No podcast for this post, just a look at a brand new feature available on Instagram that could really help food & drink businesses. In an effort to support smaller businesses during covid- 19, Instagram has made food delivery easier by adding a Food Order sticker for Insta Stories.
How To Use Food Order Sticker
If your restaurant or takeaway is on Deliveroo or Uber Eats. the food order sticker makes it even easier for customers to order from you, by letting them order with one simple click on your Insta Story.
To access these new stickers, just click on the sticker tray found by clicking the box with a smiley face icon at the top of the Insta Stories page. Then select the Food Order Sticker.
Once you have clicked on the sticker you will need to select your partner, either Deliveroo or Uber Eats.
Now your Food Order sticker is all ready to use, and Instagram will remember your details so you will not have to do this every time. Although you can change the link at any time by clicking on the link icon on the sticker.
Making The Most Of The Food Order Sticker
A few simple ways you can use the sticker to be most effective
Best Sellers– Use good quality images of some of your best selling dishes to create a story. Use the sticker on each image.
Native Instagram Stickers- Instagram algorithms favour their native stickers eg- Poll, Quiz Question. Why not make a collage of two favourite dishes and use a poll to let your followers choose their favourite, with the food order sticker on there too so they can order it
Highlight New Dishes– Give returning customers something new. Use images of the new dishes to create a story
Customer Reviews- people want what other people have recommended. Turn your online customer reviews into an Instagram story and encourage your followers to order now.
Sharing is caring- Encourage customers to post stories about their takeaway from you, and repost with encouragement to order for themselves with the sticker.
Add An Order Food Action Button To Your Profile
Usually, food businesses are only allowed one website link in their profile. Instagram now allows you to add a new Order Food action button. This will help customers find your deliveroo or Uber Eats page.
Go to your profile on Instagram & click edit profile
Click on action buttons
Click on order food and enter your Deliveroo or Uber Eats link
Birmingham food tour very kindly invited me on this food tour of the Jewellery Quarter. Food, interesting local knowledge and a great time were all provided by Birmingham Food Tour and completely free. Opinions as always are completely my own.
Birmingham Food Tour
To be honest, the first time i heard about a food tour in Birmingham. Being from this great city and as someone who eats out, FREQUENTLY. I thought why would i do that? What possibly could i be shown that I’ve not seen before.
The truth is that the Birmingham restaurant scene is changing so much, that i have found it nearly impossible to make a dent in my list of places i need to visit. Especially when it comes to the Jewellery Quarter.
Saints Kitchen
Saint Kitchen
So the meeting place for our adventure is Saint kitchen at the bottom of St Paul’s Square. I enter to a warm welcome from our host Rhiannon and the rest of the food fanatics, who are all busy getting to know each other.
Joining the group on my own i was immediately made to feel welcome by the couples sitting close by, and the conversation soon got flowing about my favourite subject, food. Right on cue we are presented with a quick introduction to Saint and their food by Rhiannon to our meals a sort of tomato and bean stew with a slice of grilled halloumi and topped with a perfect poach egg. Served with a slice of sourdough toast, which threatens to steal the show, and is from the amazing Peel & Stone Bakery.
It was superb, so good it made me feel guilty i had wrongly dismissed Saint Kitchen as being part of the same chain as desco lounge and Sorrento Lounge. I now know that this modern independent is brilliant and will be back to sample some more from their brunch menu.
Otto Pizza
Otto Pizza
A quick stroll across the square, stopping to listen to Rhiannon’s interesting and informative local knowledge. I had no idea how much history was behind this area. We come to our next stop, Otto Wood Fired Pizza AKA- Birmingham’s best pizza, in my opinion. Although i’m yet to try the new pizza places vying for that throne.
One of my concerns of going on a food tour was portion size. Convinced they would just be small plates or tasters, Saint kitchen dispelled my ignorance and Otto Pizza beat me over the head with it. So much food! Even a greedy sod like me was starting to feel the burn, and then out come more pizza.
Generous quality ingredients top a fantastic crisp base, which has risen and blistered from the heat of the fire. So deep in conversation, and having fun i forget to take any notes of pizza names or toppings and just about remember to take a photo.
Rock & Roll Brewhouse
Rock & Roll Brewhouse
Our third stop was a little trickier to find, it’s easily missed but you’ll be sorry if you do miss it. From the outside it looks a bit run down and industrial but down the concrete ramp and into the windowless tap room, you are transported in to one of the city’s hidden gems.
The music is blasting but not with anything current, this place takes great pride in their uniquely brilliant taste in music. Even posting their playlist on their Facebook page for all to see.
The interior is unique too, like no other i have seen. It did feel like going back in time to an old social club which had me feeling nostalgic. The tap room was packed with a great atmosphere. When i used to drink, this is the kind of place i loved, and could have spent the whole day, sampling their different beers. A must see for anyone who has never been
Pig & Tail
Pig & Tail
A quick pit stop for a tour of the fascinating Ruskin building and it’s serene roof top kitchen garden allotment, and we arrive at our next destination. The Pig & Tail on Albion St. A kind of modern English fusion Tapas restaurant from the same folk who brought us The Pickled Piglet.
Cod Chunks
A beautifully modern pub, with a great selection of small plates and sharing boards. We are treated to a summer tasting board and a few small plates, but as with Otto i’m so consumed enjoying the company of my new friends i forget to take any notes, and my mental notes don’t expand past delicious. Not helpful for the Pig & Tail but very telling of how much fun this tour is.
Vanguard Mead Bar
By the time we get to our last stop, we are well fed and quite relived that the last of our adventures is of the liquid variety. Mead tasting at Vanguard, situated above 1000 trades. This charming bar is not only notorious for it’s selection of and dedication to mead, but for it’s quality cocktails too.
