Queens Hill, Belbroughton, Worcestershire DY9 0DU. Tel: 01562 730 276
7/10
Birmingham lost one of its most talented and likeable chefs (the two aren’t always mutually exclusive) when Andy Waters shipped out of the city in the spring.
Waters left Edmunds in Brindleyplace to escape the... how shall we put this?... stormy waters that hit the restaurant.
READ MORE: {}
The chef walked away in the wake of a little local difficulty with other members of the then partnership. Edmunds still exists and is still called Edmunds, albeit the restaurant was named after Waters’ late father. It’s an interesting exercise in brand identification, a bit like calling a restaurant Gordon Ramsay when the bloke who set it up has moved on and got nothing to do with it.
Still, it isn’t Edmunds I went to cast an eye and a tongue over, but rather Waters’ new venture. For the past few months, the chef has been running The Queens, a pub in the Worcestershire village of Belbroughton. He has brought with him some of his old team from the place that is named after his dear father (even though Waters isn’t there).
Am I labouring the point? I can’t believe the new chef, talented Frenchman Didier Philipot, wants to live in the shadow of the former head chef and trade under the name of that chef’s dad. Still, I’m a hack, not a restaurateur. What do I know?
Belbroughton ticks all the rural escape boxes – it is name checked in the Domesday Book, it has a stream for Pooh-sticks and a very old church. Judging by The Queens’ car park, it also has the highest ratio of Bentleys and Mercs per capita in the West Midlands.
Yet the village is only a short hop down the M5 from Birmingham. I found the pub without getting lost or having to stop for sandwiches and a flask of tea.
Most Read
Waters’ confidence in his abilities remains intact despite the bruising Battle of Brindleyplace. With his track record, he could have had his pick of those pubs that hold a virtual monopoly in their local area. But the chef has moved with his wife and restaurant manager Beverley to an area teaming with dining options.
There are a number of other dining pubs in the village itself. Roger and Jo Narbett’s award-winning The Bell & Cross is within spitting distance at Holy Cross. Then there is The Fountain, which has a fierce, almost pathological local following. When I wrote about The Fountain, I spurred the green ink brigade into letter-writing action. So I won’t mention the pub’s unique charms again.
The Bell & Cross, in particular, serves good food in a lovely, unfussy environment and habitually takes the gong as Worcestershire’s dining pub of the year. Things may be about to change though.
There’s a new kid in town, albeit one who’s been round the block a bit via Lyon, Warwickshire and Birmingham, picking up a Michelin star on his travels. Whatever the view of the food guide writers, it’s a win-win for the local people of Belbroughton and Clent.
And having two such establishments so near to each other could well pull in a new market to the area.
Waters has taken over at The Queens, a 16th century pub, in a partnership with millionaire Black Country entrepreneur Jim Driscoll, who made a mint creating the animated TV series The Shoe People in the 1980s. (I know, I don’t remember it either, but well done Jim.)
The interior has had a gentle make-over, with purple hues and the odd cushion being introduced to soften the atmosphere without falling into the trap of making the place look like Victoria Beckham’s dressing room. The Queens still feels very much like a pub, somewhere you can go for a pint as well as a plate of good food.
Don’t miss
The place, thankfully, lacks that self-aware gastro-pub smugness. Gastronomy is undoubtedly here but it doesn’t have to shout about it.
If it has been a jolt for Waters going from lavish restaurant dining to pub cooking, he doesn’t show it. He has rightly decided to take things slowly, putting traditional pub food front and centre while hinting at the flourishes that may lie ahead.
The à la carte has starters such as ham hock, Italian cured meats with pickled veg and a tian of crab and prawns. Mains include pork belly with black pudding, roast duck and orange sauce, and corn-fed chicken with roasted chicory, braised shallots and mushroom sauce. Most dishes are in the £13 to £17 range. Then there are “pub favourites” such as French trimmed pork cutlet with duck liver, rosemary, garlic and roasted shallots (£14.50) and steak and ale pie with roasted bone marrow (£13.50) and you just know these are going to be good.
There is a very well priced set menu lunch (two courses £12.50; three courses £16.50) and when we visited on a Sunday there was a three-course lunch for £17.95. It is possibly the Sunday lunch bargain of the year. To have done justice to all the veg (good, simple veg at that), I would have been happy with a main and a dessert – and that’s only £13.95. It’s astounding value.
To start, the creamy leek and potato soup and the king prawns in a garlicky chilli tomato sauce were good but the pick of the bunch was a salad of (thick) smoked salmon and Cornish crab. Light acidity came from confit of lemon and grapefruit. Simple, clear flavours, great for a traditional Sunday lunch.
The mains included classic grilled lemon sole and cod with spinach and parsley cream sauce. There isn’t anything here that will shock the senses or rewrite the culinary rule book but that isn’t the point, far from it. The Queens offers homely, tasty dishes that are tastier than most of us might knock up at home. The cooking is precise, the plating clean.
Moist, flavoursome pan-roasted chicken breast had a Mediterranean make-over with stewed tomatoes, Parma ham and black olives. Three of us went for that benchmark of Sunday pub dining – roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. It was as fine as I’ve had in any pub – thick (again) slices of Aberdeen Angus sirloin, cooked rare. It’s the quality of the meat, the cooking and the just-right non-cloying gravy that makes this stand out from the usual pub tucker. I could eat it every Sunday. If I lived in Belbroughton, I might just do so.
I loved the big bowls of vegetables, untainted except for a bit of butter. No honey-glazing pap here. Hurrah. Actually, has honey-glazing died and gone back to the 80s? I hope so. There were light, crispy, non-greasy roast spuds, boiled new potatoes, carrots, green beans, broccoli and, my, oh my, a classic untarted cauliflower cheese. This, dear reader/s, was the business. It’s why Sundays were invented – for Andy Waters’ roast beef lunch and cauliflower cheese.
Waters’ desserts are always strong and moving to a pub hasn’t changed a thing. The fruity, light loveliness is there. Strawberry mousse with raspberries and sugared wafers and a dish of lemon posset – with raspberries and meringue – were late summer delights. But you’ve got to try the warm chocolate tart with toffee ice cream. You won’t get a better one. There’s lovely buttery, crispy pastry and proper posh choc. The toffee flavour is gentle, a perfect creamy accompaniment.
Waters confided that he did the catering for a funeral recently. Driving home, I said to my wife: “I think I’d like Andy Waters to do the spread at my funeral. He’d give me a decent send off.”
“Oh, yes. I’d like that, too,” she said.