Purnell's
Address: 55 Cornwall Street, Birmingham
Telephone: 0121 212 9799
Meal for two, including wine and service £120
Stand back. I am about to get excited about a carrot, and believe me that's not a sentence I ever thought I would write. It's not that I have anything against carrots (although given the over-boiled, ruptured variety with their back taste of death that I was fed at primary school I would be entitled, I think, to hate them). I just find them too much themselves, too - oh God - orange to be worthy of eulogy. And then I tried the ribbon of carrot, flavoured with cumin and toffee, on my companion's plate at Purnell's in Birmingham and, well, the rest is just so much giddy saliva. The essential carroty-ness was there and the sensitive cooking had retained a little bite. But then came layers of flavour which added so much more to the story. We can argue over what makes a great cook, but surely this ability to show off the humblest of ingredients to the best of its advantage must be on the list?
And so to the headline news: I have eaten a truly great meal in Birmingham. The one thing that takes the lustre off this is that it was cooked for me by Glynn Purnell, the same guy who cooked me the last great meal I ate in Birmingham. That was at Jessica's in Edgbaston, where he won the city's first home-grown Michelin star. Now he has his own place in the city centre, where he is doing his thing with carrots and a whole bunch of other stuff besides. The site is much like the newly rejuvenated city in which it sits: sleek, sharp, self-aware and just a bit soulless. There's nothing wrong with the hard lines or the mix of beiges, browns and blacks. The chairs have legs. The tables are flat. It all functions, just without being obviously attractive. (To make up for it, they have a maitre d' of ludicrous beauty - the sort of chap who forces women to look away, and even a few straight men to momentarily reconsider their life choices.)
What matters, as ever, is the food, which is very attractive indeed. Purnell is a modern chef with both classical chops and a taste for whimsy. Take the canapes: on the one side Provencal olives, on the other sweet popcorn flavoured with intense, smoky paprika. He's also not scared of the occasional foam, but generally he holds to more obvious techniques. And even when he misses the mark, the effort is admirable, as in my starter, listed as 'poached egg yolk, smoked haddock milk foam, cornflakes and curry oil'. It arrived looking like a great alabaster breast, the nipple of yolk surrounded by a vast sea of smoky foam. Eaten together, these disparate ingredients suddenly made sense: it was a re-texturised kedgeree. This was fun food and clever food, though not necessarily something I'd order again. Unlike my companion's seared scallops with capers, punchy acidulated shallots and a tiny cake of skate and potatoes, all of it dressed with toasty beurre noisette. It was on the money (which is, in case you're wondering, £38.95 for three courses).
Those heroic ribbons of carrot turned up with some brill, cooked to a delicate but even texture in spiced coconut milk, on top of humble lentils with their own ballast of Indian spicing. There were similar references to destinations east of Istanbul in a dish of slow-cooked but caramelised lamb shoulder, flavoured with orange and saffron and topped with a cutesy turban of yogurt foam. Clearly Purnell is hot on his eastern spices, which is not something that normally thrills me. It reminds me of all those ludicrous dishes prepared by supercilious French super-chefs with the title 'au curry', as though the entire cuisine of India can be dismissed in one clumsy spice mix. And yet there is a subtlety to Purnell's cooking which makes it forgivable.
And so to the end of the meal, in which malt bread was wrapped in the lightest of pastry and deep fried to become an earthy confection, and served with a banana ice cream, nuts and splodges of caramel and dark chocolate. I have said before that a good dessert can't be faked; that it demands an innate understanding of why sweet is good, and based on this plateful I would imagine Purnell to be a three-Snickers-a-day guy. (Hell, among his petits fours is chocolate-covered peanut butter on a stick. That's filth, I tell you. Filth! Though in a good way.) Another dessert of a vanilla parfait with braised rhubarb and a syrup flavoured with tarragon was equally smart.
The wine list boasts lots of Old World choice at sensible prices, including, praise be, a reasonable selection of half-bottles - and the bar knows how to mix a kir, which is to say without drowning it in cassis. This is a young restaurant with a grown-up head on its shoulders, and the brisk trade was proof of that: it was a Tuesday lunchtime in August only weeks after the opening, and the dining room was full. Which is as it should be.
· Word of Mouth, The Observer's food blog, is at observer.co.uk/foodblog
