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Brad Carter of Birmingham’s Michelin-starred Carters of Moseley extols the virtues of provenance without compromise and passion without pretence

Interview by Will Halbert
Photography by Jack Spicer Adams

Carters of Mosely is a tough gig to pin down on paper. It’s a restaurant every bit as renowned for its reverence as it is notorious for its subversiveness. Its menu stands as an all-out celebration of the British Isles but remains unswayed by misplaced nostalgia, hackneyed trope, or cynical gimmick. There’s a sense of fun here seldom found this high up the – wait for it – food chain of fine dining. No sir, Michelin-star menus don’t come with more flex and moxie than Carters of Mosely. And that’s in large part thanks to the efforts of Brad Carter himself. His self-taught, from-the-ground-up approach to the craft isn’t just the fuel that propels his restaurant to such great heights, it’s the secret something-something that makes it all such a spectacle to boot.

Your menus have quite rightly been described as ‘wonky, weird and perfect’. Is it important for you to challenge diners’ expectations?
It’s really important for me to challenge diners. What I do at Carters isn’t going to please everyone; it’s an extension of my vision and my convictions. I’ve always set out to create dishes that people can’t get at home, dishes that make our products and our ingredients the star of the show. As much as I love a steak, and strive to perfect that at home, everyone can do a steak. At Carters, we’re always looking to push things that little bit further, to really think outside the box and blow people away. That’s the key.

Naturally, the guests’ expectations run high when you’re operating at this level. People are always expecting so much of you. To multiply and maintain that mind-blowing quality over 14 servings, and to instill a sort of rhythm and flow to it, that’s where the skill really comes in. I’ve found myself at the knife-edge of innovation. I really like it here.

Michelin-star dining can be a little intimidating at times. How do you manage to keep things fun and relatable amidst all the prestige?
For us, the restaurant was always going to be a true representation of who we are; something we believed in. Together with my partner, Holly, I always wanted to create the kind of place we’d want to visit on our nights off. So there’s this personal standard that we hold ourselves to. we deal in high-end produce without compromise, but we maintain a vibe that’s more akin to eating at a mate’s place for dinner. That’s where I want Carters to sit.

Like I say, we have some of the best quality products you’ll find in the UK; we have some of the best wines from around the world, but it’s important for us to stay true to ourselves. I’m not a posh guy from a posh area. I didn’t get the silver-spoon upbringing. But you don’t need to be posh to appreciate a good thing. I’m learning along the way, and that excites me. I think some of that excitement is captured in what we do here.

The Michelin Star is the Oscar of the food and drink world, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not why we started things here. It’s come along with the journey and I absolutely love it. But the fundamentals of this whole dream of mine have always been to create a space that I would personally love to spend time in. Hopefully, that honesty is the reason why what we do resonates so deeply with people.

Is it ever a challenge balancing the Michelin star status with your experimental edge? Or do they both go hand-in-hand?
I’ve always preferred to do things my own way. I always like things to truly be my own. Having never worked in any Michelin-starred restaurants before opening my own place meant that I never really had that knowledge or network to fall back on – I had to carve my own way through. It’s paid off; I feel like I’ve managed to create my own style through that grind. And I think the Michelin Guide recognises that.

When you start doing your own thing, championing your own island, and celebrating your own history, it really shines through. So I think the Michelin star and experimentation go hand in hand, but one isn’t a product of the other. Again, it all comes back to honesty and authenticity.

Technically, there really wasn’t a modern British cuisine a decade ago – the guide was predominantly French-led for a time. British chefs have slowly put British cuisine on the map. We enjoy a rich cultural and gastronomic history here in the UK, but we’re refining it, distilling it. We’re taking influence from around the world, obviously, but we’re exploring it in a way that helps elevate our own traditions. Some of the most beautiful things come from classic techniques and practices – but we’re not looking to imitate. Knowing how to master something without simply replicating is a real skill – one that the Michelin Guide recognises.

The Michelin Guide is more open than it’s ever been. It truly recognises innovation and there are much younger chefs coming through.

Is Michelin-star take away something you’d have ever imagined doing when you first opened your doors?
2020 saw us all doing things we never thought we’d do! We all had to move fast when that first lockdown was dropped on us. I started off by doing food box deliveries; both raw meals to cook at home and cooked meals to enjoy immediately. They were really well received. It helped that we were some of the first to the party.

We got to re-open between September and November – that gave me time to really plan how we wanted to move forward. For the current round of lockdowns, we’ve done things a little differently. We thought ‘you know what? People are kind of sick of cooking at home. They’ve been there, they’ve done that. They want to go out for food and have a little bit of fun with it. But they want it from someone that they trust. 

So, we’ve been doing our own spin on a kebab. Honestly, one of the best things I’ve ever eaten was a kebab on authentic Turkish pide bread, bought on the streets of Berlin. It was amazing. I wanted to recreate that vibe using Italian Mortadella. So I popped Mortadella on a spit in Carters’ kitchen. It was kind of like one of those mad food ideas that actually just felt like great timing.

