‘Smart tapas in need of some Spanish oomph’

Plates by Purnell’s, Birmingham

This week’s establishment is only one letter away from being an excruciating mind and body exercise technique. I tried it once – a private lesson – the aim being core strength, lower-back revitalisation and better posture. But it was agonisingly slow and all done attached to a contraption that looked like the merger of a running machine and a guillotine, neither of which I like the idea of. So I didn’t return, much to the relief of the instructor who clearly didn’t appreciate my impatience and total lack of empathy with the idea.

Meanwhile I cycle a lot, don’t stretch ever, and as I spend my life writing, eating and cycling I’m aware that I am slowly curving around myself and will one day, like some Roald Dahl character, turn into a snail.

The transformation was briefly stalled as I sat upright on a high stool at Plates by Purnell’s, a sweet and lively Spanish tapas restaurant in Birmingham. It’s situated not far from the city centre and is wrapped around the central core of the ground floor of a Victorian building. Its grand arched windows and the thin space (walls decorated with upcycled barrel tops) make one wonder if it once was the lobby for some aspiring 19thcentury business. Was this some offshoot of what the poet Robert Southey, visiting Birmingham in 1807, described as ‘the hammering of presses, the clatter of engines, and the whirling of wheels’? Of which, of course, a couple of hundred years later, nothing is left, the factories and buildings of the Industrial Revolution having been either demolished or fitted out as fancy loft living spaces or restaurants.

The man who lends his name to this one is Glynn Purnell, who has a fancier, Michelin-starry place around the corner; a West Midlands-born chef who was once described by the Birmingham

Post as ‘undoubtedly the finest chef to hail from Chelmsley Wood’.

Here, he indulges his love of Spanish tapas. Accompanied by straight, but not effusive, service, I began with crusty bread, drizzled with oil and scattered with chives, with a simple tomato dip, and anchovies (a menu extra). The latter came in a bowl on top of an innocuous salsa – an unnecessary addition, since a good anchovy needs nothing but its own silky, creamy, salty bravado.

Next came a cassoulet of chickpeas, a nicely cooked summery stew that could have done with some oomph, some seasoning, a little left hook to my taste buds; and the same could be said of a dish of shelled prawns and garlic. In Spain, it’s usually a more passionate affair: you get a whole prawn and The octopus was impeccable: charred, soft and with that magical seafood-meetspoultry flavour delight in pulling it apart, chewing the flesh of the tail and sucking furiously on the head – showing the sort of decorum one feels on being cooked a meal having hidden as a fugitive in a large pipe for a week without food or water.

The grilled octopus, meanwhile, was impeccable: charred, soft and with that wonderful, magical seafood-meetspoultry flavour.

But a highlight was my pud, written on the menu as ‘Desastre de Eton’, gloriously witty Spanglish and perhaps a sign that, despite having booked under a pseudonym, they saw me coming. There I was, a middle-aged man chomping my way through lunch, alone with my thoughts, and the hint at where it all started to go wrong was staring out at me from the menu.

I should add that it was, in fact, a perfect construct of this famous pudding: a beautiful meringue, resting neatly on berries and dainty squirts of cream. An absolutely sublime Eton mess. Which, I’m sure you’ll agree, rather sums me up.