Richard McComb heads down to Fleet Street for a tasty treat, but leaves feeling rather hacked off.
Is it just me that doesn’t/didn’t get it?
It’s obvious, I suppose. The name of the place; the use of minimalist black and white on the website menu (when you can find it); the in-house newspaper-effect menus; the paper on which the limp calamari are served; the plug for Sunday roasts under the heading of: “Read all about it.”
For heaven’s sake, man, the place is called Fleet Street Kitchen. Fleet Street. FLEET STREET. You know, the place where newspapers used to be based. In London. DOH!
Except this Fleet Street is in Birmingham, and as far as I am aware this Fleet Street has never had anything to do with the newspaper industry, other than providing a canal into which drunken reporters could hurl themselves after a bad day at the office.
So the play on Fleet Street doesn’t really work, which could be a metaphor for Fleet Street Kitchen (FSK). In fact, it is a metaphor for FSK. The message, as the Mad Men say, is confused.
Here is a place that makes much of the fact it has the country’s first barbacoa grill of its type on which to cook meat and fish. Congratulations, or as they say in Hockley: Felicitaciones, buddy.
According to the FSK folks, they have these barbecues in northern Spain and they have special charcoal and stuff. They’re mad for a barbacoa in Bilbao. It’s very exciting. But a grill, to an extent, is a grill. The toothbrush has been redesigned many times but basically it remains a brush for teeth.
Jamie Oliver has a restaurant in London, not far from Fleet Street (the real one), called Barbecoa, spelt slightly differently with a middle “e”, which uses “fire-based cooking.” It’s got a grill. There is a Barbacoa restaurant in Liverpool. It’s been there for 31 years and was “overall winner of Sefton’s Best Bar None award.”
Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to have a grill but it does have a Sunday carvery. And a Bryan Ferry impersonator.
Back to Fleet Street, the one that has nothing to do with newspapers other than suicide attempts by hacks. I really wanted to like the place. It has got a nice story to tell about its “farm to table philosophy” and commitment to sourcing meat, including beef from Dexter and Hereford cattle.
It is the latest venture from Town & Country Inns, which runs Après and Mechu next door in Summer Row. FSK has a downstairs bar for people over 25. I don’t know what happens if you are 24. Clearly, the idea is to create a one-stop shop for bright youngish Brummies who like steaks and what they call cool beats.
FSK has possibly the naffest window display in British dining. It is not the display as such – lots of alluring bottles of Champagne, all beautifully lit – as much as the wording in the window.
In bold type, the casual observer reads: “We only use empty display bottles.” In other words: “There is no point smashing our nice new plate glass window because the Moët and Bolly are dummy bottles. They’re worthless.”
Classy. Only in Birmingham.
What a reassuring message to send out to customers: if you don’t nail it to the floor, the locals will walk off with it. It might be true, but it’s a bit offensive.
The “upstairs” restaurant, which is actually on the ground floor, has been impressively decked out. It’s all very nice: tiles, wood, light bulbs. I could give you the spiel but I’m not an interior design expert, so have a look online where the pictures speak far more eloquently than my words ever will. Good luck finding the menu on the website. It was there when I looked yesterday but as I write this review I can’t find it. Hopeless.
There is a lot of nice looking bread laid out in baskets, which you don’t get to taste unless you pay extra. Welcome to dining by commodity. My main course, which I’ll come to, cost more than £30. You’d think they might throw in a couple of rolls and butter for that, wouldn’t you?
Archie, who works in corporate PR and uses phrases like “senior stakeholders” without irony, had some wet, not very deep fried, not very hot, calamari to start. They looked as appetising as earlobes. My “big prawn cocktail” was indeed big and was kind of all right in that way that defrosted catering pack prawns are. The large prawn hooked over the glass had seen better days though and was turning black. “You’re not going to eat that, are you?” says Archie. Bear this in mind: Archie eats anything. I passed on the prize prawn.
There are fish dishes and chicken and other things I can’t remember (and can’t look up on the website because the menu is still missing). But the reason for coming to FSK is the steak. There are entry level rumps and ribeyes and fillets and sirloins and the top priced Dexter 16oz T-bone, which I had. I asked for it rare and anticipated a good scorched crust and blood. I got neither.
The steak was surprisingly anaemic – inexplicable, because Archie’s 12oz Dexter chop had good colour. If the chef was worried about over-cooking the meat and erred on the side of caution, he needn’t have worried. He over-cooked it anyway.
Now consider this: to the price of FSK’s premium T-bone steak, you add chips (£3), a sauce (£2.95) and a nibble of vegetable. Archie and I split some spinach, which costs £3 a portion, so say my bit cost £1.50. That means my main course came to... £30.40. The spinach was burnt. If the chef had smelled it before it went out he would have picked it up.
For dessert, I had the chocolate “foundant” [sic] with vanilla ice cream. The fondant was barely warm. I suspect it had been pre-cooked, blast chilled, lobbed in a microwave and not given enough zappage.
Archie had a knickerbocker glory that lacked knickers and bocker. It was effectively the fruit of an Eton mess (a dessert elsewhere on the menu) with some dairy matter swirled on top, crowned by a 1970s glacé cherry. The piece de resistance was a long handled metal device with a shallow scooped end that looked like it last saw service at Birmingham’s Women’s Hospital. Archie was meant to eat his pud with this and, to be fair to him, he gave it a go. Then there was an “Oh, no!” What had happened? Had Archie dropped the instrument on to his seat and accidentally impaled himself?
Thankfully, not. Archie had discovered the cylindrical handle of the implement was hollow and therefore straw-like. One could suck or blow through it, as he had just discovered. (I think he sucked.)
“Urrgghh. Imagine who else has done that. My senior stakeholders wouldn’t stand for this,” he said.
“Don’t be a girl. It will have been cleaned,” I said.
“But still. It’s put me right off.”
Archie asked for a non-gynaecological spoon. He looked pale. I thought he might give me his cherry. He wasn’t giving it to the waiter, I can tell you that.
The chirpy Spaniard delivered every course, or collected each dish, with the phrase “my friends.” As in “A good choice, my friends” or “Was everything all right, my friends?”
After an hour and half, £100 down, including a bottle of Rioja, Archie and I weren’t feeling very friendly.
I usually leave new restaurants three months to bed in before reviewing. FSK has only been going for a few weeks. By June, it might be brilliant. Or it might not be.
* Fleet Street Kitchen, Fleet Street, Islington Gates, Summer Row, B3 1JH Tel: 0121 236 01004/10
