A summary of my 2011 Kinver gastronomic weekend!

A summary of my Kinver 2011 eats

My annual trip up to the West Midlands to visit The Quiff and Apple Geek for a gastronomic weekend. So here is a quick summary of my eats.

Blakelands, Country House and Restaurant
Halfpenny Green
Bobbington
South Staffordshire
DY7 5DP
www.blakelands.co.uk/restaurant.html
Date visited: Friday 5^th August 2011
Attendees: Myself and the Quiff and Apple Geek
Price of meal: total £100+ for all 3 of us, including; aperitif, service and coffee. Thank you to The Quiff and Apple Geek for treating me

Part of Blakelands grounds and house

Blakelands restaurant is within the Blakelands Country house and grounds, a lovely erm… country house as said where it would be nice to have a wedding. I do believe there was a wedding party on the evening we dined.

We started off in the cosy, country house bar where we sat in cosy arm chairs and sofas. Waiter service for our drinks (sorry can’t remember what they were) and where we get the restaurant menu which is very English with many yum sounding dishes. The lady who takes on the maitre’d role (though I couldn’t imagine Blakelands having a maitre’d) takes our dinner orders as we sup in the bar. About 10 minutes later she asks if we are ready to go through to the restaurant, which we are and do and our drinks are brought in.

As we sit down the friendly waitress takes over. There is bread on the table and we start munching as the friendly waitress brings over our starters.

Starters:
Myself: Mango, grapefruit and watermelon cocktail
The Quiff: Salmon and dill fishcake with sour cream, citrus dressed leaves
Apple Geek: Cream of mushroom soup, smoked bacon croutons

Grapefruit cocktail starter

An honest fishcake

Honest mushroom soup

I was expecting a leafy green salad with some fruit in it but what I got was fruit in a glass but not even the fruit I was lead to expect, it was just red and white grapefruit segments. It tasted very good but would have been better as a dessert rather than a confused starter. The Quiff’s fishcake was not the normal patty shape but a breadcrumb ball which was very well cooked and very tasty. I didn’t try the sour cream but it looked like whipped cream, I’m sure it tasted fine through. Apple Geek enjoyed his soup, I didn’t taste it but we can take his word for it.

Our empty dishes were taken away and our mains were brought out soon afterwards.

Main Course:
Myself: Guinea fowl breast, pork, orange and ginger stuffing, fine cointreau gravy
The Quiff: Shropshire lamb cutlets, finished with loganberry juice
Apple Geek: Fillet steak, black tiger prawns, melting garlic and parsley butter

Honest and hearty guinea fowl

Honest and hearty lamb chops

Impressive surf and turf

The mains were good sized portions on hot plates. My guinea fowl main was delicious; very cooked, still moist, tender and had good flavour. The stuffing was a bit too wet but you could certainly taste the orange with a very slight hint of ginger. The gravy was very nice again with just a hint of cointreau. The Quiff had fairly large lamb cutlets but there was a decent chunk of fat and bone on it. He really enjoyed it and had no complaints. Apple Geek had a very well cooked steak, good size, well seasoned and generally very good. There was a large handful of prawns which were again well cooked (it is so easy to overcook prawns become chewy). Apple Geek really liked it. Each dish came with roasted new potato on the plate but what impressed me the most was that each table gets complimentary vegetables and chips as accompaniments as standard without needing to ask. This is a stroke of brilliance and I think all non-budget restaurants should follow suit. We completely appreciated this! You could see the potato the chips were cut from and they were very good. The vegetables were fresh and we got; broccoli, carrots and French beans simply steamed of boiled, no seasoning so you add your own to taste or dip into your sauce. All in all the main courses were a big hit, we were happy eaters.

Complimentary veggies - genius!

Complimentary chips - genius!

The waitress is excellent, she asks us after clearing away the main course, if we want a few minutes before dessert – Yes! She could tell we were full, what attentive service, you know after 2 reasonable size courses to properly enjoy dessert you need a breather. She came back a few minutes later for our dessert order and, perhaps we had a breather, we also went for coffee. The waitress asked if we wanted the coffee in the bar – what a nice idea, yes please.

Dessert:
Myself: Warm apricot brioche bread and butter pudding
The Quiff: White chocolate and lime cheesecake, deliciously light
Apple Geek: Hot sweet waffle, chocolate and butterscotch sauce, Movenpick white chocolate ice cream and… whipped double cream (aka teeth rot with a side of clogged artery!)

Apricot bread and butter pudding

Light and tasty cheesecake

Sweet tooth stodgy yumminess

The desserts came and they looked good and apart from Apple Geek’s waffle (which we expected to be big) they were not too big and looked manageable. The bread and butter pudding was very good, not too sweet and not too stoggy. There was also a jug of warm cream to pour on top. You could taste hints of both the white chocolate and lime in the Quiff’s cheesecake which was, as they said, light too – excellent, what it says on the tin. Apple Geek’s waffle was, just as you expect – large, sweet, yummy. We all really like.

