Review: Turners, Birmingham

I thought Alimentum had an odd choice of location, on a main road out of Cambridge near a trading estate. But Turners has it totally beat for “least likely place to expect fine dining”, squashed between hairdressers and carpet retailers in a drab parade of local shops with a squat row of 1970’s flats above. Who cares though, right? It’s all about the food. And to be fair, Harborne looks to be an up-and-coming area of Birmingham. I would have been tempted by the retro ice cream parlour up the road, if it hadn’t been 2 degrees and a biting wind outside.

Inside Turners things are more tranquil, decorated in modern masculine grey and black. The walls are covered in mirrors, to open up the narrow dining room, and all the mirrors say “TURNERS” in huge letters as a helpful reminder to those who eat out so often that they lose track of which restaurant they’ve wandered into. Service was a bit on the starchy side, only relaxed by one of our waiters being a bit new and making a couple of little cock-ups that he was unsure how to fix. Guys, just lighten up a bit.

I really enjoyed our lunch menu, though. Three little canapes, including a well tasty brown shrimp cracker, were followed by an oyster amuse. Maureen’s starter was a bright scallop ceviche, with plenty of zingy citrus in the luminous scallops and a nice horseradish snow on top. The cubes of pickled apple looked great but were really pretty vinegary. My starter, a plate of quail, was definitely my dish of the day. Confit leg, breast stuffed in cabbage leaf, liver parfait and a smokey quail egg with a runny yoke, all bound together with a splendid truffled jus and accompanied by crispy cabbage and very good cubes of salt-baked celeriac. Balance of flavours: perfect.

They pulled a cheeky number on the main course: lobster tortellini on the menu, langoustine tortellini when served at the table (and that mumbled pretty quiet). Served with sea bass and pronounced good. My main was beef, the usual pairing of a piece roasted pink and a slow-cooked element. The

slow bit was cheek, in a reasonably crispy potato tube, and jolly good. The other piece was sirloin, quite a dense piece and not particularly well chosen for flavour. Nice bourguignon-style accompaniments and jus.

Hm. Actually, pud was another contender for dish of the day. A really glorious prune souffle, full of flavour, with some very naughty armagnac ice cream and an earl grey caramel sauce poured in for good measure. Filthy good, when souffles are so often meekly angelic. That said, Maureen enjoyed the heck out of her rhubarb souffle and a neat brick of apple cheesecake was praised by our friends. And it wouldn’t be right to leave without mentioning the veritable regiment of petit fours that marched out with coffee, all good.

So we enjoyed dining at Turners and while a couple of dishes were good enough, a couple of others were really excellent. The three course a la carte we had was £55 at lunch and that’s about right. Richard Turner’s cooking is interesting enough that I’m happy to put him up with Purnell’s and Adam’s in the list of “fine dining places in Birmingham worth your time”. The wine list was a bit low on cheaper options, and the wines we had by the glass also weren’t quite up to what I’d have hoped. We may just have picked wrong.

Pedantic Postscript: why is it “Turners” restaurant? If this is the restaurant of Richard Turner, then it should be “Turner’s” as in “Richard Turner’s restaurant”. But it’s not, it’s “Turners”. So perhaps it is actually a restaurant where you might hope to find several Turners. Hence the plural, “Turners”. Perhaps it is actually owned by someone else, and employs a number of members of Richard’s family? Who can say.