For Christmas, our friends bought us a Private Pod Dining
experience at Craft in Birmingham.
Craft is located at the back of the ICC and designed with a
British Garden theme, with the pods overlooking the canal. It has its own
entrance way through a beautiful floral archway. On arrival, our pod was ready
slightly earlier than our booking time and we were shown to our private pod.
The pod was incredible it was private, but we could still see and be seen. It
had its own temperature controls and the bonus of its own speaker which you
could connect to through Bluetooth which added to the atmosphere.The kitchen is helmed by Andrew Sheridan who has appeared
on the Great British Menu. All food and wine are sourced within the UK and the
experience we had included a four-course menu and a free bottle of Fizz. The
free bottle of Fizz was a Halfpenny Green Sparkling White Rose from Shropshire.
The menu included information about what we were having, the idea behind the
dish and the creativity and sustainability behind each dish as well as which
wine goes well with each course.
The first course was bread, which was freshly baked with salted
butter that was so soft and easy to spread on the bread. The bread was lovely,
it was soft in the middle with crunchy crusts and the butter added lovely
flavour being salted. The only critique I had was that it was only one piece of
bread each.The second course was chicken parfait with toasted treacle
bread and mushrooms. Of all the courses this was my least favourite but that is
because I don’t like things that are this consistency. It was very savoury flavour,
and you could taste the mushrooms throughout. The toasted treacle bread was
fine and was an added bit of crunch to the dish after the smoothness of the
parfait.
The third course was prime cut British beef, beef fat
carrot, breaded ox cheek, Bernaise sauce and triple cooked chips. This dish was
incredible, the beef was cooked to perfection with the gravy. The carrot was amazing,
it had been cooked in beef fat and was the right amount of crunch and a decent
size. I had never had ox cheek, let alone breaded ox cheek. It was lovely, it
was a bit drier than the prime cut beef but that didn’t take away from how nice
it was. The triple cooked chips were cooked perfectly they were fluffy on the inside
and crispy on the outside. I wasn’t a fan of the sauces unfortunately but that didn’t
take away for the dish at all. I’d say that there was too many chips and not
enough carrot, but taste wise it was perfect.The fourth and final course was carrot cake, baked custard,
walnuts and clotted cream ice cream. This was lovely way to finish the meal, I’d
never had carrot cake and I was pleasantly surprised. The cake was perfect it
was moist and the combination of every worked so well. I didn’t love the ice
cream but that wasn’t a problem at all.
Lastly, I also ordered and tried a Frozen cocktail which is
either gin, vodka or rum with summer fruits. I had gin and it was delightful,
it was a slushie. I would recommend highly; however, it does take a while to defrost.
Overall, I loved this experience and the food, I’m quite a
fussy eater but I tried and ate everything I was served and enjoyed most of it.
The service was outstanding, even when we weren’t too fussed about the speaker
going down, everything was done to make sure it worked, and we were offered a
portable speaker. Additionally, the timing between each course was about 15 minutes
and this worked fine for us. We had a 2 hour and 15-minute window to be served
and eat our food and this was the perfect amount of time.
I would recommend this as treat and you get your moneys
worth out for what you have for food and service. Also thank you to our friends
for an amazing Christmas present.
You can book and investigate Craft here on their website: Craft Garden
Hope you enjoyed this, until next time
Stacey x
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