BANK BIRMINGHAM
MORE canals than Venice, more trees than Paris, more hills than Rome. Jewel of empire. Cradle of the British revolution that truly changed the world. Crib of the Cham- berlains and Sir Dick Knowles; home of Hattersley and Jenkins. Underloved, unlove- ly heimat of insouciant pride. It is a measure of its people's easy confidence that Birming- ham is so far behind every comparable European city in the provision of 'proper' restaurants. They just don't care. If you want Balti, you're in the right place; it was invent- ed in Brum. If you're after bruschetta, you'll probably find that as well, on some unself- consciously kitsch brand-new pavement piazza. But if it's barquettes Bagration that turn you on, or anything else vaguely classi- cal, you're more likely to meet it almost any- where in urban Britain but here.
In the last couple of years the lazy giant has begun to stir, but only just. A Petit Blanc opened in Brindleyplace (yes, that really did count as a major leap forward); Gilmore, St Pauls and the Jam House lead the rejuvenation of Hockley and the Jew- ellery Quarter; Jonathan's (for years the only serious non-ethnic restaurant in Britain's wealthy, otherwise vibrant second city) is still there.
And now there is Bank. The original opened in London in 1996, to critical acclaim and commercial reward. Here was big, sophisticated brasserie eating for the Nineties: buzzy, minimalistic distraction for over-wealthy youngsters who had grown up on the dance-floor not expecting to be able to converse. The food was generally thought to be good. For style reasons, it was important that it be so. Poor food would have been tacky; and that wouldn't do. But you could serve flambeed dog-face with an apricot glaze to the smug grotesques who pack the place, and not five in 100 would notice the difference.
Speaking of which, I took my school- friend Eddie Hughes, who is a Conservative councillor in Walsall, to the second Bank, in Birmingham. He is a fine man, but not a great gourmet. As we sat down (45 minutes late at about 9.45 p.m., but without causing eyebrows to raise; in London we would have been sent to stand in the corner) he remind- ed me of his habit of taking the raw ingredi- ents of a meal — chicken breast, broccoli, Carrots, potatoes, glass of milk and a nice fresh fruit salad — throwing them in a blender and drinking the product in three or four gulps. When the wife is away, Eddie explains, it just doesn't seem worth cooking and eating when one can blend and drink one's dinner in a fraction of the time. Bril- lat-Savarin he is not.
He began with half a lobster grilled with butter. And, to give him his due, he made all the right noises about what a splendid lobster it was, and how he could see what he'd been missing by throwing his meals into the blender. `Mmm This is really deli- cious. I'm really enjoying this lobster,' he kept saying, like a radio soap-opera charac- ter desperately setting the 'man in restau- rant really enjoying lobster' scene. Obvi- ously, I knew he was lying. He would have said exactly the same if I'd given him a plate of deep-fried cockroaches coated in slime and told him they were baby lob- sterettes in a spittle sabayon. Pressed, he admitted as much. But I appreciated his making the effort to lie. Sincerity is super- fluous in matters superficial. My own first course was pea risotto with Gorgonzola. It's something I often order it having become restaurant-fashionable in the mysterious way that certain dishes do but which always disappoints. The peas are never up to the job. The whole point of risi e bisi (which is traditionally more soupy than a conventional risotto; the Venetians, who are its masters, call it a minestra) is that it is made with the tiniest, sweetest spring peas. At the best of times it is hard to fmd such things in Britain. As Elizabeth David wrote in Italian Food, 'Those bigots who will not hear of an eatable green pea anywhere but England . . . would think otherwise if they had eaten the sugary, brilliant little peas from the Roman countryside.' The miracles of deep refrigeration notwithstanding, the apotheosis of the pea was never likely to be found in Birmingham in January. A pea `Yes, dear, you look like I've got a million dollars.' stock, made with the pods, would have helped, but I suspect that chef Idris Caldora was using chicken. Not that it would have stood much of a chance against the Gor- gonzola. And not, on the other hand, that it wasn't a perfectly pleasant risotto, because it was. It just didn't taste of pea.
Sea bass was agreeable too. I can't say it changed my life. Indeed, I can't really remember it particularly well. But I recall that it gave me what I considered at the time to be a perfectly acceptable level of pleasure. One is sometimes in danger, as a restaurant critic, of neglecting the normal in favour of the easy laughs and greedy slavers of the culinary extremes. Some sea bass is filthy, which is funny, while other sea bass is sublime, which can be sexy. Most of it, though, like the piece I had at Bank, is just sea bass.
Confit of duck leg, by contrast, is a sub- ject from which one should always be able to wring a few pretentious allusions. My friend Eddie, for instance, could not help but recall the old apophthegm, 'A Gascon will fall to his knees for a good confit.'
`How true that is, blender-boy,' I replied. `Have you been reading Paula Wolfert's Cooking of South-West France? I'm sure she mentions that vieux macron in one of her delightful excursions into la vie confite. And doesn't she also let slip that "confit is less a recipe than a way of life"? Isn't that just so true as well? Only yesterday I gobbled some goose that I had confited myself before Christmas. Wonderful stuff.'
`Mmm. That's right. It's really delicious, this confit of duck,' said Magimix Man with a slightly bemused, but politely indulgent, mien.
As a room, I much prefer Bank Birming- ham to its southern parent, The open kitchen, long bar and long glass corridor connecting it to the dining area have been imported from London. But the Brum- magem Bankenstein (to adapt a sobriquet once applied to John Bright, even though he was from Rochdale) is a smaller, lighter, quieter, much more pleasant space in which to eat.
The Bank group is unusual among British restaurants in training its staff at least to the basic standards one would take for granted in France. The London restau- rant suffers by comparison with the Birm- ingham branch, though, because most wait- ers in the former seem actually to be French, and are therefore rude, whereas in the latter the staff are mainly Brummies, and thus charming.
The food will not set the world ablaze, but neither will it seriously disappoint, which is probably more important. What is more, the restaurant is a relaxed, unpretentious place. In fact I enjoyed the new Bank so much that it almost made me stop hating the old one. Which is high praise indeed.
Bank, 4 Brindleyplace, Birmingham; tel: 0121 633 4466. .E50 per head including wine, coffee and tip.
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