Amusing Bouches: Adam's, Birmingham, 24th October 2013

Obviously I'm happy for the brilliant team at Adam's that news of their great food and service is spreading (I guess the michelin star publicity hasn't hurt). However this does present a bit of a problem-they are now booked up for dinner until late November, and Saturday lunch until December. So I was very pleased to be able to get a reservation for dinner at pretty short notice thanks to a cancelation, especially as it had been over 2 weeks since my last visit and the current 5 course tasting menu looked really good. We opted to have the tasting wines as well.

The three "snacks" were are a really nice prelude to the main event. The beetroot meringue with goat's cheese was as good as I remembered, and having not had chemo for a few weeks I felt able to brave the mini steak tartare. Things got started with sea bream, orange buckwheat and lovely sweet tomatoes. Until recently I'd never tried Jerusalem artichoke but I think it might be my new favourite vegetable-in the second dish it was served 3 ways with egg yolk and chorizo. Next came pheasant with celeriac and an interesting battered button mushroom. By this point we had finished the third glass of wine (a pinot noir) and I'll admit I was starting to feel a bit tipsy so was slightly relieved the fourth course did not have a matching wine. It did however contain whiskey, in addition to cream and chocolate-I could have eaten about five times as much. The final desert of apple with cinnamon sticks and vanilla ice cream was a really refreshing way to end a great meal. I was pleasantly full and happy it would keep me going whilst NBM the following day.

To top everything off we were offered the chance to see the kitchen and meet the chef himself. In the few minutes that I spent chatting to Adam I decided that as well as being a great chef he is also a thoroughly nice bloke. I'm seriously starting to wonder how I coped before Adam's opened!