Bistro 1847, the fantastic innovative Vegetarian Restaurant in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham have recently launched their festive menu, and we went along to try it last week.
We ate off the Seasonal Mini Al A Carte Menu, but theres also a small tasting menu if you would prefer. We started off with a couple of drinks – I tried out the Rudolphs Ruin which was a lovely tasting drinking and quite strong – definitely just the one needed for me!
We were pretty hungry so as well as our meal we ordered some bread off the grazing menu to pick at – this came with some whipped herb butter and went down very nicely.
I started with the Lemon-grass, chilli, coconut, potato crackling, parsnip, wild mushroom whilst Lee had the Carrot, sesame, carrot top, wild chervil, feta ice cream. We both adored our starters – Lee is a huge falafel fan and thought that this and the feta ice cream were beautiful. The wild herbs that dance across the plate on the dishes add such a brilliant extra dimension to the flavor as well.
For the main course we both went for the Cauliflower & milk crumb, masala spices, mushroom emulsion, Caramelised cauliflower, spiced pease pudding. Again, a really well rounded dish. I loved the little florets of pickled cauliflower and the pease pudding. For a non vegetarian thought, it always amazes me when chefs can wow me with ‘just’ an array of veg. Well done guys!
Puddings didn’t quite hit the flavor heights of the savoury dishes, but they were still really pleasant desserts. We had the Sticky toffee, smoke, whisky, praline and the Sorrel, white chocolate, apple. The white chocolate mousse/ganache was really nice, as was the cake and ice cream elements of the the stocky toffee dessert.
We really enjoyed our festive meal at Bistro 1847, just as we’ve enjoyed all our meals there. A great place to try for an alternative Christmas Feast!
Disclosure: We were invited by the restaurant to try the festive food free of charge, but this was not in expectation of writing a blog post, positive or otherwise.
