{"id":699577,"date":"2026-07-19T06:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699577\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T06:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T06:47:09","slug":"vieni-birmingham-a-happy-hubbub-you-cannot-pipe-this-in-restaurant-review-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699577\/","title":{"rendered":"Vieni, Birmingham \u2013 \u2018A happy hubbub \u2013 you cannot pipe this in\u2019 \u2013 restaurant review | Food"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vieni, an Italian restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, is small, Sicilian and scrappy. The Instagram bio of its chef and founder Angelina Adamo<\/a> reads, \u201cBite off more than you can chew and learn how to fucking chew\u201d, which feels like a battle cry for almost everyone stepping into hospitality, especially independent places like Vieni, where the waters are choppy and your skillset needs to be varied. Arancini with one hand, signing off payroll and ordering loo paper with the other.<\/p>\n

Vieni, which is about a mile or so from the city\u2019s Bull Ring, is a million miles from Albert\u2019s Schloss<\/a>, Big Mamma\u2019s La Bellezza<\/a> and the multitude of vast, impersonal pleasure machines that have spread their legs in Brum city centre. Of course, a gigantic Rosa\u2019s<\/a> serving pad thai and Tattu<\/a> with a plastic purple flower ceiling all have their place, and make people happy, but I have joy in my heart for places like Vieni.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hearty, not trendy\u2019: Vieni\u2019s barbecued whole sea bass, with courgette and basil<\/p>\n

Prior to this opening, Adamo was running the kitchen at The Circle Lounge <\/a>inside Birmingham Hippodrome, serving weary thesps and parents seeking refuge from Robin Hood the pantomime, with plates of marvellous arancini. She has now moved to this tiny, beloved nook on the edge of the newly emerging Goodsyard<\/a> development, serving coils of Sicilian fennel sausage with cacio e pepe<\/a> <\/a>butter beans, fregola with clams, and an eccentric, ever-changing dolce of the day that is worth the train fare alone. Note: many property developers claim to be building in the quaintly named Jewellery Quarter but are actually miles away; Vieni is just beside the tiny station. En route I bought vintage clip-on earrings from a man in a bullet-proof kiosk, while on the corner a sandwich board offered gold grills for your teeth from \u00a360, with free moulding and postage.<\/p>\n

Vieni\u2019s menu is hearty, not trendy \u2013 it\u2019s not glorified picky bits and puzzling sharing plates. It is, instead, 32-hour ox cheek crispy lasagne in slices as a starter; Pyefleet oysters with British strawberry and champagne vinegar; seabass crudo with peaches, basil and green chilli; and ruffled ribbons of mafaldine with vodka tomato sauce. We snuck in on a Saturday at around half past four, myself and the weary Charles, and grabbed a window table for a Sicilian Slapper, draught Poretti and Limonata Radler, and a glass of Luscombe\u2019s lightly sparkling rhubarb pop. Soon we were ordering a round of 1946 gildas and a plate of majoram polenta bites. We\u2019d popped in for snacks; now we were begging them to serve us dinner.<\/p>\n

I needed one of the pea, broad bean and pecorino arancini that Adamo is so adept at; these aren\u2019t your piddly quail\u2019s egg-sized arancini so popular in Britain. This was a magnificent object, perched in a puddle of tomato sauce and heaped with pecorino. Next up, that 32-hour ox cheek crispy lasagne: lots of depth, lots of softness. The ultimate cuddle on a plate.<\/p>\n

32 Hr Ox Cheek Crispy Lasagn\u2018An ultimate cuddle on a plate\u2019: Vieni\u2019s 32-hour ox cheek crispy lasagne.<\/p>\n

Vieni has that thing that pleases me most in restaurants: a happy hubbub. You cannot pipe this in or orchestrate it. A happy restaurant hubbub manifests when diners are genuinely happy with their s\u2019mores toasted marshmallow gelato, or, as we had, a large barbecued sea bream with peperoncino \u2019nduja butter. Diners were chuffed with their burrata, melon and Brummie honey, littered with mint and pistachio, or their whole globe artichoke with hazelnut pangrattato. This wasn\u2019t like Kawan<\/a>, who you may remember from last week, where the atmosphere was of people who had been very politely mugged.<\/p>\n

Dolce of the day: Vieni\u2019s Sicilian lemon and vanilla cannolo.<\/p>\n

Vieni dances a fine line where British-Italian restaurants often fail. It\u2019s not the Spaghetti House or a red-sauce mum-and-pop restaurant; it sits closer in spirit to Moro<\/a> on Exmouth Market, London, but it isn\u2019t remotely intimidating and you are actually being fed. The menu is ever changing \u2013 that dolce of the day, a s\u2019mores toasted marshmallow gelato when we visited, for example, seems now to be a maraschino cherry gelato with a lattice shortcrust. That\u2019s one of the sexiest things I\u2019ve written this year.<\/p>\n

Grab a table. Bite off more than you can chew. Then eat the bloody lot.<\/p>\n

Vieni<\/a>, 41 Pitsford Street, Goodsyard, B18 6LJ, 0121 806 0080; vieni.co.uk. Open lunch Weds\u2013Sat noon-2pm, dinner Tue-Sat 5pm-9pm, plus brunch Sat 9.30am-11.45am (10am-2pm Sun). About \u00a350 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.<\/p>\n