I’m conscious that I can’t write about every nice meal I have in every nice restaurant. It would be boring for me, and boring for you to read about the same places over and over again. Truth is, we are creatures of habit who rarely leave Harborne. We saunter around the High Street, never with the decency to book ahead, eating and drinking in the same four or five spots. You could call it a perk of this, or you could see it as a perk of the postcode, either way, I come out in hives if I have to leave the B17 postcode for any other reason than to go to New Street Station, Opheem, or my hairdressers. In the year since I last wrote about Cuubo I have been, I think, four times. Once with Tom that ended up going in The Mail, another time with Crazy Joe and wife, another for Omar’s leaving do, and once to run up the road to see Will, eat some soup, neck a glass of wine and run off back to a meeting. Three and a bit times then. A pi of Cubbo. A very tasty pi at that.
I want to tell you that much has changed in that year, though that would be pushing the boundaries. Truth is Dan has just streamlined the restaurant, tightened it up, changed the seating and had a new frontage. The most noticeable change is the numbers; it’s just Dan in the kitchen now and Sara out the front. It’s occasionally frantic but it works. I know Dan well enough to know that his standards sit higher than most and that Sara understands the rhythms of the service to keep that in place. This time we are here for my father-in -law’s birthday. Tony. T-Dog. Big T. You get the point. Champagne connoisseur and chief dog sitter. I get a negroni, Sophie gets a sbagliato. The rest of the party turned up. Bubbles are poured. There is focaccia that’s bouncier than a pair of fake tits with an olive oil that likely costs as much as the procedure.
Most of us get the lobster to start. What a dish. I think it might be better than the sausage raviolo which I previously said was his best course. Poached lobster tail, borlotti beans, chicory. What makes it is the sauce, a bisque of sorts, that shows that the flesh might be celebrated but the shells do all the hard work. Dense with lobster and sea minerality with cognac lurking in the background, tomato providing colour and bitterness. The texture is crucial: no grit, no shell, no vegetable debris, just that extraordinary velvet that coats the mouth. It is ridiculously decadent. I want more bread to mop up the last of it so I ask for more bread. Others may be happy with a spoon. I am not that person.
Mains continue with the standard of ‘how does this place not have a star yet’. Slow cooked brisket in a sauce of the cooking liquor, with silky mashed potato and a lettuce with the flavours of a Big Mac (gherkins, cheese, yeast, bacon, if you’re wondering). An excellent risotto using aged Vialone Nano rice with sweet and sour tomatoes that are a little too pronounced in vanilla, and a quite brilliant chicken course with breast and crispy thigh using meat from Packington. What makes the chicken is the use of the childish, almost indecent sweetness of sweetcorn puree, and pancetta which arrives like the Italian uncle who has been drinking since lunchtime and improves the conversation by shouting. Together they make a remarkably complete little argument: sweet, salty, fatty and savoury.
You know where this is going. I know where this is going. But it’s a celebration so I couldn’t care less. By now the table is on bottle number six, with most of the red drank by this guy and this guy alone. We ordered all of the desserts to share and then another of the chocolate cherry bar because it was so good. Is it an ideal way to try to review them? Of course not. But what I can tell you is that the chocolate cherry is jammy and fudgey and damm right outrageous, more so with the mexican vanilla ice cream that takes me straight back to L’Ambrosie The lemon custard is still as great as it’s ever been, I didn’t get a look in with the strawberry one, and the figs on the figgy one were as delicious as they should be for the price he apparently paid for them. Like I say, there are better, more sober food writers out there. Not many admittingly, and you’ll have to look outside Birmingham to find them, but there are some.
The bill is many hundreds and Linda pays for her husband’s birthday, but realistically three courses and a bottle of wine to share is going to be about eighty quid a head, which is outstanding value. Cuubo wants you to believe that they are just a tiny neighbourhood restaurant, but the reality is they are so much more than that. This is a tiny neighbourhood restaurant that happens to house some of the very best cooking in the city. It’s one of my absolute favourites in Birmingham for good reason.
10/10
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