Michelin-starred chef cooks up Midlands restaurant chain plan
BIRMINGHAM chef Richard Turner has ambitious plans to launch a chain of restaurants after overhauling his Michelin-starred venue.
The 46-year-old chef will open the doors of Turners at 69 next week, in place of Turners Restaurant, after a refurbishment programme and devising a new menu aimed at a wider audience.
“With the old restaurant, it became very personal and everything is based around me and my cooking,” he said. “But with the changes and what we’re doing now, it can be translated into other places and other people will be able to do it.”
The chef wants to turn up the heat on his approach quickly once the concept is tested.
He said: “If this new idea works in Harborne, I will want to open restaurants in Sutton Coldfield, Lichfield, Solihull and bring the restaurant to other places too.
“I have no plans to make it go nationwide, I quite like living and working in Birmingham and I don’t know if I would want to do anything out of the area, when there are so many opportunities around here.”
Richard has spent his career in the West Midlands, starting out washing dishes at Thrales in Lichfield while still at school before moving on to Four Oaks and then he opened his eponymous restaurant in Harborne in 2007.
Turners has had a Michelin star for the last seven years but the chef decided he wanted to change his approach.
“I am bored of what we have been doing at the restaurant because that is what everyone is doing now,” he said.
“Every restaurant has a taster menu nowadays and I thought now was the time for me to say, ‘I’m not going to follow the fashion, I’m just going to do what I want to do’ and hopefully what people really want.”
Richard, who was brought up in Birmingham and has lived in the area since, decided to ditch the elite vibe of his restaurant after he felt like he was alienating customers.
He said: “We’re going to change the menu and give customers more power in what they want. It will be considerably cheaper and although the quality of the cooking and food will stay the same, it will just be a lot simpler.
“I want a restaurant where I would go to eat, and I don’t want to eat Michelin-starred food all the time. I want to attract a much wider audience as Michelin-starred food can be very elite and not everyone can afford to spend £200 on dinner.
“But, I have been cooking at this level for 30 years, so I’m not going to become a bad cook overnight, but rather than do 15 courses with lots of different elements, I want to strip it all back.”
