As with any large town or city, food and drink has played an important role in the commerce and culture of Birmingham, West Midlands, England.
Local dishes
In the late 18th century, poor harvests in England resulted in high food prices and the opening of soup kitchens to provide cheap, nourishing food for the poor. In 1793, the inventor and industrialist Matthew Boulton noted a recipe in one of his notebooks for a soup that was intended to be sold for a penny a quart. The food was a hearty broth of stewed beef and vegetables, served with a slice of bread. In 2014, Glynn Purnell recreated the dish as a fine-dining course and served it at his restaurant, "Purnell's". The original one consisted of beef, vegetables, and a slice of bread.
A dish titled "Brummie bacon cakes" is also said to be a dish local to Birmingham It consists of a mixture of flour, salt, and butter or margarine, with chopped bacon and cheese added to it. With the addition of Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and milk, the mixture is made into a dough and sliced into wedges, which are then baked with cheese sprinkled over them.
Dishes that identify with the neighbouring Black Country are also traditionally popular in Birmingham. This includes faggots and peas and, in the past, groaty pudding made with beef, leeks, onions, and oat groats.
The dish, which originated in Kashmiri restaurants in Birmingham in the 1970s the Balti should also be considered as a local dish (see below).
Tea During the 1830s, Thomas Ridgway began trading in the Bull Ring, selling tea. Ridgway later went bankrupt. Setting up business in London, he paid back all of his creditors and 1897 tea trade, becoming one of the first English tea companies to hygienically pre-pack tea so as to avoid adulteration. In 1876, Queen Victoria commanded House of Ridgways to create a blend for her own personal use. In 1863, William Sumner (founder of Typhoo) published "A Popular Treatise on Tea". In 1870, Sumner started a pharmacy and grocery business in High Street in Birmingham city centre. This grew and forced Sumner to move to new premises on Castle Street and then on to Bordesley Street at the canalside. Typhoo was bought by Indian conglomerate company Apeejay Surrendra Group on 31 October 2005.
Limes Birmingham's earliest food trade connections with the West Indies involved the importation of limes and cocoa during the mid-to-late 19th century.
The Montserrat Co. Ltd. was formed in Edgbaston by J.& E. Sturge. Lime juice was produced in the city and then exported for use in the manufacture of citric acid. The failure of Sicily's lemon crop at that time resulted in an opening in the market, which Sturge took great advantage of, utilizing their extensive chemical works based in Edgbaston. The company was set up by the Sturge and Albright families, who funded the development of Montserrat estates in 1867. Joseph Sturge bought the Elberton Sugar Estate in 1857 and converted it into a lime production plant. He also wanted to prove that free labour could be made profitable. Members of the Sturge family were instrumental in the British anti-slavery movement.
Brands Famous food brands that originated in Birmingham include Typhoo tea, Bird's Custard, Bournville cocoa, Cadbury chocolate, and HP Sauce.
Restaurants The Old Crown public house, a black and white timber-framed building, is said to be the oldest secular building in Birmingham, dating back to 1450 to 1500. It is situated in Deritend and is documented as serving as an inn from 1626. Birmingham Corporation proposed its demolition in 1851, 1856 and 1862 but it was saved by the efforts of Joshua Toulman Smith. It is still used as a public house which serves food. The Saracen's Head in Kings Norton dates from the same period as The Old Crown and is now a visitor's centre with a snack bar. The work to restore The Saracen's Head came as a result of it being chosen for financial assistance by a vote of the viewers of the BBC television programme Restoration in 2004.
The Leicester Arms, which became known as Freeth's Coffee House, situated at the corner of Bell Street and Lease Lane, served as a tavern and coffee house from 1736 to 1832. It served as a meeting place for small businessmen and lawyers and, when bought by John Freeth, a topical ballad writer, in the second half of the 18th century, it became a place for groups which supported radical politics, including the Birmingham Book Club, which held dinners at the coffee house. Freeth sent out rhyming invitations to dinner to club members. The club was recorded as having 24 members in 1775.
Ann Allday, the wife of Joseph Allday who was a leading Birmingham councillor from 1849 to 1859, ran a "celebrated" tripe restaurant and tripe shop in Union Street and other councillors often met there. At that time the Woodman Tavern in Easy Row was also a favoured meeting place for Allday and his colleagues.
A more recent hostelry of note is The Garrison in Dale End, which served as a model for the public house by that name featured in the BBC television drama series Peaky Blinders. The real public house was sold at auction for £183,000 in May 2014.
A fish restaurant was opened in Warwick Passage in 1883.
In 1896 a new building in the Arts and Crafts style was erected in Corporation Street to house James Henry Cook's vegetarian restaurant, one of the first in England. In 1898, The Pitman Vegetarian Hotel, named after the famous vegetarian Sir Isaac Pitman, was opened on the same site, and the proprietors subsequently opened a long-running health food store. It is said that Mahatma Gandhi dined at the restaurant when he visited Birmingham on 18 October 1931.
