Imitation, so the saying goes, is the sincerest form of flattery. So I guess Birmingham's superb Lasan restaurant should be very flattered indeed.

I met Lasan's charming and innovative owner Jabbar Khan for lunch yesterday and he told me a fabulous story about a recent trip to India.

He was sitting in Mumbai railway station leafing through a local paper when he came across an advertisement for a local restaurant...carrying a picture of one of Lasan's dishes and describing it as one of the Mumbai restaurant's specialities.

With his obsessive drive to find new ways to prepare and serve food, Heston Blumenthal is an important figure in contemporary cookery.

His television programmes in which he sought ways to cook perfect versions of well known dishes were brilliant, though its unlikely any of us would create a deep, brick-lined pit in our back gardens to cook chicken tikka masala.

I wonder, though, abut his latest venture - a heavy, lavishly produced cookery book that sells for a hundred quid.

It's a sad fact that the vast majority of recipe books are never used. They simply adorn shelves or coffee tables.

One of Birmingham's unsung foodie heroes is a man whose name must be recognised by thousands of people.

Wing Yip is a remarkable figure - arriving in this country from China when he was a young man and working as a glass-washer in a restaurant before launching his own retail business.

Today it is a massive enterprise with large Oriental supermarkets around the country and its own range of ready-made sauces and other products that have found their way on to the shelves of mainstream shops.

The flagship store is right here in Birmingham, where Wing Yip still lives with his family.

Funny how some sites seem to be jinxed when it comes to restaurants.

A building at the bottom of Bennetts Hill in Birmingham city centre has been used by a number of eateries which came and swiftly went.

Now the space has been taken over by the imposing Barry Sherwin, owner of the nearby Red bar, and renamed The House.

The concept is that it will be a proper brasserie - offering everything from sandwiches to more sophisticated dishes any time of the day.

We in the West Midlands don't have many unique culinary delicacies, though I guess Glynn Purnell's professed Brummie Fusion food is redressing the balance somewhat.

Traditional local dishes, though, have largely been forgotten - with the exception of faggots, which make an occasional appearance on restaurant menus.

That's something to rejoice because they are wonderful things, especially served with onion gravy.

I ate faggots, onion gravy and mash at the Kitchen Garden Cafe iin Kings Heath on Friday night and left a very happy man indeed.

Any keen and competent cook will tell you that they love working with expensive ingredients, but get an even bigger thrill from turning cheap ingredients into something good.

A fillet steak, for instance, merely needs to be slapped in a hot pan and given the briefest of cooks to emerge tender and tasty. A slice of foie gras likewise.

But there's a greater sense of achievement in transforming something that's overlooked into a nourishing, flavoursome dish.

And that's why I'm chuffed about tonight's dinner.

Like some lonely phantom, I am tonight wandering the upper corridors of my house while, below, wine glasses chink, laughter rings out and food is enjoyed.

My wife has invited two of her old (oops...bad choice of word there) friends from university for dinner and, because I didn't get round to organising anything to do, I'm at home and under strict orders to make myself scarce. In my own house. On Saturday night.

And, to make matters worse, they are eating food that I've cooked: silky, home-made pasta turned into ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach and served with a light tomato sauce.

In between fulfilling the onerous duties of their jobs, three colleagues are spending a lot of time chatting about cooking.

The reason: all three have started a cookery course together.

They're taking about filo pastry parcels and red pepper risotto and homemade ravioli and all sorts of other dishes that they're producing at night school.

At one time, of course, domestic science lessons at school would have equipped them with the skills needed to cook. Sadly those days have largely disappeared.

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.

The old debate about which is the better city - Birmingham or Manchester - has reared its ugly mug again.

What a load of hot air. Brum is clearly the winner.

Manchester doesn't have a single Michelin starred restaurant while Birmingham has Simpson's and - i predict - will have two more starred restaurants - Purnell's and Edmunds - when the fat bloke's new guide is published in the new year.

The standard of curry houses in Manchester is not as high as it is in Birmingham and I've not been impressed by the Chinese meals I've eaten up there either.