James Brennan

The UK’s second city is teeming with museums, nightlife and nature, has the cultural chops to back up the claims, and boasts a sprawling web of leafy suburbs to set up home. Trust me, I know it: I’ve spent the last eight years exploring Birmingham’s nooks and crannies, filling my face and dousing my liver at its high-end restaurants, food festivals and indie bars.  I’ve danced to underground bands at Victorian boozers and sung along with star headliners at Symphony Hall. If it’s on this list, I’ve done it. Let me tell you, if Birmingham can win over this staunch northerner, it must be doing something right. Spend a day, spend a week. You’ll have no trouble filling your days. Here are the best things to do in Birmingham.  🍂 Autumn 2024: ‘Welcome to my favourite season here – it’s the perfect time to crunch through the autumn leaves at one of Birmingham’s many gardens, bandstands and nearby country parks.’ –Lauren Potts  RECOMMENDED:😋 The best restaurants in Birmingham🍻 The most charming pubs in Birmingham🛏 The best hotels in Birmingham🏘️ The best Airbnbs in Birmingham This guide was recently updated by Birmingham-based writer Lauren Potts. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines. 

Birmingham might just be Britain’s most exciting food destination right now. This burgeoning city bursts at the seams with creative chefs, great-value restaurants, Michelin-star dining and everything in between. Looking for street food? It’s here. Small plates and natural wines? We’ve got you covered. Even if you’re just looking to dive into a burger and chips, you might find the best one you’ve ever tasted in Brum (in fact, we can promise that one). Here are the best restaurants in Birmingham.  RECOMMENDED:🍺 The best bars in Birmingham📍 The best things to do in Birmingham🍻 The best pubs in Birmingham🛏 The best hotels in Birmingham This guide was recently updated by Birmingham-based food writer Lauren Potts. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. 

There are plenty of things that make a bar great, but a show-stopping view? That’s a real gamechanger. What could be more elegant than sitting up high, cocktail-in-hand taking in some sweet, sweet scenery. Whether you’re perched on the umpteenth floor of a Singaporean skyrise or plonked atop a south London car park, rooftop bars are about the experience just as much as the drinks.  Sure, many of them are swanky places, but lots more are pretty down-to-earth hangouts, too (despite, obvs, being pretty far from the ground). Featuring top-notch venues from all over the globe, our favourite rooftop bars range from the cha-ching to the chilled. But they’ve all got one thing in common – a stonking view. RECOMMENDED: 🍷 The best bars in Europe🍸The best bars in North America🍹The best bars in Asia

Birmingham is a city that somehow simultaneously fulfils expectations while being delightfully surprising. That trend is true of its bars, an impressive collection of venues that are as much about history and heritage as they are about style and sophistication. The bar scene here tells its own story of Birmingham, a tale that needs to be heard. Sure, most might think of classic Victorian boozers and real ale pubs when they dream of nights out in Birmingham, but Brum does a fine line in colourful cocktails, speciality gins, and innovative craft spots. There is even a zero-waste bar, which happens to be spectacular. Birmingham, your bars are brilliant. RECOMMENDED: 😋 The best restaurants in Birmingham🍻 The most charming pubs in Birmingham🛏 The best hotels in Birmingham📍 The best things to do in Birmingham At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.  

Birmingham has a major reputation for high-quality Indian food, but the universal acclaim the city’s restaurants receive doesn’t do it justice. The days of the infamous Balti Triangle may have passed, but Birmingham’s range of Indian cuisine means it still stands tall as the curry capital of the United Kingdom. From Bombay-style street food and sweet centres to desi pubs and innovative fine dining, the Second City has it all, and no trip to Brum is complete without an evening of delicious Indian-inspired fare. It might just be the best thing to do in this brilliant city. None of this is a surprise, of course, as Indian cuisine has long been an integral part of Brummie culture. After all, the humble balti was invented here, and innovation continues to inspire chefs across the city. All diners need to do is peruse the menu, sit back, and get ready to enjoy thrilling dishes made from the freshest ingredients, which tell stories from the first bite to the last. RECOMMENDED: 😋 The best restaurants in Birmingham🍻 The most charming pubs in Birmingham🛏 The best hotels in Birmingham📍 The best things to do in Birmingham James Brennan is a food and travel writer from Birmingham, and Kayleigh Watson is a writer and editor from the city. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.  

