Review: The Wilderness, Birmingham

The Wilderness is an edgy little restaurant occupying a space in Birmingham Open Media, itself an odd little art & media space down a grungy back street behind New Street Station. So: location convenient but not very pretty.

It’s a tiny space and you dine on small round cafe tables, which is a bit squashy but wasn’t uncomfortable. One of the walls is covered in rubbery green moss. Service was cheerful and friendly, making up with enthusiasm what they lacked in knowledge. Their website statement talks of local sourcing, foraging, ingredient-driven simplicity – so let’s see how they did.

First course was a piece of sea trout, just a tiny bit over-cooked, served with pickled and grilled mushrooms, puffed rice and a powerful dashi. The dashi was good, although much more powerful and deep than a classic Japanese specimen. The rice too scrunchy to be pleasant. Still, not bad. Yeah, that is faint praise.

Next course was a nicely cooked piece of boar with a layer of salty fat, served with puree & crisp of j’choke, deep-fried reindeer moss, and scattered with wild garlic flowers. In February? Perhaps rather than The Wilderness they should be called The Polytunnel? Snark aside, it was good to see boar on a menu. I enjoyed the venison too, beautifully plated and with my favourite little touch of the meal: blobs of sweet stout gel.

Two puds. One was flavours of rhubarb, which was a perfectly decent collection of fruit, sorbet and gel. The other was a chocolate dish that had one very awesome thing on it: cep flavoured chocolate parfait. They mucked it about a bit with cherries and other chocolate elements when really they could have made me very happy indeed with more of this!

So the 5 course tasting is £35 each. And gold-dusted chocolate skulls to finish! It’s £70 if you go for their cocktail-based pairing, and based on the one cocktail we each tried that might be a great plan. The food was all pretty good, and it’s definitely priced right at £35… but at the same time, maybe I expect a bit more from a tasting menu at any price? Maybe I’ve just had one too many tasting menus! I’m more than willing to go back and see what they serve up on a different day – I’ll update when I do.