Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Location: McKee's Brasserie, Haig's Hotel, Balsall Common
Date: 1 April 2010
Details: Banoffee cheesecake, petit-fours and cup of tea

Notes: A birthday outing for my mother's sixtieth. Haig's Hotel in Balsall Common is becoming a word-of-mouth success for the retired Solihull population. McKee's Brasserie offers a three-course menu every day (£12 lunch, £19 dinner) - there's a wide choice of meat, fish and veggie options and the menu changes monthly. So for a birthday lunch, this was superb value.

The banoffee cheesecake was a toffee cheesecake in disguise - a few slices of banana on the top cunningly transforming it into 'banoffee' - strange, but tasty enough. The 'chocolate sauce' promised on the menu was a few dribbles of toffee sauce - strange, but tasty enough again.

The petit-fours were very strange - cute to look at but very strange to eat. Some seemed to be solid coconutty mixtures, some were miniature pastries or biscuits. Best to just admire these, rather than actually eat them.