like these. Thank you for them! I'm sitting on my hands so as not to buy a train ticket right now to Brum.