Itihaas
18 Fleet Street, Birmingham
Telephone: 0121-212 3383.
Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, noon-3pm, dinner, Mon-Sun, 6-11pm (10.30pm Sun).
Price £35-£45 a head for a large meal with beer or wine.
Score: 8.75/10
It seems a long time, quite possibly because it is, since the great city of Birmingham was an indolent comic's cheap laugh and its culinary image rested entirely on whether that queenly cook, Shughie McFee, was having a good day in the kitchens of the Crossroads Motel. Crossroads has come, gone, come again and gone again since then, and for the past decade a resurgent centre that always strikes me as a giant amusement park for the nation's cranes has seen all the redevelopment accompanied by a slew of fancy restaurants, several with Michelin stars. Yet, for all that, and old prejudices dying hard, the palatial splendour of Itihaas came as quite a surprise to me.
The palace being hinted at here is, I'd guess, that of a Moghul princeling with dreams of hosting a viceroy in the late 19th century. Downstairs is a salon privée known as "tiffin room with butler", while the upstairs "Colonial Room" is as grand a dining area as you are likely to encounter, bedecked by marble and slate and antique relics, packed with finely wrought, wooden Rajasthani furniture, and ably patrolled by a large staff smartly clad in Nehru jackets and saris. Someone has really wedged up here to create a theatrical setting of the kind that's seldom associated with that part of Brum known as "the Balti Triangle" - and that someone is Raj Rana, a young local jeweller/property developer making his first foray into catering.
Included in any list of restaurant disaster formulae should be one that holds: "Dramatically ornate decor to the point of deflecting attention from food + twentysomething owner with no experience of difficult industry = voluntary liquidation within nine months." So much for the formula. A couple of years into its life, Itihaas has been recognised as the country's best Indian at the Cobra Good Curry Awards (the brewery, that is, not Jacqui Smith's emergency committee; really, how would they find the time?) - and no wonder, because Rana has underpinned his grandiose ambitions with the hiring, from a swish Delhi hotel, of a truly outstanding chef called Amardeep Saka.
After bathing our hands in rose petal-sprinkled water bowls (I love little touches like that), we ordered grotesquely from an inventive menu that ranges for influences across India and beyond, and raved about almost everything. One disappointment were bland Chingari prawns, but dainty chunks of lamb in a medley of herbs and spices (naram garam gosth) were rich and lustrous, while wild mushrooms baked with black pepper and chilli (kumb ki kushbuh) had the appealingly clean, zingy afterkick of north-eastern Thai cuisine.
An endearingly over-attentive manager filled the inter-course hiatus with a discourse on regional cuisines, reluctantly leaving when the three main courses and side dishes arrived. Of these, the least good was masala champay - four cutlets baked in the tandoor in a delicate, paprika-based marinade that deserved better lamb. Mediocre meat needs more spirited saucing, and this a dish called hara bara gosth certainly got, the lamb this time tenderised by slow cooking in a gravy of cumin, chilli and garlic that was so delectable my friend identified the dish as "the Paul Ince of curries - it's the Guv'nor." Saka's talent was confirmed by a dish of his own invention which, for Italianate reasoning that remains opaque, he calls murgh aur masala ki milan: a sharp, piquant and spectacularly good chicken in another beautifully spiced gravy. Deep-fried okra was pointless, but sizzling shallots with chilli was as sparkling a side dish as I've eaten in a long time. Hot carrot cake with kulfi was a refreshing twist on the sickly, synthetic puddings usually offered as desultory after-thoughts in Indian restaurants.
"That is one of those rare places in which you can't help eating and eating, even though you know full well it's going to make you feel ill," said my friend as we waddled away, and while I doubt that punters gorging themselves into stomach cramp forms a central part of Rana's elegant, palatial vision, I hope he will take that as the gluttonous compliment it's intended to be.
