Birmingham chef issues powerful ‘persist’ message after Michelin Star win years in the making<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nBack then, Alex reminded me of someone I couldn’t place, a musician maybe, a painter or a poet.<\/p>\n
It felt from the outside like he was filled with the sort of combustible creativity that could either drive something forward at land speed record-breaking velocity, or that might explode and burn your face off.<\/p>\n
I liked it.<\/p>\n
From Land, he moved onwards to a new venture, Nomad, the little ants laid out ready to be eaten were a big step from vegan cooking and pretty much the main thing anyone seemed to mention when talking of it.<\/p>\n
In either coop he was pushed in, the one filled with vegan scran or insects on a platter, Alex seemed uncomfortable with the idea.<\/p>\n
As a journalist, I always felt that his annoyance and frustration at the idea of being misunderstood, or labelled incorrectly, was something I both related to and struggled to negotiate in my reporting.<\/p>\n
Even writing this now I expect him to message to say I’ve got it all wrong and can I shut up please.<\/p>\n
I like that about him too.<\/p>\n
Nomad evolved into The Wilderness, finding a home in the Jewellery Quarter, a space that has all of the grit of an old factory but all of the magical, listed splendour a heritage neighbourhood like this deserves.<\/p>\n
It was befitting of a ‘rock and roll fine dining’ spot where the chef slung a giant python around his neck for photos and scrawled Bukowski quotes on black walls to turn out plates of delicate produce and exquisite, imaginative flavours before it. Grit and beauty.<\/p>\n
And as time moved on, a decade, Alex weathered change in that spot.<\/p>\n
His new cocktail bar Nocturnal Animals opening and closing, a pandemic, a stint as the Night Time Economy Advisor to Andy Street, a new opening in the form of a seafood-forward restaurant in landlocked Brum called ‘Albatross Death Cult’.<\/p>\n
For a long time, even as a fan of the genre, I wondered what The Wilderness meant by ‘rock and roll fine dining’.<\/p>\n
I got the fine dining bit when I went in to try the tasting menu, but outside of the soundtrack and the all-black-everything decor, where was the rock and roll?<\/p>\n
When Alex collected his Michelin Star at long last this week, and Michelin commented that they’d ‘seen hard work and persistence pay off’, it clicked.<\/p>\n
When Ozzy Osbourne wanted to play music festivals again but Lollapalooza turned him down, he and Sharon set up Ozzfest and travelled the world with it.<\/p>\n
When Michelin inspectors kept their coveted stars in their luxe leather satchels, Alex Claridge showed up and cooked whatever the hell he wanted anyway.<\/p>\n
Rock and effing roll, man.<\/p>\n
A Michelin Star is no small feather in a cap, an acknowledgement and a display of excellence, hopefully more bookings, more visitors.<\/p>\n
But the journey, the grind, the graft, the pivoting, the agitation, the challenges, the joys, the misunderstandings and the side-steps had been the point all along. That’s the punk rock, DIY spike.<\/p>\n
Sometimes people ask me what I think ‘Birmingham food’ is. Is it the high end expensive restaurants with Michelin acknowledgement? The neighbourhoods with world-class samosas for 50p?<\/p>\n
Is it our street food halls or our balti houses? I never knew how to answer.<\/p>\n
But now, when I consider what Birmingham food is, I’ll think of Alex.<\/p>\n
It’s showing up and staying true to yourself, following your gut and laying it all out on the table where people can pick it up, or not.<\/p>\n
It’s forging something from nothing, through fire, and stamping a Birmingham ‘anchor’ hallmark on it, sometimes with your boot and sometimes with a wax seal.<\/p>\n
It’s going to Dublin to pick up an award one day, and sweating into your new chef’s whites the next day because the journey doesn’t stop for a star, however bedazzling.<\/p>\n
There’s a lesson in that, for every single artistic, compulsive creator in this city.<\/p>\n
Don’t wait for the pay-off. Tomorrow, if we wake up, we go again.<\/p>\n
The Wilderness is as 27 Warstone Lane, Jewellery Quarter, B18 6JQ.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, Alex Claridge collected his first Michelin Star after 10 years at The Wilderness in the Jewellery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":758876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,10314,748,393,4884,10969,56079,16,15],"class_list":["post-758875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-birmingham","tag-birmingham","tag-birmingham-restaurants","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-jewellery-quarter","tag-michelin","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116056235939736666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/758876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1_GPY_BEM_270516wilderness_081JPG.jpg\")
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