A guide to plant-based dining in Birmingham
England’s second city has a long association with veggie and vegan food, and even more places are championing plant-based cuisine.
I hear the balti before I see it. It leaves the kitchen sizzling in a blackened metal bowl. It’s a curry to behold — a thick, fiery swamp of spices. A charred, pillowy naan is placed next to it as cutlery. I inhale, set aside any sense of decorum and start tearing and scooping almost before the server turns their back.
Birmingham has a food scene that does this sort of thing to a person. Home to a pan-global abundance of seriously good restaurants, not to mention more Michelin stars than any UK city outside London, it was described by last year’s Good Food Guide as ‘Britain’s most exciting foodie destination’.
I’m in town on a mission. A meat-free one. As a vegetarian of just a few years’ standing, and still trying to discern my courgette koftas from my jackfruit tacos, I’m here to sample some of the city’s countless veggie and vegan options. Shababs proves a good place to start. Its emphasis is on authentic, well-priced baltis with over 30 vegetarian options on the menu.
Balti in broad terms describes a curry made in a thin steel bowl over a hot flame, then served and eaten in the same scorched vessel in which it was cooked. The method keeps the curry hot and retains its flavour. While the original style is associated with Northern India and Pakistan, the version typically served in the UK — using vegetable oil rather than ghee — originated in Birmingham’s large Pakistani/Kashmiri community in the 1970s. “Some balti cooking bowls are more than 25 years old,” says Shababs’ affable owner Zaf Hussain, before offering me a tarka dal of astonishing depth.
The next day, having worked up an appetite on a long canalside walk, I visit Land, in the city centre’s Great Western Arcade, where bakers, barbers and bottle shops line the covered passageway. With an entirely plant-based seasonal menu, it entered the Michelin guide for the first time in 2023. Birmingham’s a fitting home; the city was the birthplace of the Vegan Society, in 1944, and almost half a century before that, it witnessed the opening of The Pitman Vegetarian Hotel, home to one of Britain’s first vegetarian restaurants, which reportedly counted Mahatma Gandhi among its customers.
The tasting menu at Land is a blizzard of deft technique and heady flavours: browned chickpea-flour pancakes are topped with harissa and hot shredded sprouts; roasted onion squash is paired with mustard seeds and curried lentils; an apple dessert is joined by malt mousse and black garlic caramel.
In a city of more than 2,000 restaurants and takeaways, my food wanderings barely scratch the surface. I finish with a visit to The Rainbow pub in Digbeth, where the menu is produced by award-winning vegan specialists Ba-Ha. It’s pub grub — burgers, nachos and salad bowls — but done with lip-smacking aplomb. “A lot of people don’t realise we’re plant-based until they look at the menu,” says general manager Jimmy Shaban. “Without fail, they’re won over.”
The Rainbow, where the original, real-life Peaky Blinders are said to have drunk in the late 19th century, sits feet away from The Custard Factory, a hip nightlife complex in the former home of Bird’s Custard — a brand that, along with Typhoo Tea and Cadbury, used to be among the city’s main claims to food-and-drink fame. Times have changed. On one last walk back into the centre, I cross Black Sabbath Bridge, named after one of the city’s most famous musical exports. Lead singer Ozzy Osbourne infamously bit the head off a bat in the 1980s. Would he have been bold enough, I wonder, to do the same to a roasted cauliflower floret?
More meat-free experiences in Birmingham
The food at this budget Indian takeaway in Hall Green is excellent, with a good choice of masalas. Try the barfis (milk-based sweets).
A simple city-centre joint with a fully vegan menu of ‘pay as you feel’ soups, sandwiches and cakes. Vegan beer and wines are also available.
Overseen by Robert Ortiz, formerly of Michelin-starred Lima London, this restaurant offers South American fine dining and has a dedicated vegetarian tasting menu.
A veteran of the local scene, this restaurant has held a Michelin star since 1999 and offers a plant-based tasting menu at lunch and dinner.
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