After dessert we retired to the bar where good coffee is brought over with Benedict mint disc. After a chat and laughter (as always, oh I have such brilliant friends) we get the bill (thanks again to The Quiff and Apple Geek for treating me). I got to the toilets before we leave. These are back towards the restaurant and then upstairs behind the bar. The womens is very pink, clean, spacious with carpet and an actual fluffy towel to dry your hands on.

Potent irish coffee, regular coffee and peppermint tea

Summary: Excellent! Great service – everything is just as you need, they have honed this down very well and made it very comfortable. Honest good food, well cooked with a good range of vegetarian dishes too and you know I love the complimentary chips and vegetables. Great location in a lovely building. Shame that it is in the middle of nowhere really but it just wouldn’t be the same on the high street. If you have the chance to visit it I highly recommend you do and it doesn’t break the bank either.

Black Country Living Museum
Tipton Road
Dudley
West Midlands
DY1 4SQ
www.bclm.co.uk
Date visited: Saturday 6^th August 2011
Attendees: Myself and the Quiff
Price of meal: £1.50 pp

Yummy heart attack chips

Proof of "goodness"!

Asked what I wanted to do on Saturday, I replied (like a geek) that I wanted to visit the Black Country Museum so The Quiff took me as Apple Geek was working. The only thing I will tell you about the Black Country Museum is that it a recreation of the mining community in the Black Country during the 1930s where you can go down a mine, walk through houses that actors sit in and will answer your questions and there are recreations of shops and businesses some of which actually function as shops. It was to one of these, possibly one of the most famous ones at the Black Country Living Museum, that The Quiff and I went for lunch. It was Hobbs’ Fish and Chip shops, which cooks its chips the traditional 1930s Black Country way – in beef dripping! The queue was fairly long and out of the shop when we arrived but as we were hungry we decided to line up and glad we did because the queue just kept growing. There is not much on the menu; chips, cod, roe and we saw some kids with scraps (deep fried batter bits) on top of their chips. The Quiff and I both got a bag of chips with salt and vinegar and sat in the shop to eat them. They were cut from the potato and tasted very very good. We munched away adding more salt and vinegar as we went. We could feel our arteries clogging as we were lining up and they were certainly clogging as we ate but it tasted so good. We were very happy eaters as were all the others who brought food from Hobbs. If you do go to the Black Country Living Museum you should certainly visit Hobbs and get lunch there.

Apple Geek hotel – garden
Somewhere in the West Midlands
No website
Date visited: Saturday  6^th August 2011
Attendees: Myself and the Quiff and Apple Geek
Price of meal: About £40 in total

The weather looked changeable but for a few moments the weather looked faintly sunny and as Apple Geek has an excellent gazebo with an outdoor heater we decided there has to be a barbeque, especially as so much meat was purchased for this very purpose! Whilst I busied myself with making a pathetic salad Apple Geek and the Quiff got on to doing the business of barbequing meat! The Quiff and myself went to Kinver village that very morning and acquired; 2x beef burgers, 1x pheasant and apricot burger (I think it was this?), pre-war sausages (no crap in them!), 3x fillet steaks. The butchers were very generous with the meat and in the end we didn’t cook the beef burgers and 1 of the steaks.

Pheasant burger and bit of salad

EXCELLENT steak!

The pheasant and apple burger was excellent – meaty but you could definitely taste the sweet apricot. The sausages known as pre-war as “there is no crap in them”, to quote Apple Geek, was just that. Very meaty and very tasty and well seasoned. The filet steak was expertly cooked to perfection by Apple Geek; still juicy and tender with excellent flavour. Much meat was consumed with some fresh bread we also picked up from the local bakery that morning with excellent salted butter brought all the way from France by Apple Geek his very self! Another successful and triumphant barbeque from Apple Geek made all the more English by the fact that the rain started to pelt it down as we were finishing our meat and we had to run like a troupe of acrobats in and out of the house to clear up as well as shelter the barbeque machine under the gazebo.

Sizzling pre-war sausages

Before the barbeque meat feast had begun Apple Geek and I baked a cake in order to recreate his yummy Victoria sponge from last year. Alas, perhaps it was because I helped out, perhaps we had taken the cake out of the oven too early the sponges did not come out in one piece and them they stuck together when we placed them on top of each other even though they had cooled! We had made up the jam and butter cream – what were we to do??? There was a wave of genius and a story told, it was then in the forge that is Apple Geek’s kitchen that The Kinver Mess was born! What is a Kinver Mess? Something the world’s top restaurants will be serving soon, that’s what!

