Dining in Yuppieland

A map of Birmingham looks like a spider’s web. Like most inland cities in Europe, a series of concentric ring roads encircle the city, while main roads radiate from the centre, usually named after their destinations. If you head outwards from the city down the Stratford Road, you pass through the long straight streets of terrace houses of the late 19th and early 20th Century, into the semi-detached estates built a generation later. You then pass the sprawling ‘shed cities’ of supermarkets and the new ‘executive homes’ to emerge in the fields and villages that are the homes of the young upwardly-mobile professionals of Yuppieland. To an outsider, Yuppieland looks rural, but instead of farms there are golf courses, riding stables and craft centres. The cottages of the peasantry have become the mansions of the wealthy, while the village pubs have become expensive restaurants.

My experience is that dining in these converted pubs is dispiriting. Earlier this year, I went with my mother to Henley-in-Arden, a beautiful small town along the Stratford Road in the heart of Yuppieland. The restaurant included mediaeval features, superb decor and friendly staff. The food was a work of art presented on elegant plates and looked wonderful. It was expensive but poorly-cooked. It somehow managed to be both tasteful and tasteless. This has been my experience with several dining expeditions to this part of the world. People in Yuppieland are prepared to spend a lot on their meals, like them to be an impressive visual experience in a fawning environment, but can not discriminate between good food and bad.

Not all of England is like this. To encounter good food made from fresh local ingredients, it is better to move further from the big cities. In my own area of rural Worcestershire, there are two places I visit which always delight. The first is the Talbot at Knightwick. This is a small hotel with its own brewery and farm. The food is imaginative, is sourced from the Teme Valley and is full of taste. The main draught beers are called ‘This’ and ‘That’, and these are the best beers I have ever tasted anywhere. The plates and beer glasses are not the products of designer studios, but who cares. The second place to eat is the Venture In in Ombersley. This is a small restaurant (with Michelin rosettes) owned by its cook, who lives with his family above the shop. I have a family connection with the Venture In because my son Andrew worked there as a kitchen porter one evening a week before going to University. The atmosphere in the kitchen was far from the kind of shouting match shown on television pictures of restaurants. Instead, there was an effective and friendly team of people dedicated to cooking in the best way from the best ingredients. The result is food that is as close to heaven as can be attained on earth.