Being home to five Michelin-starred restaurants makes Birmingham the most awarded city in the UK outside London. Adam Stokes earned one of these stars in 2013, less than six months after he and his wife Natasha opened a small, temporary restaurant in the heart of the city centre. The restaurant – adam’s – was hailed for its simple approach to food with little imaginative twists that elevated it to Michelin status.
The restaurant was never going to become a permanent fixture, however – Adam and Natasha set up the original Bennetts Hill location as a two-year pop-up while they sought out a more permanent building. While two years gave the duo plenty of time to make a name for themselves (the small restaurant was even voted the best in the UK by Tripadvisor in October 2015) it was only after they found New Oxford House – an art deco building most recently home to an insurance company – last year that they felt they could achieve their full potential. After much refurbishment and building everything from scratch, the new Adam’s restaurant sees its first lunch service served on 26 January. Adam can’t wait to show the UK what he’s capable of.
‘This is the restaurant we have been promising for over two years now,’ he tells us. ‘Our ethos will still be the same as before, which is to cook contemporary food in comfortable and relaxed surroundings that’s served by happy and knowledgeable people. The big different is the facility – we have more space to ensure a more overall quality dining experience. The décor of the first restaurant was our starting block, and we have built on that and tried to offer more.’
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Adam Stokes and the reincarnation of Adam’s