Health conscious Kinver Mess

Inspired Kinver Mess

You take a healthy slice or chunk of the sponge, place into a bowl. You them dollop on as much jam and butter cream as is your preference and eat. You can choose to whizz it together to give it a more mess like appearance and blend the flavours as I like to do or keep your flavours separate as Apple Geek likes to and generously slosh chunks of sponge into the jam and butter cream as you go. This is an excellent dessert as you then get jam and butter cream on all bits of sponge, not just the middle and you don’t get an over load of butter cream at the end of the slice. Absolute delicious geniusness in a bowl! We proceeded to eat Kinver Mess throughout the weekend.

Bank Restaurant
4 Brindley Place
Birmingham
B1 2JB
www.bankrestaurants.com/birmingham_restaurant.html
Date visited: Sunday 7^th August 2011
Attendees: Myself and Apple Geek
Price of meal: £32 in total including drinks

Myself, the Quiff and Apple Geek were due to have brunch at Bank but the Quiff couldn’t make it in the end. We had booked a table the night before online but we could not get the time we wanted, 12pm, so we booked for 11.30am but when we arrived it was completely empty. Even at 12pm there were only a few more tables. I guess they don’t let you book when they expect it to get very busy.

Fresh and crunchy bread rolls

Anyway, Apple Geek and I arrived, were shown to a table(we had our pick really) and got bread rolls which were fresh out of the oven. These were really nice, hot, very crunchy on the outside and warm and fluffy in the centre with salted butter. Our main waiter was overly quiet/ softly spoken and sl-ow. He came over gave us the menu and would pause hovering over the open menu then point out slowly which bit was the lunch set menu. Then he asked us what we wanted to drink, we would tell him and it would take him a few seconds before he would acknowledge what we asked for as if it took the sound 5 seconds to hear him. Good thing we had time but I found it a little annoying especially when he was slow with serving the food.

Brunch starter:
Myself: Crayfish and mackerel salad and a grapefruit juice
Apple Geek: Earl Grey tea

Earl Grey, grapefruit juice and water

Crayfish and mackerel salad

I ordered from the set lunch menu which was 2 courses and a soft drink. The salad came after not too long a wait and was very good. There was a lot of crayfish and mackerel which was well cooked and the entire salad had good flavour. For a starter salad it was quite filling. I really enjoyed it and could have had it as a one course brunch if it was larger, they should really think about doing that.

Brunch main:
Myself: Gnocchi with sun dried tomato and peppers
Apple Geek: Full English breakfast without black pudding or tomato (so scrambled eggs, bacon mushroom and white toast)

Very good gnocchi

A semi-full English breakfast

The gnocchi was very well made and the sun dried tomato and pepper sauce had good flavour and well seasoned. It wasn’t drenched in the sauce, there was just enough, it wasn’t too greasy either/ overly olive oiled. Very good and I really enjoyed it.  Apple Geek enjoyed his Full English and said it tasted good. It was a lovely leisurely brunch and it was really nice to have some time to sit have a nice relaxing chat with Apple Geek.

The waiter came to clear the plates. He asked us if we had finished – ‘yes’ we replied and then there was a pause as he stood stock still, long enough for me to nearly say to him – ‘you can clear our plates away’ but just as I start to open my mouth he begins to move and clear the plates away. There was no one sitting anywhere near us and so I didn’t like the way he leaned over us to clear stuff, it was really disruptive.

Apple Geek and the Quiff had been to Bank before and on their first visit they didn’t like it as they were sat where the walk way was and it was not a pleasant experience. I could tell from the layout of the restaurant there were too many tables and arranged in a grind like pattern which was uninventive and not good for comfortable dinning.

Apple Geek hotel – kitchen
Somewhere in the West Midlands
No website
Date visited: Sunday 7^th August 2011
Attendees: Myself and the Quiff and Apple Geek
Price of meal: unknown

First thing on Sunday morning the Quiff began chopping beef and vegetables, making stock and putting it all into the slow cooker and leaving it to cook. The results of this hard work paid off and we were going to eat it on Sunday night with peas and new potatoes brought from the local grocers in Kinver village. When Apple Geek and myself got back from our brunch and shopping we gave the beef stew a mix and added about large and generous glug of red wine into the stew. We think this added something extra nice to the stew.

Sorry no photos of the amazing stew but this is a photo of the pumpkin pies The Quiff made but I didn't get to taste as there was too much food!

When we eventually began eating the stew it was delicious! The Quiff cut the beef into large chunks which fell apart in the mouth tender and soft and the slow stewing meant they were full of flavour. The vegetables were soft but not disintegrating as I thought they maybe having cooked for that long. The sauce was also delicious as it had the flavours from the meat, vegetables and seasoning. We also had bread and butter as accompanying the meal.  Thanks very much to the Quiff for preparing and cooking the lovely stew.

Thanks very much to the Quiff and Apple Geek for another brilliant and gastronomic weekend!