Some meals are about eating.
Others begin hours before you reach the restaurant.
You decide what to wear, perhaps arrange drinks beforehand and spend the afternoon looking forward to the evening. Birthdays, anniversaries, engagements and those wonderfully unnecessary occasions when the only reason for going out is that you haven’t done it for too long.
Birmingham is particularly good at this kind of dinner.
The city’s reputation for serious food has developed dramatically, with sophisticated independent restaurants sitting alongside celebrated fine-dining establishments and a dining scene influenced by cultures from around the world.
Adam’s Restaurant is one of the names associated with Birmingham’s high-end dining scene and demonstrates just how polished a city-centre meal can become.
Then there are restaurants that approach the special occasion differently.
The Wilderness has developed a reputation for modern cooking and an experience that feels very different from the traditional white-tablecloth model.
For steak lovers, Pasture Birmingham and Blacklock Birmingham demonstrate the range now available in the city.
The real story, though, is choice.
A special meal no longer has to mean hushed voices, formal service and tiny portions arranged with tweezers.
For one couple it might mean a tasting menu. For another it is an enormous steak and a bottle of red. Somebody else wants cocktails, sharing plates and a restaurant busy enough to feel like the start of a night out.
Birmingham can do all three.
Location matters too.
Colmore Row and the surrounding business district become very different after office hours, while the Jewellery Quarter offers independent character. Brindleyplace adds waterside dining and Chinatown gives you an enormous selection within a few streets.
Our advice is to build the evening around the restaurant rather than simply making dinner one stop among many.
Arrive early enough for a drink. Put the phone away for a while. Order something you wouldn’t cook at home. If there is a tasting menu and the budget permits, surrender control and let the kitchen decide.
Most importantly, don’t save Birmingham’s best restaurants exclusively for birthdays ending in zero.
Sometimes making the reservation creates the occasion.
And that may be the greatest luxury of all.