Mead Tasting
We taste three different meads, introduced by owner Chris who is determined to rid mead of it’s medieval, old man stereo type and is succeeding too. The last of the meads being a sparkling low percentage mead, which would go incredibly well over ice in a chilled glass on a warm summers day, if we ever get one.
Rhiannon passes around some treats from our friends over at the chocolate quarter, and we begin to say goodbyes. Today really did prove one of my favourite quotes true “There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t met” I can’t recommend this tour enough, and i definitely will be back on it soon
Nostalgia, it’s a strange thing. I’m in one of the most famous Michelin starred establishments in Birmingham. Yet the third course of our nine-course tasting menu. A dish of slow cooked mouth-watering pork belly with turnips, pickled onions and a welcome crunch coming in the way of the smoked potato crisps, has transported me back twenty(ish) years.
I’m coming
home from school on a bitterly cold day to a warm dining table where I find a gigantic
bowl of stew, the kind that warms deep to your core. The kind that has been
cooking so long the meat softly falls apart, struggling to keep it together under
the weight of the light gravy that covers it. This was slow cooking before slow
cooking became a big thing.
Now I’m not comparing my mom’s cooking, to the cooking of Purnells talented brigade of chefs. I’m nostalgic not delirious. Not that my mom was a bad cook by any stretch of the imagination, just that her unfussy, simple and wholesome food which I loved and miss dearly, was a million miles apart from the refined, delicate dishes I’m sampling today.
As it goes, a sense of fun and nostalgia seem to be the two key ingredients to the magic of this great restaurant. I wouldn’t expect anything less from a restaurant created by Glyn Purnell. A chef who talks so fondly about his early years experimenting with food he cooked for his younger siblings. His fun and mischievous personality won him fans nationwide when he appeared on BBC’s Great British Menu. This was the first time that I had seen a chef on TV who made me really take notice of what top level cooking could look like, I wanted to try his food instantly.
The fun
begins with the gifts from the kitchen, smoked eel filled with what I believed
to be a squid ink wafer cone topped with a delicate mousse giving it the
appearance of a mini ice cream cone.
The other gifts were some super fresh mackerel
on a crisp crouton with an olive tapenade that escalated the whole thing to
another level.
The final treat was a delightful potato bon bon that was cleverly made to resemble a lump of coal, and if all lumps of coal tasted this incredible, I’d be praying to be on the big man’s naughty list this year.
Warm hearty home-made bread arrived with our first course, a dish I have desired since I first got Glyn’s book. Cheese and Pineapple – “Emotions of Soixante-Dix” A fun dish of salt baked pineapple covered in a warming blanket of parmesan mousse topped with frozen pineapple with two mini bread sticks to act as the tooth pick from the old buffet favourite.
‘Mushrooms on Toast’ was the title of our next course, a dish that for me was the highlight of the night. Everything on this dish the crisp toast, foie gras, runny quail egg, sweet pickled mushrooms and a deep broth all cooked perfectly and combining in harmony to create a real autumn treat.
There was a change to our menu for the next course, instead of the halibut we would be having his curried monkfish dish that was from the Great British Menu. This was a good swap. Subtly spiced meaty monkfish, topped with fermented carrot, served with some beautifully spiced fragrant curry lentils, finished perfectly with some coriander emulsion. This is a very good and clever dish that manages to take what Birmingham is famous for, curry, but turns it into something sophisticated and very worthy of a Michelin star restaurant.
‘Nice to MEAT you’ the name of our main course, a course which follows the same high standards set by the previous courses. A visually beautiful dish of roast Balmoral venison loin which is pink, and succulent absolutely cooked to perfection. The generous chunk of venison comes with a sweet butternut squash puree, some sour citrus flavours provided by blobs of orange and ponzu, and a piece of crispy nori, a Japanese seaweed which brings a brilliant interesting texture to this fantastic dish.
The first of our desserts ‘Shy babies get no sweets’ is a zingy refreshing pallet cleansing genius of a dish that matches deliciously balanced lemon balm with liquorice. Not a combination I’ve had before but one I will be having again, they go together amazingly, and I absolutely loved it.
‘Burnt English Egg Custard Surprise 10/10/10 GBM 2008’ The most iconic and famous dish on the menu, and one that I have wanted to try ever since I first seen it on the Great British Menu TV programme. A heavenly dish that has a real sense of fun, it did not disappoint. A creamy, smooth, silky custard with a vanilla gel, and burnt sugar topping inside a hollowed hens egg shell. As a bonus this was served with a caramel baked apple, topped with what tasted like a stroopwafle and a quenelle of vanilla ice cream which put together actually tasted like a great apple straddle.
The final curtain came in the form of ‘Mint Choccy Chip’. A rich chocolate and mint mousse, with a chocolate crumb topping. The dish presents a giant helping of theatrics, provided by dry ice being poured over dried mint engulfing the whole table in a menthol fog. It’s by far the best after dinner chocolate I’ve ever had.
It’s easy to take the level of service provided at restaurants such as Purnells for granted. It’s all too easy to just dismiss it with a comment such as “it’s what you would expect”, however it really does make the difference to the whole experience. Its all well and good that the food is of the highest quality but it’s the warm friendly, attentive and knowledgeable front of house team that can really make an experience memorable, and on this occasion all the people who looked after us were excellent. Everybody, lead by restaurant manager Sonal had a smile on their face, made us feel welcome, introduced every course with passion and enthusiasm, kept our glasses permanently full, and advised us on which wine to order. All small simple tasks that were consistently done all night and contributed to this being a special experience and not just a normal dinner out.
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