No 9 Church Street, Church Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, 01789 415 522
8/10

One of the biggest gaps in Birmingham’s dining scene remains the dearth of good – as in “good enough to go back every week without being bored out of your mind” – neighbourhood restaurants.

We have starry wonders weaving their magic at the special occasion/corporate account/lottery winner end of the market. Most of these places remain the best bet for a well cooked, decent value lunch.

Then there are a smallish number of good independents matching great produce to sound technique and convivial surroundings. The number is increasing but the pace of growth, considering Brum’s new-found culinary credentials and a population topping a million, is sluggish. Interestingly, the city’s biggest population group is the 20-29 bracket, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the population.

The same figures, from the Office for National Statistics, also reveal there are 7,127 people in the 90+ age category, suggesting there in untapped niche potential for manufacturers of stewed fruits.

But why have I done the sums on Birmingham’s population? Have I grown a beard, changed my name to Colin and re-trained as an actuary?

No, I have done so in the interests of restaurant science and the reason is this: the figures show there are an awful lot of people – 192,006 to be exact – in their 20s in Birmingham. By comparison, there are 137,023 in their 30s and 134,830 in their 40s.

I’d give you the figures for the 50s’ cohort but let’s be honest here, no one really cares about 50-year-olds. I know this because I’m only five years away from oblivion and I can already smell the desperation.

But back to the 20-somethings: they rule the roost. This matters because although people’s food tastes may be shaped in their childhood and teens, it is only once they hit their 20s that non-members of the Bullingdon Club start enjoying the sort of disposable income required to go to a restaurant. Capture this audience in their early 20s (and as the figures show, there are plenty of them) and they will keep coming back.

By their 30s, the lure of the city centre’s bright lights wanes. By their 40s, diners start getting nose bleeds if they leave their home district. So neighbourhood restaurants make sense. Roll out the red carpet to a 20-year-old, serve him or her satisfying plates of good food, match the chain restaurants as close as profitably possible on price, exceed them on quality and you’ve got a sustainable business plan.

What’s more, people have an affinity with their local Italian, French, whatever, that they never have with a bland chain managed from Milton Keynes. They will fall in love with their local restaurant; pulses quicken at the mention of it.

Now love may be too strong a description for how I feel about No 9 Church Street, but I am definitely smitten and more than happy to engage in some flirting, possibly with a view to light petting.

No 9, inevitably, isn’t in Birmingham. It is in Stratford-upon-Avon. Warwickshire, it would seem, do local restaurants rather better than we do in Birmingham. Despite the city’s reputation, I know people in Warwick and Leamington who insist it’s not really worth the journey. I happen to think they are wrong, but I get the point.

Birmingham, certainly, needs more places like No 9. It is owner-managed, independent, and one of the bosses, Wayne Thomson, is the head chef. For many years, Thomson was head chef at New Hall in Sutton Coldfield, where he managed both the flash restaurant and the brasserie. I always had the feeling his food and outlook was best lent to something in between these two styles of cooking and that’s exactly what he’s done at No 9. You can tell when a chef is happy and confident in his food and Thomson is both of these.

He has gone into business with friend and colleague Dan Robinson, taking over a 400-year-old Grade II listed building in the old town, away from the Shakespeare rubber-neckers. The place has a homely feel, the bar situated downstairs by the kitchen, while the dining room is on the first floor. The bar’s lunch-time specials board tells you the sort of reassuring territory we are in: soup is courgette and elephant garlic, there is a seared beef rump with asparagus, rocket and green bean salad, and a summer berry Pimms jelly with Champagne sorbet. The three-course lunch and pre-dinner menu is £16.50. The bloke’s giving it away.

I had hoped to sneak in under the radar and was surprised to see Thomson, who clocked me immediately, front of house. A waitress had called in sick so he was serving rather than cooking. “It’s what you have to do when you’re the boss,” said Thomson with a smile.

I like that, the spirit of mucking in as well as having the confidence to leave the food to the sous chef despite the appearance of an annoying reviewer. Thomson, quite simply, loves running his own restaurant and it shows. The place just feels right.

I umm-ed and ahh-ed over the menu because it’s got lots of things that I like. I was tempted by the spring lamb sweetbread fritters with a pickled carrot salad, but had my eye on lamb for a main course.

So I had the three variations of wild sea bass and loved it. The ingredient is king here, not the chef’s ego, and a finer tasting of bass won’t come my way for a while. The ceviche was mildy tangy and the spice dumplings in a light golden consommé worked well, invoking Asian influences without the too common English vulgarity of being overworked.

But the best bit, the best bit of the whole meal in fact, was a simply grilled crescent of fish with pesto potatoes. Boy it was sweet. I would happily eat a bigger version as a main but maybe it was so good because it was offset by the two other preparations.

Pink Cornish spring lamb came with hearty French-style roast garlic and Middle Eastern influenced spiced aubergine and cous cous, the plate sweetened up with fresh peas and mint from an English country garden. The dish felt like it had been prepared for me, a welcomed guest, not a faceless customer. If I say it was like posh home cooking I do so in the most complimentary way possible. The cous cous, described as fragrant Israeli, could have been more fragrant, but it didn’t really matter.

So far, so good, but it will go pear-shaped on the dessert, I told myself. And do you know what? I was wrong. I just loved the spiced pineapple, wrapped in the crispiest of crispy brik pastry and accompanied by a frozen pina colada. The parfait was sandwiched in brik too and looked like a remade ice cream wafer from the seaside. How can you not like that? It worked well with a glass of luscious Dandelion Vineyard’s 30-year-old Pedro Ximenez, which is virtually a pudding in its own right, bursting with toffee, figs, syrup and citrus.

Dinner for one was about £50, including three glasses of wine. You could eat here far cheaper but I was in such a good mood I didn’t want to.

No 9 also has a private dining room for 10 in the rafters. If I had a birthday, I’d go there. But I’d rather Thomson set up shop in Birmingham and saved me the bus fare.