It’s been crazy successful. And I don’t want to speak too soon but I think they might be here to stay, in some form or another. That’s one of the weird advantages of the lockdown, it’s allowed me to play out some of my ideas in real-time and see them possibly grow into something bigger. Watch this space.

From Mortadella kebabs to potato smilies and caviar, you’re a fan of mashing up old comfort foods and elevated cuisine. Are there any other fast food/cantine classics you think it’d be fun to put a spin on?
The way I see it, if you’re going to let your food do the talking, you better make sure it has something interesting to say. It’s nice to inject a little fun and personality into what you create. It’s how you get your character across and give your dishes a signatory feel. 

It’s important to sign things off in your own style without being gimmicky. So all those childhood memory foods are a hotbed of creativity for me because they’re authentic to who I am and where I’m from. I’ll be honest, though; the smiley face is more of a throwback to my rave days than any school meal. But that’s the fun of it; people want to invest in your story. They’re interested in you as much as they are in the food. 

If I wasn’t a chef I’d be living on chips and kebabs, no doubt. Sure, my job has helped me discover some of the finer things in life and now I appreciate food like nothing else – but who doesn’t love a kebab? Having nods to your personality and your history in your food is what it’s all about if you ask me.

On that note, where does the inspiration behind your dishes come from? Can you talk us through the personal process a little?
The main thing for me is the British Isles – everything we use is from the UK. The only imports we use are coffee and chocolate. As a result, we don’t use lemons and limes in the bar or the kitchen; we have to find replacements for that. So we turn to the likes of sea buckthorn juice instead of orange or passionfruit, for example. We turn to wood ants for bursts of sherbet lemon. So necessity, the need to work with what we’ve got, is a huge source of inspiration for me. It’s quite a long process before anything hits the menu, but being in the kitchen and getting hands-on with the products and learning about their properties always gets the gears turning.

Outside of the kitchen, I’m inspired by my travels. Whether that’s a quick walk in the woodlands or grabbing a bite to eat on a street corner in Japan. It can come from anywhere. Music is another massive inspiration for me. I love music as much as I love food. They both spark that same creative fire in me. I could be listening to a gig and just find a happy place and like, drift off and think about a dish. Anything that opens your mind to creativity can be a place to find inspiration.

We’ve made so much progress in the food and drinks industry in the last 10 years – are you still excited by the ground left to cover?
I think we’ve made a hell of a lot of progress. Especially here in Birmingham. Which, if I’m honest, was a bit of a culinary wasteland twenty years ago. There have since been some phenomenal chefs that have really put Birmingham on the map. I feel proud to have played a part in that.  And it just keeps growing and growing.

On a wider scale, I think we’re a more engaged nation than we used to be. We’re far more clued-in when it comes to quality and the importance of good produce. We’re seeing that across the board – people care about the wine in the bottle as opposed to just its label.

The media has played a role in the evolution of food and drink, too. A weird role but a role all the same. Chefs have stepped into the spotlight a little more. Not just on TV, but across social media too. That’s been fun, throwing up a picture of a Galician steak on Instagram and seeing people really engage with it and take something away from it, whether that’s a bit of knowledge or just a good laugh. It pushes people to do things differently. I think that’s ultimately what has democratised eating out; the information is more accessible, and people are coming through the doors with a little more know-how than they used to.

The exclusivity has been removed to some extent, and I love that. At Carters, you might see a table dressed up to the nines next to a table in flip flops and shorts. It’s not the status that matters, it’s the shared love for what’s being put down on the table that counts.

And finally, what beers have you been treating yourself to over the last few months?
Beer is a big thing for me, I drink a fair bit of it. My favourite beer at the moment is from my good friends at Braybrooke Beer Company in Market Harborough. They specialise in lager, something that not a lot of folk in the UK do that well. There’s some terrible lager out there. They take a lot of inspiration from German lagers and they come away with some amazing stuff. They have this Keller Lager that they age for around six weeks. The concoction mash is left in there for flavour. 

Our last collaboration beer was made with Braybrooke; a gose with grand fir pine & salt from an ancient salt brine in Droitwich. We used pine from Carters’ kitchen instead of the coriander which is traditionally used in a gose sour wheat beer. It was a really cool collaboration. 

I work with brewers as much as I can because I find them to be very like-minded people. There’s a strong link between good beer and good drink, I think. They’re both at their best when they’re shared too. When I met up with Mario Canestrelli, the head brewer at Braybrooke, he cooked some chestnut pasta from the chestnut flour in his village in Puglia.

Beer’s become far more respected of late. It’s not just for lads getting pissed on the weekend at football. People appreciate beer for what it really is now; a wonderful communicator of place, passion, and culture.

Check out the latest from Carters of Mosely here and here.