Marmalade @ The REP
MALADY MARMALADE
We’re heading into town to see Stewart Lee at the Symphony Hall with the plan to eat at The Prince of Wales, just behind the ICC. We’re running late, but confident we’ll squeeze it in, only to discover they’re not doing food this evening. Maybe I shouldn’t have joked earlier that we’ll end up with a pint and crisps, but we’re too hungry to entertain that option. So we head towards Centenary Square with nowhere particular in mind.
Time is pressing and the first opportunity to eat is Marmalade, so a snap decision is made. Walking in it immediately feels promising as it’s less than a third full. That said, it’s a depressing scene; most tables are bare—not laid out for dining—and it’s got the look and atmosphere of a Travelodge dining room on the outskirts of a downbeat town on a Tuesday evening. Actually, that’s unkind on Travelodge. It’s not simply lacking soul; the décor is tired and the interior design looks like it’s been put together with a budget of £300 from B & Q.
Marmalade - interior
Whilst we’re stood, frozen like rabbits in the retina burning glare of headlights on a huge juggernaut full of despair, a waitress greets us with menus in hand. She’s full of smiles and swiftly ushers us to one of the few laid tables. Resigned to our fate, we order drinks and then discover the table is sticky, which is never great—with or without the threat of Covid-19.
It’s a totally schizophrenic, yet ambitious menu—there is no speciality and it calls on the kitchen to have the full breadth of culinary skills required for global cuisine fine dining… yeah, right. Even with our drinks order taken, we’d leave if we could reach anywhere—and I mean anywhere—order, and eat, in the fifty five minutes we have before the show starts. But we’ve already wasted a few minutes debating that and, eventually, hunger—that most dangerous of emotions—rules our thought processes. So, we accept our fate, with just hope to see us through.
Given the circumstances, we’re all playing it safe. Katrina goes with ‘battered fish of the day with triple cooked chips’; Georgie opts for wild mushroom arancini with romesco sauce and a side of sweet potato fries; and I choose the ‘gourmet stack burger.’ The use of ‘gourmet’ applied to a burger at least offers some amusement and that’s enough to lift it above the dirge of alternatives; so that’s that decided.
Drinks arrive just a moment or two before the food comes out. My ‘gourmet’ burger is pure canteen—leaning like the Tower of Pisa with a portobello mushroom, two beef burgers, stilton, shrivelled Parma ham, two sad pieces of little gem lettuce and a slice of gherkin in a ‘brioche’ bun. In fairness it doesn’t taste too bad for the first few bites until all the melted stilton spills out, soaking into the unnecessary paper serviette under the bowl of fries. But halfway through I discover the burgers are undercooked (which will come back to haunt me throughout the rest of the weekend).
‘Gourmet’ burger… stop sniggering at the back
The best thing on the table are the ‘triple cooked’ chips—whilst not triple cooked in the true sense, they’re good chips; but the unspecified ‘fish of the day’ is cardboard ‘thick’ and on the dry side.
Unspecified ‘battered fish of the day’
Georgie’s plate of arancini tastes “like a warmed up supermarket thing” and the romesco sauce is barely more than tinned, chopped tomatoes with a fancy name.
Wild mushroom arancini
The bill of £46.70 arrives with individually wrapped Mint Imperials, which perfectly capture the essence of the experience. All in all it’s everything I detest about eating out; badly cooked, abysmal food that’s a poor version of what’s it’s purporting to be; served in an environment that’s just plain unloved at a price that’s taking the piss.
I really wish we’d stayed at the pub and had crisps.
AVOID
Centenary Square, Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2EP
