Review: Purnells Bistro Revisited, Summer 2014

Purnells Bistro is one of our ‘go to’ restaurants in Birmingham when we’re looking for a guaranteed good quality meal at prices that won’t break the bank. We’d actually not been since around Christmas time, apart from for cocktails at Gingers, so we were looking forward to checking out the summer menu.

On looking at the menu, I think I could have chosen every starter on the menu, but I went for the Honey & Black Pepper Glazed Confit Duck Leg – Lentil Verdi – Rocket. Confit duck is one of my earliest food memories from camping holidays in the south of France as a child and is still one of my favourite things to eat. This one was right up there, melt in the mouth duck meat and the honey added a lovely sweetness contrasting with the sharp lentil salsa verde. Yum.

Confit Duck

Lee had the Scotch Hens’ Egg – Grilled Black Pudding – Cream of Onion Soup – Sour Apple. He thought the soup element was fabulous and all the classic elements worked well, he couldn’t taste the apple coming through though.

Scotch Egg

Moving on to the mains, I liked the sound of the Corn Fed Chicken – Celeriac Purée – Gem ‘Caeser’. The chicken huge and so juicy, the grilled gem lettuce was topped with plump anchovies and crispy bacon. It was an unusual main, I guess a deconstructed, warm Caeser Salad, but it worked really well.

Corn Fed Chicken and Gem Caesar

Lee had Poached Cod – Goats’ Cheese – Butter Beans – Chorizo – Spinach. He really liked all the flavours of dish but felt overall it was a bit on the small side.

Cod

Dessert wise, our eyes were immediately caught by one of the dishes for a couple of reasons, the White Chocolate & Crème Fraiche Mouse – Marinated Pineapple – Passion Fruit. Firstly, it sounded delicious, completely my type of dessert, secondly for the spelling. They’d spelt it Mouse, it should be mousse…..it didn’t occur to us that they could be being clever….They were, desert actually came in the shape of a mouse, and was spectacular to boot. Hats off to them.