What the hell is “New Baltic Cuisine” when it’s at home? If what we eat at chef Niki Astley’s (no, that’s Niki) intriguing Two Cats Kitchen is anything to go by, it would appear to be whatever he wants it to be, loosely influenced by a number of hot-ticket chefs, a bit of nouveau-Scandi posturing and the fact that his girlfriend comes from Latvia. It also seems to be a determined attempt to make himself stand out in Birmingham’s culinary scene. And guess what? It works. Like a dream.
Astley’s background doesn’t appear to be immersed in the Baltic states. A bit of digging reveals that he worked at the White Horse in London’s Fulham (aka the Sloaney Pony, more concerned with dishing out nanny’s favourites to the collars-up brigade than anything starring fermented swede), with a stint of southern US-style soul food at the Church down the road. But here, in his first actual restaurant, he’s single-minded: New Baltic it is.
Down a hidden, brick-lined close in the jewellery district, the only clue to location a cryptic black cat sign, we find a long, beamed room given an almost monastic air by its stained-glass windows and “altar” at the far end (it’s a serving station where staff faff about with dishes before serving up). Other than a paint job (including tabletops, still tacky from their brush-up) and new seating, not a great deal appears to have changed since it was the Caribbean restaurant, or the Nepalese. Perhaps it’s a shoestring budget that allows Astley to serve a seven-course set tasting menu for a gentle £40.
After excellent, crunchy-crusted sourdough, almost honeyed with meadowsweet, and sunshine-yellow smoked butter comes auksta zupa, a Latvian beet soup usually made with fermented milk kefir, a kind of Baltic Yakult. Astley has substituted buttermilk, soothing balm to the shoutiness of dill; in the cold soup’s shocking pink depths are dice of egg white, on top a peppery nasturtium flower. Brilliantly lurid, it’s a properly bracing opener.
Better still is a chopped, raw tartare of beef “noisette”, a richly mineral rump cut. It clings to the edge of its plate, dotted with smoked duck, hazelnut, acerbic little jolts from pickled swede and fermented apple, crunch from croutons and hazelnut. It’s smoky with “coal oil” (a borrowing from Simon Rogan), and freshened by oyster leaves, that plant tasting spookily like its crustacean namesake. This teeters towards the sublime.
We’re entranced by chewy pelmeni dumplings with a molten, goat’s cheese stuffing and its crystalline onion broth sploshed with homemade lovage oil: a dish where sweetness and pungency, stodge and subtlety, play happily together. And Arctic char, the fish flaking into translucent folds over smoky shiitake mushrooms, sauced with egg yolk and salty lumpfish roe and samphire. Let’s gloss over the evening’s only stinker, a catfoody bunker of mutton done no favours by pumpkin, whole raw blackberries and a woody chunk of vinegary artichoke. (And I’m glossing extremely hard, because the menu promised us grouse with salted caramel.)
The kitchen’s love of fresh herbs reaches its peak with a pre-dessert called, simply, “Sorrel”. This turns out to be quite something: a bunch of large sorrel leaves secured by twine and interleaved (sorry) with various iterations of the citrussy plant: sorbet, curd, a crisp granola. Each mouthful delivers sweetness and sharpness, plus a knees-up of texture. I’m ignoring ribald snorts from the chum: the only way to eat the thing is to roll it into a cigar shape and ram it straight into gob. Oh, ho ho – very funny.
Details of the actual pudding escape me, but it’s basically the bang on-trend collision between an Eton mess and the contents of a cereal box. I’m sorry, food trendsters, but when confronted with unidentified blobs and blurts, shards of this and soils of that, it just makes me long for a sliver of perfect, sharp tarte au citron. Or, even better, some oozy, non-Baltic fromage.
Astley honed his craft during a series of pop-ups throughout the city, in coffee shops and bakeries. With his magpie approach, he may be making it up as he goes along, but he’s doing it with intelligence, flair and (apart from the mutton and that pudding) a fine eye for food’s inherent beauty. He’s moving Brum from balti to Baltic, brilliantly.
• Two Cats Kitchen 27 Warstone Lane, Birmingham B18, 0121-212 0070. Open lunch Thurs-Sat, noon-2pm; dinner Tues-Sat, 5.30-9.30pm. About £25 a head plus drinks and service; £40 tasting menu only Fri and Sat.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 8/10
