Alfie Birds in the Custard Factory in Digbeth, Birmingham is billed on their website as ‘Gourmet Eats & Beats’. Now I can’t quite vouch for the beats part – they seemed to have Seal on repeat the other Friday lunchtime when we visted, but the Eats are sure good.
We’d heard their wood fired pizzas, cooked in their own wood-fired pizza oven, were quite something, and we were’t disappointed.
I love the space at Alfie Birds; set over 3 levels, it’s funky, quirky and laid back. I imagine it’s quite the place at night – we’ve been for a early evening drink before now and it seems quite the hip place to be on a weekend evening!
The menu is mostly burgers and pizzas with some salads and sides thrown in – but it’s very imaginative with things such as the Haggis Neeps and Tatties Pizza or the Balti Triangle Pizza, a nod to Brum’s heritage (yep – it even comes shaped like a triangle!)
We decided to share a small nachos to start – crammed with the usual culprits of salsa, guacamole, sour cream, cheese & jalepenos, it was a good example of a classic.
We then had a couple of the small (6″) pizzas to share, and a side of Sweet Potato Wedges. The Pizzas we chose were the Great Balls of Fire – homemade cayenne spiced beef and herb meat balls, Spanish chorizo sausage, green chilli, red peppers and buffalo mozzarella and the Peter Piper’s Pickle & Pulled Pork – Alfie’s very own seven hour slow roasted BBQ pulled pork with sweet pickled peppers. The pizzas were really excellent quality with a really thin crispy base, heaps of toppings and completely delivered on flavours. The wedges were also excellent version of a classic and we really couldn’t fault anything. Great examples of food & cooking in this kind of category. Another that struck me was the really reasonable value of the food – all this plus a pint and a coke cost £25. The small pizzas were £6 each, and if you wanted a big one (12″) they are only £8-11.
Alfie Birds is a great little venue to try out if you’re in the area – the Custard Factory is full of unique and vintage shops and a great place to spend a couple of hours.
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Disclosure: We paid in full for our meal.