Cada año, le preguntamos a miles de habitantes de ciudades de todo el mundo sobre la vida en su ciudad de origen. Indagamos acerca de la escena restaurantera y los mejores bares. Lo destacado en teatro y en las galerías de arte. También acerca de cómo son los vecinos y los barrios que consideran más cool. La idea es mostrar la vida global de cada ciudad y destacar los sitios que realmente entusiasman a los lugareños.   ¡Aquí están los resultados del Time Out Index 2022! Como siempre, hemos analizado todos esos datos y los hemos aprovechado para elaborar nuestra clasificación anual de las mejores ciudades del mundo. Durante los últimos dos años, la lista se ha enfocado en destacar cómo las ciudades se unieron durante la pandemia e hicieron de la vida (casi) tolerable durante los confinamientos. Pero ahora, después de dos años de restricciones para viajar, el mundo se está abriendo nuevamente y nosotros, como tú, estamos ansiosos por volver a salir. Nuestras principales ciudades este 2022 son las que cuentan con una vida nocturna próspera, comida y bebida increíbles, arte, cultura y museos en abundancia. También hemos aprovechado nuestra red global de editores y colaboradores expertos para obtener información privilegiada sobre lo que está de moda, lo que es nuevo y las tendencias. Si estás planeando una escapada por el mundo este año (especialmente si es la primera en mucho, mucho tiempo), estos son los lugares imperdibles.  

When Malcolm X visited Smethwick in 1965, he found a community fraught with racial tensions. Asian migrants were not welcome in some bedsits, shops and those most English of institutions, local pubs. Fast forward 50 years, and many of those Birmingham pubs have been transformed – saved, even – by entrepreneurial British-Indian Sikhs. Revitalised with traditional Punjabi food and a unique spirit of optimism and inclusion, here are the best desi pubs in Birmingham and the Black Country. Want to make a crawl of it? There’s a whole host of superb craft beer joints and other cocktail bars in Birmingham.  RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best bars in Birmingham

I’m standing in a dimly lit corridor in a studio complex somewhere in Birmingham, and I’m looking into the eyes of Foka Wolf. He’s laughing about getting death threats for his ‘Voodoo Classes for Kids’ paste-up. ‘People were saying they were gonna kill me because, you know, religious people had taken offence at it,’ he says. ‘Someone from a church left a message. He didn’t sound too happy. It’s obviously black magic and that doesn’t go down with people that well. But that’s part of the reason I do it.’ The enfant terrible of our street art scene has been busy recently. To use Brummie parlance, the artist’s scathing brand of razor-sharp street satire has spread all over town like a mad dog’s shite in the past 12 months – on walls, lampposts, windows and hoardings. There was the poster on an abandoned shop front asking: ‘Are you Brexit ready? Bunkers from £9,000. Flame-throwers. Child traps!’ I’d done a double take before realising Foka Wolf had struck again. For a second there, I was quite interested in the flame-throwers. It wasn’t long before Wolf’s work spread out beyond Birmingham. One Instagram post even showed an ‘Over 75s No Rules Deathmatch’ poster slapped on the marble façade of Trump Tower in New York. Understandably, Wolf’s real identity is a secret, for now at least. He says his influences include the artist David Shrigley, Viz magazine and Chris Morris’s satirical TV classic ‘Brass Eye’, and he buys into the DIY punk aesthetic. ‘There’s a cut-and-paste old-school

Roy Short, 50, and John Brophy, 54, are Birmingham’s foremost Peaky Blinder impersonators. What does exactly does that entail? We asked them just that – and they taught us a whole lot more.  The real Peaky Blinders were a gang that actually existed.Roy: ‘They ruled Digbeth and Bordesley Green from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and did a lot of gambling and fighting. Some were locked up in Steelhouse Lane police cells.’ They got the name because they sewed razor blades into the peaks of their caps.John: ‘And so do we. They are metal and they do show, but they’re just props. They’re not sharp. We have guns as well, but they’re not real. We sometimes take fake rifles and handguns to events, just for effect.’ You have to shop around for authentic Peaky Blinders clobber.Roy: ‘Our attire consists of a three-piece suit, cropped trousers, workmen’s boots, a long black coat, pocket watch and chain and, of course, the trademark cap.’ John: ‘We search vintage and charity shops and the internet. We even go to car boot sales, where you can pick up knuckledusters and guns – obviously, they’re all decommissioned and antique. A lot of people sell country and western stuff so you can get shoulder holsters and things like that.’ You’d better prepare for a lot of attention.Roy: ‘We have a lot of blokes asking for photos. Once one flash goes off people start queuing up. They buy us drinks. We have bus and taxi drivers putting their thumbs up. Old ladies in bus stops say we remind them of th