In the latter years of the Victorian era, a number of Italians migrated to Birmingham and occupied a small number of streets off Digbeth and by 1914 they numbered about 700 people, mostly originating from villages around Rome. Many were street-traders and sold the first ice cream in the city using broken eggs from the egg market in Moor Street and ice from Fazeley Street. Camillo Biglio opened a confectioner's shop in Cannon Street in 1878 and, afterwards, is thought to have opened the first Italian restaurant in Birmingham, .
An edition of the Michelin Guide for the British Isles was first published in 1911 and stars were first awarded for restaurants in the mid-1920s. The edition published in 1925 recommended a single restaurant in Birmingham – The Exchange in Stephenson Place – which was awarded 3 stars, interpreted as signifying that the establishment was a "luxurious, well appointed restaurant". Subsequently, no Michelin Guides were published for Great Britain from 1931 to 1974.
Birmingham is home to a wide variety of Asian eateries, which have served the people of Birmingham since the 1940s. The first Chinese restaurant was the Tong Kung on Holloway Head, which opened in 1956. In the late 1950s there were also Kam Ling in Livery Street and Tung Hing at 15 Snow Hill. Notable also were The Slow Boat, opened in 1961 under St. Martin's car park (this business failed after a public health action for the use of illegal meat in its dishes), Heaven Bridge in Smallbrook Queensway, and, by 1968, The Old Happy Gathering in Pershore Street, which offered more authentic Cantonese cuisine, the earliest restaurants being more in the style of "chop suey houses".
In the early 1970s Chinese businesses and community associations were gathered around Hurst Street and Digbeth and Wing Yip opened the first Chinese supermarket in Bromsgrove Street, establishing a food empire in Birmingham which now has its headquarters in the Chinese Quarter, along with other fine oriental restaurants.
In 1945 Abdul Aziz, one of the first East Bengali (later known as Bangladeshi) immigrants to live in Birmingham, opened a cafe shop selling curry and rice in Steelhouse Lane with many policemen from the local police station as customers as well as solicitors and barristers who worked at the nearby law courts. This later became The Darjeeling and was the first Asian restaurant in Birmingham, owned by Afrose Miah. The second Asian restaurant in Birmingham was The Shah Bagh on Bristol Street. In 1957 Mozamel and Rachel Kazi changed the nature of their cafe, Rae's Cafe in Bristol Street, from a 'greasy spoon' to a shop where curry was served and its resulting popularity necessitated that it be moved to larger premises in Moseley Road, where it was called Jinnah's. John Bonham who became the drummer in the group Led Zeppelin, dined there regularly. The Kazis' son, John, came up with the novel idea of home delivery of food to regular customers as well as a takeaway service whereby customers took their own pots to the restaurant to have them filled with curry and rice for 25p. Also noteworthy was The Curry House opened by Abdul Motin Choudhury and Abdul Jabbar on Bristol Street in 1965, which was later to become the Aloka in 1981. There was also the Banu restaurant on Hagley Road, which was opened in 1969.
The dish known as balti was invented in Birmingham in the 1970s in restaurants owned by members of the Pakistani community in Sparkbrook, many of whom had migrated to the city from the Mirpur area of Pakistan in the 1960s. When non-Pakistani customers began to visit their restaurants, they required curries to be cooked more quickly than occurred in traditional Mirpuri cuisine and the restaurateurs consequently developed dishes in which meat was cooked off the bone at higher temperatures in steel dishes with fresh dried spices rather than curry pastes and vegetable oil in place of the traditional ghee. The steel dishes in which the food was cooked were called "baltis" (said to derive from the Hindi word "balty", meaning "a bucket") and then the food was served in the steel dishes with naan bread.
The geographical area in which the balti serving restaurants were concentrated became known as the Balti Triangle and is defined as having a northern apex at the junction of the A41 and A453 Camp Hill roundabout, an eastern boundary of the A41 going south to Stratford Road, a western boundary of the A453, and a southern edge just north of Wake Green Road and College Road. A visit to a restaurant in the Balti Triangle is often promoted as an important activity for tourists visiting Birmingham.
The first recorded written reference to balti dishes was made in a 1984 edition of Curry Magazine and it is said that as of 2016 there are about balti 50 restaurants located in the Balti Triangle. In 1998, the balti restaurateurs formed themselves into the Birmingham Balti Association.
In the city centre, among current notable south Asian restaurants are the Rajdoot in George Street in the Jewellery Quarter, which serves North Indian cuisine and which was opened in 1966, and which lists among its former notable customers The Beatles, The Princess Margaret and, more recently, the television personality Simon Cowell. In Hurst Street is The Maharajah, which also serves North Indian cuisine, having opened there in 1971. It was the Egon Ronay Indian Restaurant of the Year in 1999 and among its former notable customers were John Major, Cliff Richard, and Take That.
Off St. Paul's Square in James Street is located Lasan, which opened in 2002 and which won "Gordon Ramsay's F Word Best Local Restaurant" award on Channel 4 television. The then chef-director, Aktar Islam, has appeared in BBC's Great British Menu three times: in 2013 and 2014, as well as in 2011, when his dish of sea bass with battered soft shell crab won the fish course category. Islam left his role at Lasan in late 2017 and opened two new restaurants in Summer Row in May 2018 and December 2018 respectively – Opheem, which serves progressive Indian cuisine, and the neighbouring Legna, which has since closed.