The CityLiving team checks out just a few of Bullring's dining options.
Gallery Restaurant, Selfridges
I don't know about you, but when I think of eating in a department store restaurant, I always picture queuing up with a wooden tray for cottage pie and chips, or chilli and rice - fairly staple stuff, good for recharging the shopping batteries but little else. Not likely to trouble the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.
The Gallery Restaurant was a real surprise, then. A nice surprise.
My friend and I went to Selfridges straight from work for a pre-cinema meal.
There were a fair number of diners already there, but we had a good pick of tables and chose one on the balcony overlooking the Bullring mall below.
It's a lovely airy and light dining area, comfy unfussy tables and chairs - and a fab menu.
Starters include delights like chunky tomato and butter bean soup, chicory, pear, Stilton and walnut salad and our choices - crayfish cocktail (a skinned beef tomato crammed with meaty crayfish in Marie Rose sauce) and baby gem, char grilled chicken and avocado salad. They're all around the £5 mark and if our dishes were anything to go by great value - the salad huge, my cocktail delicious and filling. Pudding was already looking unlikely.
For mains there's everything from spring lambs' liver to macaroni cheese on head chef Simon Malin's menu, prices ranging from £7.95 to £11.95.
We chose cod fishcakes with pea puree and parsley sauce (£8.45) and the roast free range chicken with creamy garlic potatoes and chasseur sauce (£9.45).
With some field mushrooms and olive oil mash, we struggled to finish it all - the fishcakes chunky and fresh, my chicken sizeable, well-cooked with a tart sauce - and well complemented by the mushrooms with pesto and Parmesan dressing.
A couple of glasses of Brahma Berr from Brazil (on the menu specially for the Brasil 40ยบ promotion) for me and a glass of Sauvignon for my feeding companion and we headed off to the flicks more than happy. Next time it won't be just the clothes that take us back to Selfridges...
