Dear Editor, Based on comments in our restaurant guide, Richard McComb asserts that when it comes to the Michelin stars showered on Birmingham in recent years – “we must think the compilers… have been quaffing excess eau de vie” (Post, December 3).
Nonsense. We come to conclusions very consistent with the Frenchmen, and note that the city is now the third best UK city for high quality Anglo-French (or, as it is often called, Michelin-style) cooking. That is not “damning with the faintest of praise”.
Our less supportive observation was that what’s odd about Birmingham is that these rich icing-on-the-cake restaurants don’t really seem to have much in the way of support from a marzipan layer beneath.
Curiously, Mr McComb doesn’t dispute we’ve got this fact right – “there really is a dearth of solidly good middle market restaurants”.
But nonetheless he seeks to brand our comments as in some way unfair by saying it is always so “in any city there is always a gulf between the big hitters and the next rung”.
Mr McComb is entitled to this last view, but there is no evidence for it. It is not the case in London, and our annual survey of restaurant-goers across the UK – the only one of its type – suggests it isn’t the case in any other major centre either. Big hitters most commonly have lesser hitters just underneath them.
Richard Harden,
Peter Harden,
Editors Harden’s UK Restaurant Guide.
