Nomad

I’d been looking forward to the no rules night for a few months! i was lucky enough to grab 2 spaces. We received an email late on Tuesday to tell us to meet our host of thurs at 7:10, colmore row. We were advised that we would leave at 7.15&our first treat was on the bus. This was some cheesy but salt n vinegar tasting popcorn. Next we arrived at the kitchen garden café in kings Heath — I d hoped for a more unusual venue but it was fine… but I & others were left feeling we could have made our own way there… and others had travelled to the city centre to get back on a coach to take them back to the suburbs! The novelty of the coach was fun though!
We were told that wine was £15 and we could pick a bottle wrapped in tissue (lucky dip if you will) and bottles would cost between £15 — £190 in a restaurant. I managed to score at St Emillion so cost seemed good for such a nice bottle of red!
The starter arrived quite quickly — now I have to confess I was starving (& was pretty tipsy by now) — I think if you’re after a delicate starter, it ticked the boxes. It was effectively a new potato, some salad leaves & a mini egg yolk. It was beautiful & fresh tasting but probably not what I needed.
Next came the incredible pollock — cooked to perfection with a tasty pea purée & some little pickles and roasted spring onions!
For the main, we had lamb cooked two ways, a pulled lamb belly & slices of lamb. Beautifully cooked & finally I got some carbs — little bit of mashed potato.
Finally the delicious dessert arrived which I polished off in seconds — a creamy custard with peanuts chopped on top & a strawberry. I could eat it every day for the rest of my life!
We jumped back on the coach & found some apple fudge for journey home!
As it was no rules, we paid what we liked which I think is a great concept but not sure how well that works for the chef! We tried to ensure that we were fair based on cost of ingredients & chef time but felt perhaps the coach was an addition that wasn’t needed. Really enjoyed the night!

I attended one of Nomad’s #NoRules pop-​up events, and it was nothing short of spectacular.
Creative food, local ingredients from local foragers, and it’s pay what you wish! Guests are given a pen and piece of paper and can play critic for the evening.
We had a wonderful chat with the chef Alex, who was incredibly passionate about his work and very informative.
There were 12 tasting portions, and I enjoyed every single one of them quite a bit. Highlights for me included raspberry whiskey foam and the reindeer moss with caramel and peanut brittle. And yes, as other reviewers have mentioned, ants were on the menu. They are really quite tasty once you get over the jarring presentation (very citrusy).
I highly recommend snagging a ticket to one of these if you can!

If you want a dining experience to grab you by the nomads then this is the one for you!
We attended the No Rules evening last week held at Urban Coffee in the JQ and were somewhat unsure what to expect, I knew the food was going to be great — Alex has a great reputation — but what would the dinner be? All we knew was the concept was no rules, it was BYOB (bonus!) and it was in the JQ (2^nd bonus!).
What was delivered was a cacophony of incredible cuisine, 12 (I think) courses of somewhat off the wall culinary delights starting with cocktails (3 differently infused, pickled or coated grapes) through to goats cheese infused gin served with beetroot, pickled cauliflower with wood ants, japanese knotweed and asparagus, the most delicious lamb in a pea sauce and finally ending up with port and cheese like you’ve never seen it and a dessert cocktail squirted onto your hand (or clothes as Emma was unfortunate enough to get!). There were more course, these are just a few that I can remember.
We all left the evening absolutely enthralled with the range of food an techniques used, as well as slightly bemused as to what we’d just experienced.
All the tickets for forthcoming No Rules events are probably gone by now but Nomad are doing regular pop-​up nights at The Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath, well worth checking out for a truly unique dining experience. The menus are set and change regularly depending on what is ready in their allotment and what their crack team of foragers can dig up (sometimes quite literally!)

Nomad is a new concept from Birmingham based chef, Alex Claridge. As well as a pop up restaurant (currently at Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath), he is running several #NoRules events (where you don’t get told the location of the venue until 48 hours beforehand, eat with your hands and pay whatever you think your meal is worth at the end of the night). I managed to bag a free ticket to the first of these evenings and waited with anticipation for the location to be revealed.
I received my email notification on the Monday evening (for the event on Wednesday evening). We were allocated Urban Coffee Company in the Jewellery Quarter (literally around the corner from my flat) and advised that the evening would be BYOB. We eagerly wandered down for doors at 7pm and grabbed a table in readiness for a culinary adventure.
Although no drinks were for sale on the evening, the fantastic waiters and waitresses were handing out glasses of water and drinking vessels for the patrons to drink their poison of choice (for some this was Pepsi, for others this was whisky). Bang on 7:30pm, the courses started to appear…
Well. What can I say? Starting with «cocktails» (grapes which had been soaked in champagne and vermouth and lovely coated with elderflower sugar) the ten courses kept coming… Everything from gin rendered with goats cheese served in pipettes to compliment a serving of fresh beetroot to cauliflower, Japanese knot weed and wood ants (seriously, actual ants); the food was amazing. There were so many highlights, I can’t list them all — but the desserts (several courses including reindeer moss, wine gum made of port and the creamiest rice pudding ever made with curds) were outstanding.
The concept is «pay what you like» and patrons are invited to interact with Nomad during the night via social media and add their comments to a big sheet of paper provided, it’s truly a unique and novel dining experience.
If you’ve got tickets to one of the #Norules events — be prepared to be shocked, amazed and tantalised in equal measure. If you haven’t, I encourage you to check out the restaurant (if you can get a reservation). Go, experience, eat and enjoy.

Yes, we ate ants on cauliflower, yes gin infused with goats cheese and served in a pipette, that is the type of food we were offered at Nomad.
What a wonderful experience, great food and allows everyone to socialise.
The concept is: Tickets are limited, but free. 48 hours before the event you will be told of the location. We had 12 courses, all finger food, and at the end of the evening you are given an envelope and you pay whatever you want and is totally anonymous. You are asked to pay what you think is right and what you can afford.
If you are lucky to get tickets, those around you should be envious. It is really something not to be missed.
It would be good if one course was somewhat larger, some of us did walk out feeling hungry. It may be worth having a light dinner before going.