Food & Drink: The truffler

THE RESTAURANT scene is revving up in Birmingham. And about time too! Brum has been best known as the home of the balti - a curry that makes a virtue of being served in a battered frying pan. After the cocktail lounge and the excitement of restaurant fiftytwo degrees north (0121-622 5250), which brought the first wood-fired oven to England's second city when it opened in May, there's more to come. This Monday, the third of Raymond Blanc's Le Petit Blancs opens at Brindley Place (0121-633 7333). Bank, the large London restaurant, is due to branch out into Birmingham by the end of the year and it has just been announced that a Malmaison hotel is coming in 2001 (though Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Manchester already have one). Also Paul Heathcote is said to be sniffing around for sites in a bid to expand from the North-west. As the good burghers of Birmingham might boast - it's where North and South meet in the middle.

u

A COUPLE of weeks ago Truffler revealed chef Giorgio Locatelli was uncharacteristically in the soup. I'm happy to report his name is now as clear as consomme. After a little fracas at Petrus, the restaurant run by Gordon Ramsay's familiar, Marcus Wareing, Locatelli was due to appear in court on 6 August. His lawyer argued that his client had been provoked, not by anything he had eaten at the restaurant but because it was made impossible for him to do so. The charges were thrown out, and the chef was given an absolute discharge by the magistrate. Meanwhile, Wareing and Ramsay are still being sued for damages - to property and profits - by the A-Z restaurant group, for which they used to work, and of which Locatelli is a partner.

u

CHILLI FOR the time of year? Visitors to this weekend's Chilli Pepper Fiesta at West Dean Gardens near Chichester, West Sussex, will definitely feel the heat. Some 200 varieties of chillis are grown in the walled kitchen garden and there will be tours, tastings, growing tips and demonstrations of cooking with chillis. Among the dozen or so stalls look out for Hot- Headz!, importer of mind and mouth-blowing sauces. Some have very saucy names including Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally and Fifi's Nasty Little Secret. Thrill seekers can also obtain a natural high from the unfeasibly hot Endorphin Rush. These, along with the Not Cool range of organic sauces, and a couple of hundred others are sold by mail order from the Hot-Headz! catalogue (01453 731052) and by e-mail on www.hot-headz.com.

u

EVEN THE ploughman's lunch is in for heat treatment if the Fine Cheese Co has its way. Its range of hot accompaniments - caramelised peppers, balsamic onions (posh pickled), tomato and red pepper salsa - are made in temperate Somerset. The jars are stylish and I recommend the onions. The Fine Cheese Co can be found at 29-31 Walcot Street, Bath (01225 448748).

u

CALLING ALL those who excel at cooking Asian food and fantasise about being a TV chef. You could become mega. Network East "Live Mega Mela", the Asian culture and lifestyle show is launching a search for the Mega Chef of the Year, in association with Tandoori Magazine and BBC Vegetarian Good Food Magazine. For entry details ring Sejal Shah or Nazira Bemath on 0181-902 5575. Entrants will have to produce a menu and a video tape of themselves. Regional rounds will take place before the final cook-off at the BBC Network East "Live Mega Mela" in the November. The winner will co-host cookery in the next series of Network East. Could a star chef be born?

u

CAN'T COOK, won't be deterred from appearing on a TV cookery programme? Ready Steady Cook is looking for participants who don't mind playing second fiddle to limelight-hogging chefs such as Brian Turner and Ross Burden. Application forms from 46 Bedford Square, London WC1.