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Philippe Boucheron discovers his Restaurant Heaven beside a Birmingham canal

Imagine, if you will, a romantic ‘mamma & poppa’ restaurant serving outstanding food set on a triangular Piazza beside a canal and overlooking a footbridge.  Only this canal is in Birmingham, not Venice, and the restaurant is run by the young husband and wife team of Steve and Claire Love.

Steve is a young chef who is undoubtedly destined to become one of the brightest stars in the British  culinary firmament.  He is a former National Chef of the Year and the 1997 Roux scholar that sent him to Paris for three months to work with the legendary Alain Ducasse.  Steve trained at his home town’s college in Stratford upon Avon and at  Birmingham’s College of Food, while his CV includes spells at The Welcome Hotel in Stratford, Ettington Park, Waldo’s Restaurant at the Thameside Clivedon hotel and Mallory Court in Leamington Spa.

Together with his wife Claire, who looks after the front of house and is responsible for the excellent wine list, they opened Love’s in Canal Square, Browning Street, in September of last year.  Within four short months they had been visited by an AA Inspector who without hesitation awarded them the maximum full set of three red rosettes.

Passionate about his art, there is an elegance and purity about Steve’s style that creates dishes that are as appealing on then eye as they are on the palate. Using only the freshest of regional produce, his cooking ensures that full flavours are eloquently expressed, while the combination of ingredients achieve a harmony of rare and exquisite beauty.  But a warning; this is a restaurant for genuine gastronomes. If your perfect restaurant is somewhere where the ambience is clean over the top, the menu so vast that no kitchen could be expected to do it justice, with a wine list the size of a family bible, then sorry – but Love’s is not for you.

A recent lunch off the A La Carte menu(£34 for two and £38.50 for three courses) started with a warm butternut squash veloute set with a tiny morsel of goat’s cheese and dressed with herb oils, that first lulled the palate into a sense of absolute content before firing-up the taste buds on all cylinders.  There are also a Table d’Hôte menu at £20.00 for two, or £25.00 for three courses as well as a £55.00 tasting menu.

A starter of slow cooked breast and braised leg of wood pigeon, pink almonds, blackberries and 85% abinao chocolate was a brilliant display of how such a basic rustic dish can be transformed into a sophisticated delight.  A Meli-Melo of Loch Duart Salmon added a whole new dimension to smoked salmon.

A main dish of pan cooked wild sea bass, with smoked almond gnocchi, glazed chicken wings, Paris mushrooms, chestnuts and blood orange curd combined a cunning combination of flavours and textures.  Similarly a pink seared haunch and braised shoulder of Finneborough venison, served with a pear marinated in red wine, butternut squash and pearl barley showed just how much of the essential flavours Steve Love can extract from his gastronomic assemblies that looked so splendid on the plate.

With these we shared two half-bottles, a stunning crisp, asparagus and citrus Sancerre from Henri Bourgeois, and a rich juicy Cahors Malbec, Château de Cedres, both from Connolly’s.

I suppose I should draw a veil discretely over the passion fruit pre-dessert that so effortlessly cleaned the plate while awakening the taste buds for the pleasure to come.  But I won’t, suffice it to say that it would be next to criminal to miss these visual and epicurean works of art.  For example the union of a glazed lemon tartlet with raspberries marinated in red wine, or the exotic flavours of poached pineapple in a coconut milk porridge, are, to quote the Bard – ‘Stuff as dreams are made of’.

Service by Claire and the exemplary Broonagh – from northern Ireland – was professional, caring but never obtrusive.  The coffee and petit fours were excellent. Truly this is restaurant heaven, but even in heaven there is a snag – car parking is awful, so park in Brindley Place and walk over the bridge.

If Love’s is my restaurant heaven, what then is my hell?  Good question: anywhere pompous and pretentious, where chef-less kitchens use chilled or frozen dishes and microwaves, while the wine lists are put together by accountants with an eye to profits rather than marrying with the food.

Love’s Restaurant, The Glasshouse, Canal Square, Browning Street, B16 8FL
Tel: 0121 454 5151
Email: info@loves-restaurant.co.uk
Website: www.loves-restaurant.co.uk

Written by Philippe Boucheron, for eat-the-midlands, April 2010. All rights reserved.

Save 20% off at Love’s Restaurant with Midlands Lifestyle Dining Club www.gourmet-life.co.uk. save Monday-Thursday of all dining, incl Table D’Hote.