Let’s be honest, it’s been a crap year for Birmingham hospitality. Looking back at the fifty-odd restaurants I have written about this year, only two stand out as being noteworthy new additions to my home city in Kynd and Perro. We just aren’t opening places to get excited about, relying instead on homogenised outposts of national chains to plug the gaps and line their pockets. Blame the economics all you want, but it’s depressing to see Manchester get better and better, and Borough in London open stone cold killer after stone cold killer, whilst we open yet another bad steak house. I’ve said it for months but someone should have opened an Ozzy restaurant given the amount of people who successfully dined-out on him this year.
Anyway, you can add Trillium to the very short list of great openings this year, and boy does the city centre need it. You’ve probably read about how it’s from Phil from Loki and Glynn of Purnell, but arguably more impressive is the team they have pulled into it; Rob Palmer who won Hampton Manors first star, Jordan the manager, Rume from 670grams and Toffs as sommelier, a couple of lads from Simpsons I know on front of house, and that’s just on the night I was there. And then the room, a feverdream of purple and neon, with birdcages and foliage like a Frida Kahlo painting. There has been no soft launch, no PR, no invites. Just open the doors and start trading. It’s worked brilliantly; they are mostly full until the end of Feb as it stands.
The menu is big and punchy, and although the narrative is to order as little or as much as you like, nobody is leaving here cheaply. It’s a little bit Lita and Dorian, a big bit Noble Rot, with plenty of Glynn’s raconteur style littered throughout. We start with the ubiquitous milk loaf, with a puddle of chicken fat, malt vinegar and pink peppercorns to dredge through. It instantly feels fresh, a witty take on olive oil and balsamic. A giant gourgere filled with mustardy-cheese sauce is a gloriously messy affair at £6, whilst the potato rosti with salt and vinegar powder comes alive with the saline hit of a caviar supplement. Linda, Sophie’s very wonderful mom, gets the seaweed palmier with anchovy and what I believe to be a ricotta. She absolutely loves it. These are washed down with a lovely champagne, an important fact given that one half of the business is a wine merchant.
That’s the snacks section done, now for Sophie and I starters. I get coddled egg with a kind of almond mousse and truffle, with some brioche on the side. Sophie thinks it’s a bit too marzipan but I like the pure indulgence of it all. It feels like it could give me gout with any luck. Sophie has tuna with oxtail ragu. She loves it. Her mom loves it. I love it. It’s borderline genius, a bit like Jamaican escovitch but more refined, more polished, more tyre guide porn material.
We get two mains between the four of us; the duck which was intended to be shared and the lamb shoulder which was not but was a very similar size to the duck. The duck is a proper piece of cooking, the entire half that Daffy kept when Daphne left him. Breast baby pink, scorched skin, rendered fat. Textbook. It comes with a confit leg so good the French have asked for the recipe, tomatoes braised in salted butter and a kind of a la orange sauce that avoids any cloying sweetness. It’s just superb. Lovely too is the shoulder of lamb, almost Sunday roast in preparation, with a minted cooking liquor and slowly cooked onions. We take all the sides (I think), these wander from a whipped potato with curls of baked potato skin, to a killer salad of winter veg, some baked black rice that’s too heavy on the ginger to work with the bigger plates, and buttery leeks with hazelnut which might be the best thing on the entire menu.
Desserts consist of an ordered zabaglione, which is really zabaione freddo and therefore nowhere near as good, but it’s okay because the cinnamon sugar dusted donuts that come with it might just put krispy kreme out of business. Far better is the custard tart with blood orange that is impeccable pastry work, and a cheese board where everything is in peak condition. The bill, with a couple of extra bottles of very good entry level wine is just over £400 and I’d like to thank Linda, the world’s greatest mother-in-law, probably ever, for paying it. Glynn said on the way out he doesn’t want to be judged on three days but a year or two, and I suppose to a certain extent me whinging about a bit of ginger, or a whether some yolks and masala are served hot or cold, aren’t really helping things, but then again it’s what I am here for. I think, in fact I’m almost certain, that Trillium will evolve dramatically over the next six months into a different beast that understands its place in Birmingham more clearly. What I am equally certain about is whatever that looks like will benefit the city hugely. Two powerhouses, a top class team, some high quality cooking, and the city’s best wine list. It’s exactly what we need.
9/10
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