If the historic hotchpotch of listed buildings, boutiques, bars, restaurants, galleries and museums that is the Jewellery Quarter was in most other cities, they’d never stop polishing one off about it. According to English Heritage, Europe’s largest cluster of jewellery businesses is a ‘national treasure’. But to Brummies – those shoulder-shrugging masters of the colossal understatement, bestowed with oodles of knockout Birmingham pubs and high-class restaurants – it’s just ‘alright’. Locals take it in their stride that people have been making shiny things here for more than 500 years, or that it was once the centre of a global pen nib trade that brought literacy, academia and schoolkid subversion to the world. It’s the home of ACME whistles, which you’ll know the sound of if you’ve ever been to a football match or been chased by a Victorian policeman. And according to legend, it was from the Jewellery Quarter that the Kray twins were given their marching orders out of Brum, although probably not before they’d been sold a sovereign ring or four. Cut off from the city centre, Berlin-wall style, by the ring road, the JQ has an urban village atmosphere. From the serenity of St Paul’s Church, in the city’s last remaining Georgian square, to the bustle of Constitution Hill, it’s a place to work, play, linger and explore. In short, it’s pure gold.RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best things to do in Birmingham

Think Birmingham, think balti? We certainly do. The Balti Triangle is literally on the map. However, there’s so much more to the city’s culinary cachet than just curry houses and desi pubs. There are Michelin stars dotted all over the place, the coffee scene’s booming, and it’s difficult to know where to even start with brunch in Birmingham. So here are the absolute best Brummie eating and drinking experiences. Some go back centuries, some are cutting-edge and contemporary – but everything is moreish. From fine dining to street food, this is how to eat like a Birmingham local. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best restaurants in Birmingham

When it comes to things to do in spring, blooming Birmingham is something of a showstopper. With its winding canals and excellent parks – not to mention all of JRR Tolkien’s magical old stomping grounds – this city is a living, breathing fairground that never stops giving. Stuck for what to do after visiting one of the best restaurants in Birmingham, or fancy a detour before trying one of the many excellent Birmingham bars – or indeed a big-hitting museum? Then this list will have you covered. Whether you’re more into cooking classes or pub crawls, this is our pick of the city’s most glorious spring thrills.  RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the best things to do in Birmingham

If this retro restaurant-cum-cocktail-bar were a beast of the night, it would be the Birmingham Bull with a mullet and shoulder pads, charging at your preconceptions of stuffy fine dining. Chef Alex Claridge of The Wilderness has gone all 1980s with his second venue, and it’s like stepping back in time. Following our tradition of never taking yourself too seriously, a lurid neon sign said ‘swanky fine dining’ but the ‘S’ kept flickering off. That was the first joke. Another sign above the open kitchen screamed ‘It’s only fucking food’ and neon-stripped corridors evoked David Lynch, but thankfully more ‘Twin Peaks’ than ‘Eraserhead’. Highlights included a dish called Not Another Fucking Balti (he likes a swear, does Alex), a rich quail, mushroom and chicken liver parfait under a creamy butter chicken sauce topped with puffed wild rice. But then came a slightly dry pan-fried salmon dish, upon which half a potato stood on the sidelines like a dork at a school disco. We were holding out for a hero as Bonnie Tyler blurted over the speakers, and it arrived with the small but pink and moist fillet steak, enlivened by a sweet massaman sauce, with some ace black garlic gnocchi made to look like black pudding. At times the food was a bit like the early days of synth pop: lots of experimentation, not enough tunes. But it was immense fun, with upbeat and welcoming staff and a cracking atmosphere.

When Aktar Islam was at Lasan, his innovative Indian food won out on the ‘Great British Menu’. But one award that has eluded the Brum chef is a Michelin star, which might be why he’s recently gone it alone and all-out with Opheem. In his own words, this plush new restaurant and bar is ‘me, unleashed’. But that’s not to say the chef is charging round the tastefully appointed room with a meat cleaver. Even the amuse-bouches confirmed that, creatively, he’s holding nothing back – a sesame-seed biscuit bomb of strawberry and intense spice jolted my taste buds into gear. The starter, a gloriously crispy soft shell crab in caraway seed tempura, was one of the chef’s award winners, and rightly so. But even that was upstaged by the moist chargrilled nuggets of goosnargh chicken on a bed of earthy bulgur wheat with perky spring onion and pickled gem broccoli. My laal maans main was another signature dish that surpassed its billing. And the Herdwick lamb loin was florid pink, tender and jacked up with tandoori flavour, while the smoked mathia chilli and bone marrow sauce doubled down with full-on blasts of sweetness and heat. In contrast, the tandoori monkfish was understated but firm and dewy, lifted by some tangy curried gourd and a subtle coconut and fish tamarind sauce. A gold leaf-strewn bonbon of rich Manjari chocolate with passion fruit ended things on a high. As we left, walking under a quirky constellation of bulbs, we felt sure Michelin would soon see the light at Opheem.