Albatross Death Cult
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
I’m meeting a friend for what’s now a ten-year-old, locked-in Christmas fine dining tradition. The last four venues in Birmingham have been Adams, Opheem, Folium and The Wilderness, so the bar is set high, with expectations to match.
It’s preview month for Albatross Death Cult, a new restaurant from The Wilderness with plans to launch fully in spring 2024. It enticed me with the promise of 14 courses of ‘best quality ingredients, heavily inclined towards seafood and Japanese flavours’. Whilst it’s a cuisine very much in vogue, I’ve tended to ignore it, beyond its influences in the wider world of dining.
Albatross Death Cult preview menu
It's a one sitting with everybody having the same thing affair. Despite being bang on time, we’re last to arrive and with all eyes on us, it feels like we’re the final contestants in some sort of Big Brother-type TV show. But we get a warm welcome and sit at what feels more like around the kitchen island, rather than at the chef’s table. It’s all very disarming.
A D C interior
By the time I’ve slipped down a Kombu Old Fashioned that delivered exactly what it promised—umami, smoke and sweetness—I’m fully loosened up and we’re already chatting happily with our neighbours. The first stoke of the appetite comes when we’re shown the tray of pleasure that awaits us, featuring slabs of wagyu A5, three-day cured mackerel and two pieces of tuna—otoro and chutoro.
Pinot Gris – Single vineyard, Matawhero NZ (£65)
Our bottle of Kiwi single estate Pinot Gris lands just ahead of a delicate seaweed pastry filled with seaweed cured trout and topped with pinky-orange caviar that provides smile-inducing pops of lightly smoked salinity.
Nori Crustade / Kombu Trout / Smoked Caviar
Then it’s two pieces of cured sea bass sitting in an umami-loaded dashi with a quiet hit of jalapeno and a palate-teasing lick of smokiness. On the basis of these first two dishes, I feel there may be a need to strap in for what’s about to come.
Sea Bass Sashimi / Jalapeno / Olive Oil
There’s ‘more of the same’ but this time with a longer dry cure for a firmer texture and more direct smokiness from mackerel, marrying with sweet and sour flavours from an apple marigold vinegar and the juicy, crisp flesh of nashi pear—a pear and apple hybrid—and finished with a leaf of apple marigold that’s a pungent mix of citrus, mint and tarragon.
Cornish Mackerel / Pear / Marigold
The next dish looking like something from a 70s dinner party easily wins the ‘Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover Award’. Thin slices of scallop are in an intensified melon-off-the-BBQ dashi with citrusy yuzu, sugar and vinegar reduction for the most magical slurp I’ve ever slurped. Although magical doesn’t come close to describing the concentrated sweet shop flavour of cured melon balls, dressed in yuzu vinegar and finished with ginger oil.
Orkney Scallop / Melon / Yuzu
‘Crab Doughnut’ is every bit as good as it sounds; crisp-fried perfect and filled with white crab meat, sat on an umami cushion of brown crab custard and finished with ‘chilli crack’.
‘Crab doughnut’
Next is the dish I’m not expecting to like given celery and walnuts are entrenched on my least favourite foods list but this forces a full reappraisal. The celery has been braised in a seaweed-loaded dashi stock and the walnut fried for peak caramelisation. That might have been enough anyway, but any residual resistance is blown away by a bold Parmesan oil that’s umami at full throttle and a sprinkle of furikake that provides a hit of the sea and crunch.
Kombu Celery / Walnut / Furikake
Sashimi arrives with chutoro tuna, with quiet heat from wasabi and the earthy, nuttiness of fresh winter truffle to keep its sweetness honest and then heightened by a citrussy vinaigrette that still manages to deliver on umami.
Chutoro Sashimi / Truffle Ponzu
We need more wine and as we’ve got wagyu next, we pick a Ser Lapo Chianti Classico Riserva. As for the dish, the biggest surprise is whilst the Kagoshima wagyu A5 is indeed the fat-primed meat bomb that’s expected and further boosted by an umami-loaded 4-year-old soy sauce, it’s matched stride by stride by a buttery, crusted pommes Anna-style hash brown.
Chianti Classico Riserva – Ser Lapo, Mazzei (£65)
Next are dashi-cooked mussels inside a crisp, curried breadcrumb coating that deliver an other-worldly texture, exactly like this was what our mouths were created to most enjoy. To enhance the experience for the palate is a lightly whipped katsu sauce that’s got all its flavours nailed to finely tuned perfection. For all the pleasures provided by the star ingredients, this could even be my favourite so far.
Crispy Mussels / Katsu Curry
‘Tuna Rice Bowl’ is the most muted dish in terms of flavour so far, although it serves to fully spotlight the melt-in-your-mouth, rich, sweet tuna belly.
‘Tuna Rice Bowl’
Poached cod with XO sauce leaves me unsure but I’m struggling to work out ‘what’s wrong’. The cod is perfect; cured for a week to firm up its texture and has been poached in brown butter, whilst the XO is an umami-coated hit of chilli, garlic, and ginger… although maybe it’s just that I’m not wild about its gritty texture in tandem with the cod?
Iberico Pork Cheek Char Sui
Last of the savoury dishes is Iberico pork cheek char siu that’s been seared, then slow-cooked for twelve hours to melting perfection. It’s served with compressed cucumber and onion tapioca, puffed like Rice Krispies and gets the optimum dish textures fully back on track.
Miso Apple / Sesame
We power through the rest of the red to set us for a glass of Sauternes for the final two courses and the first of those is the best apple crumble ever, without being remotely like an apple crumble. In a delicate pastry is crème anglaise blended with white chocolate and finished with sesame oil, on which is a long ribbon of Pink Lady apple rolled with miso caramel and then topped with sesame snow. It’s pure witchcraft and scores a direct hit on my pleasure receptors.
The finale is a rich 70% cocoa chocolate custard with an umami-loaded katsuobushi caramel and tahini vanilla oil offering hints of bitterness to keep things balanced… of course it does!
Three and a half hours have raced by and the bill comes in at £364.10 (Drinks £181 / Food £150 / Service £31.10). Taking the booze out, at £75 for the 14 courses it’s astounding value and hard to believe it equates to just over a fiver per dish.
As for the Christmas tradition, it’s been a triumph; courses have spun effortlessly through savoury, umami, sweet and sour and back again, with textures complementing perfectly balanced flavours.
My New Year’s resolution will be to more actively seek out the pleasures of Japanese cuisine. In the meantime, I’m already looking forward to the launch of Albatross Death Cult in spring.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 10/10
Albatross Death Cult, 1 Newhall Square, Birmingham, B3 1RU
