Despite my often
follicly
flawed appearance, my good pal Johnny “The BaBa” Shanahan happens
to be one of the *UK’s best barbers (*he’s
actually Irish but we won’t get into that).
Pestered by
our mutual mate Morgan Leahy (marathon
runner, shark fighter and cheese roller extraordinaire), Johnny moved from his native
Limerick to Manchester in 2014 to open the first ‘Barber Barber’ in the iconic
Barton Arcade.
Marketed to ‘scoundrels’
and ‘gentlemen’ alike, the old school barber experience they provide combines banter
and beer with some of the best barbering around. With the demand for the
highest quality men’s haircutting, traditional cut-throat shaving and beard
sculpting
so high, Johnny has since expanded with further branches in Liverpool, Leeds
and London’s Shoreditch.
In choosing
to open their
largest store to date, later this month in the prestigious Link
Street in Birmingham’s Bullring, Johnny and his fellow scoundrels have
obviously seen the same potential in the city that Chef
Adam Stokes saw when he first opened Adam’s Restaurant.
Having been
awarded a Michelin star, this year, Adam and his wife have expanded and moved their
original ‘pop up’ (here)
on Bennett St to a glitzy permanent site on Waterloo St.
In town to check to see how
the barber’s was coming together, I popped along to see the ‘new’ Adam’s and
have a quick lunch. At lunch, they offer a full tasting menu, the a la carte
and what turned out to be an exceptional value set lunch.
From the set lunch, I chose
the sweetbreads, chicken and apricot dishes but the meal started with a series
of snacks and excellent breads and butters.
I’d had the Beetroot
& goat’s cheese and
Steak tartare previously and these
were as good as I recall. The Chicken
skin & crab and Tempura prawns with
béarnaise were new to me and were top notch – the crab was especially enjoyable
with its burst of grapefruit.
Beetroot & goat’s cheese meringue
Steak tartare with mini egg yolks
Chicken skin, crab, grapefruit
& grilled corn
Tempura prawns with warm béarnaise
espuma
Lamb sweetbread, peas, broad
beans, hazelnuts – my
sweetbread starter was a deftly balanced and cleverly textured dish
with spikes of flavour from sweet alliums and pickled capers with milky sweetbreads
and the fresh crunch of hazel nuts and broad beans.
Chicken, haggis, girolles, Lincolnshire
poacher – the
chicken was another example of assured and intensely flavoured cooking. The
chicken itself was great quality and beautifully cooked; further flavour came
from Lincolnshire poacher gnocchi
and haggis bonbons.
Apricot, goat’s curd, earl grey,
almond – apricots are one
of my favourite fruits and with such a short season, I am always going to order
them when on a menu. A fresh, vibrant dish with goat’s cheese, earl grey and
almond.
Beetroot & elderflower meringue
/ Petit fours
With Barber
Barber and 5 excellent Michelin starred restaurants in the city, I can see
myself making regular trips down the M6 in the near future.
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