All tagged Birmingham

Running Down the Avenue — Stirchley Wines & Spirits in Birmingham

Krishan Rajput takes an emerald Budvar bottle from a shelf and tells me how this is where his beer journey began in 1989. He explains how his family shop, Stirchley Wines & Spirits began selling a range of beers a world apart from other off-licences. This was a decade after his father, Amrik, opened the family business, Stirchley Wines & Spirits, in the south Birmingham suburb of the same name, near where the Cadbury’s factory still looms large. This is what initially drew the Rajputs to the area—Amrik worked as an engineer for the chocolate maker.

World Crust — Pork Scratchings and Making Meat of the Scraps

The pork scratching’s journey from humble Sunday roast side to mass-market snack belies its enduring popularity as a curious cornerstone of the British pub experience. The pork scratching as we know it exists in its own genre outside the range of normal foodstuffs, but is thought to have emerged as a home-spun delicacy in the West Midlands during the 1800s.