Results tagged “Raymond Blanc” from Birmingham Mail - Restaurant Spy

Watching the latest episode of that fabulous television series The Restaurant, I'm not at all sure I'd want to visit an eatery run by any of the contestants.

Certainly not the father and daughter team - though she seems an excellent cook, dad has no front-of-house skills and a stroppy disposition when challenged.

The lifelong friends, too, are mismatched - again, one's a decent cook, though uncommunicative, while the other can't even ensure the punters have cutlery.

None of the other contenders fill me with confidence either. Especially the pair who think Welsh/Chinese fusion is a good idea and the guy who doesn't know when food is under-seasoned.

Some years ago Raymond Blanc told me that the UK lacks the same sort of regional cuisine that exists in France because we don't have the climate differences that exist in his country.

He had a point but there there are foods that we associate with particular parts of the country - Lancashire hotpot obviously, Irish stew, Geordieland's pease pudding, Cornish pasties, haggis, faggots in the West Midlands and that legendary dish groarty dick specifically in the Black Country. And there are others.

The exception seems to be Wales where, despite having some fine produce from the land and sea, there isn't a stand-out dish. At least, not one that springs to my mind. But perhaps I'm wrong. No doubt the Welsh won't be shy about expressing their views if that's the case.

I ate many times at Brasserie Blanc - or Le Petit Blanc before it was renamed - and will be sad to see it close.

Though the food seldom caused me to dance with joy, the dishes were always well conceived and skilfully executed.

And it helped banish the notion that Birmingham was a culinary backwater. For that Raymond Blanc deserves our thanks.