Simpsons, restaurant review: Birmingham’s fine-dining destination is re-strutting its stuff

20 Highfield Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 3DU

The dining room has been extended and given an elegant makeover, leaving it feeling airy, clean-lined and modern (Jodi Hinds)

How do you introduce excitement and novelty into a long-term relationship? How to rekindle romance when you've been jogging along together nicely for 15 years, then gradually realise you're both getting older, and one of you needs a facelift? Yes, sure, there's Tinder, but this is the restaurant page – keep moving if you want the dating column.

We're talking about Simpsons, Birmingham's finest fine-dining restaurant, holder of a Michelin star these past 15 years and cradle of the city's burgeoning dining culture. Under the leadership of gifted restaurateur Andreas Antona, Simpsons has been a talent factory for a generation of chefs who went forth to populate the West Midlands and beyond with decent places to eat. One of them, Glynn Purnell, has been so successful that his alma mater was in danger of looking stuffy by comparison. And so Antona – who made a bold move a decade ago when he moved Simpsons from Kenilworth to Edgbaston – decided to change again, and change big.

A virginal quenelle of white crab is jolted by sharp pickled cucumber

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Like The Ivy, another seminal restaurant which recently closed for major refurbishment, Simpsons has emerged from a month under bandages with a whole new look, rather than a few minor nips and tucks. There's a new design scheme, apparently inspired by "the simple styles of Bauhaus, Japan and Scandinavia". Yep, that ought to cover it. There's a new head chef, in the form of Nathan Eades, and a new restaurant manager, recruited from Hedone in London. This is what TV execs call "a big play".

So much newness all at once can be indigestible, and startling for loyal customers. But first impressions are rather wonderful. The domestic bones of this handsome Georgian townhouse have been preserved: standing in the entrance hall, you're not sure whether to leave your coat or your calling card. A series of elegant reception rooms unfurl like a shimmering bolt of eau de nil silk, every luxe fabric and bespoke chair screaming "interior designer with a big budget". But there's nothing blingy or twee about it.

The dining room has been extended and given an elegant makeover, leaving it feeling airy, clean-lined and modern, like a Grand Designs take on an Alpine lodge. The centrepiece is the obligatory blasted tree stump – someone must be making a fortune from knocking out old branches to the restaurant trade. And in a radical departure, there's not a tablecloth or curtain to be seen.

Chefs emerge from the semi-open kitchen carrying dishes to the table. That's how it tends to work with these new-fangled tasting menus – and therein lies the next big change. The old à la carte menu structure has been done away with. Now it's tasting menus only for dinner, five or eight courses, with a wine list that doesn't offer much below £40. They may have relaxed the aesthetic a little, but make no mistake, this is still a special-occasion kind of place.

And rather special the food is too: playful without being whimsical, open-minded without dashing around the globe like a gap-year tourist. Stand-outs from the seasonal five-course menu include a "crispy" duck's egg, a lightly poached yolk held in a nest-like basket of finely spun filo pastry, heaped with shaved Jerusalem artichoke and black truffle, the emollience of the yolk countered by a belting cobnut and truffle pesto. A virginal quenelle of white crab is jolted by sharp pickled cucumber and citric yuzu mayonnaise, a pinball experience for the tastebuds. Plaice, pan-roasted and finished with crumbled chicken skin, trompettes and charred nubs of corn, is equally panoramic. The bread is fantastic – pillowy and seamed with tapenade, like a savoury cinnamon roll.

One dish – of duck, toasted grains and leaves of pickled onion – doesn't quite come together. Nor am I crazy about a confection of chocolate, peanuts, caramelised banana and popping candy, which aims for Heston-like nostalgia but overshoots. More subtle and exquisite is honey parfait partnered with poppy seed cake and candied fennel, with a spry fennel and yoghurt sorbet.

With long-standing chef-director Luke Tipping, the kitchen seems to have hit the ground running. The new front-of-house team doesn't operate quite as smoothly; the big, barrel-vaulted room needs an animating presence to warm it up, the human equivalent of an open fire. But maybe they are thrown by having Birmingham's two top critics at adjacent tables, doggedly pretending not to notice each other, like feuding dowager duchesses.

Simpsons is a hugely important marker for the Birmingham restaurant scene. Some long-standing devotees might find the stripped-back new look challenging. But others will discover Simpsons for the first time: reborn as a thoroughly modern restaurant, still strutting its stuff among all the hot young culinary totty on the block. This could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Food ****
Service ****
Atmosphere ****

20 Highfield Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 3DU (0121 454 3434). Five courses £65; eight courses £90 a head before wine and service. Three course lunch with ½ bottle wine £45 a head