Ahh February, the month of love & cold comfort but we have plenty to warm our hearts and bellies this month from the likes of newly launched The Indian Brewery to Soul Food Project’s Kazakhstan Night & saucy adventures in Street Food. So forgive us if we feel the need to forge our fave lovelords – The Bard of Avon meet Mr Barry White – to make our motto for the month ahead: if music be the food of love – let the music play on, and on, and on…

ChangeKitchen Pop-up at Stirchley Baths – Tues 31 Jan 7.30pm – 11pm.
Talk about sustaining, we really can feel the love at ChangeKitchen in everything from the ethical, locally sourced ingredients and ridiculously good value/community support to the creative and delicious healthy, vegetarian & often vegan and gluten free menus. Share the love by digging in at their monthly Pop-up Cafe with January’s featuring a fresh Italian theme including ChangeKitchen’s renowned Raw Food Lasagne Bites, home-made Tapenade Cauliflower “wings”, Pizza, Pumpkin Risotto, salads and home made desserts. To book call/text 07828825850 or email changekitchenbookings@gmail.com. Join their mailing list for details of the next Pop-up event or sample their wares at their ace cafe at Stirchley Baths which opens Tue – Fri 10am – 4pm. www.facebook.com/ChangeKitchen

Loaf: The Thai NoodleChilli Pop-up – Weds 1 Feb 6.30pm – 9pm.
Get in line (behind us), our fave Birmingham Bakery is hosting its first Pop-up event of 2017 and it promises to fire up your tastebuds good and proper. Northern Thai Burmese Style Pork Curry, Handmade Spicy Numbing Sesame Chilli Paste Noodle, Japanese Pork Scatchings and Smacked Pickles (they must have been very naughty) and our very favourite fragrant Thai dish Laab made even more mouthwatering with Thai Chilli and Lime Cured Salmon. Prices range between £2 and £7. Eat in or takeaway, BYOB.
loafonline.co.uk

Soul Food Project’s Kazakh Vodka Pop Up at Peel & Stone and Super Bowl at The Church. 
The brilliant and frankly precocious folk at Soul Food Project hosts not one but two events this month shaking their Jambalaya, cocktails and general sexy thang all over the show starting with a celebratory Superbowl Sunday in its own HQ at The Church Inn on Sun 5 Feb more details here, followed by Tamaqqa – a Kazakh Pop-up with Snow Queen Organic Vodka and Peel & Stone Harborne to explore the food, drink and culture of a diverse and ‘much misunderstood country’. With the intrigue still brewing as menus are yet to be released, we’re just praying they don’t serve horse. Fri 17 Feb. more details here.
www.soulfoodproject.co.uk

Now open: The Indian Brewery Snowhill.
Giving all sorts of new meaning to the terms hot and fresh, The Indian Brewery opened its doors in a rather cool n’ cosy spot underneath the railway arches near Snowhill in January. Move over cool burgers, these guys give hip streetfood, with relish. See our full write up here.
Indian Brewery Snowhill, Livery Street, Birmingham B3 1EU. Tel:0121 296 9000 www.indianbrewery.com www.facebook.com/indianbrewery

Damascena Coffee House & Deli City Centre Branch – now open.
The Moseley favourite is set to open its second set of beautifully ornate doors in town on Temple row, it will also house a bakery and we can hardly wait. Honestly, we’ve only just survived January with the help of these guys and their superbly fresh Syrian breakfasts and daily cuddle in a cup. Yeh it’s a coffee house, yeh the Arabic coffee is mindbendingly magnificent and you can get tea in a gourd (obvs) but even the wait-for-it, decaffeinated cuppas get the imagination and tastebuds tingling beyond whatever you formerly thought possible. Mint leaf stuffed cups, cinnamon and cardamon infused aromas & a honey ginger & lemon worth fighting the flu for. Their creative to the point of artistic menu of fresh, smoky, flavour-drenched Syrian staples we won’t even dare try to do justice by describing, but for us it can be conjured up in just one mouthpleasingly evocative word: ‘Fattuush’, ‘scuse the drooling, it’s a Pavlovian thing. www.facebook.com/damascena.birminghamcity

Pika Pika Pop-up Food Event Mon 13 February at Cherry Reds Kings Heath.
You just know you’ve got something good going on when you’ve got a Japanese chef called Yumi and another from Hong Kong who won’t tolerate Chinese takeaways – plus a name that means shiny. Pika Pika’s perfectly poppy pop-up dinners look almost as good as they taste and cost a fraction of what you’d expect. As parents themselves, they also make perfectly priced family style food that looks so fun even the kids can come along and get stuck in. This month’s menu features Sushi, Chicken Nanban, poppet-pleasing dumplings and deep fried Tofu and fresh strawberry Mochi. That’s some seriously shiny, happy, people-pleasing stuff right there.

Kinome Kitchen Valentine’s Dates at The Quarter Horse.
Exquisite and distinctly grown-up game-changer Kinome Kitchen brings its highly celebrated and exceptionally carefully curated Japanese cuisine back to the suitably sublime surrounds of The Quarter Horse this month for a few special dates around Valentine’s Day. See our full preview here and book soon to avoid disappointment.

It’s Valentine’s Day, Drink Gin!
Our romantic response to all the Valentine’s hoo-ha is feeling unusually stirred this year with two gin-sozzled inspirations to smooth along proceedings, firsty in the shape of The Jekyll & Hide’s Gin Parlour Valentine’s meal with a delicious menu served with a (blah, pass the..) range of gin cocktails, bubbly and a complimentary Gin Martini on the big day itself. Other dates are available. Thu 9, Fri 10 & Sat 11th to be precise. www.thejekyllandhyde.co.uk

Bar Opus at One Snowhill Hendricks Experience Afternoon Tea (with gin).
Elsewhere in the city, more non-themed but still socially acceptable, nay dainty, gin drinking shall commence as Bar Opus at One Snowhill introduces the Hendricks Afternoon Tea Experience 2pm – 6pm every Saturday. Three choices of delicious Hendrick’s gin based cocktails served in the Hendrick’s Vintage t-Pot along with homemade quiches, sandwiches and sweets of scones, macaroons, lemon drizzle cupcakes and a coffee & walnut cake. Also for your delectation the newly installed artworks in the bar’s Start With Art project, a collaboration with Disorder’s Mark Howard and EQ Recording. The Long Live Legends collection pays tribute to the dearly departed icons’ of pop culture. Live music will also feature on every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month. We are so up for sipping gin from a teapot to toast our musical heroes it’s already making our heads spin, afternoon G & Tea anyone? Book now: www.baropus.co.uk

Real Junkfood Project Takeover at Ort Sat 18 Feb 12pm – 4pm.
TRJFP Birmingham is a force to behold, we love the waste not want not inclusive vibe that this community powerhouse spreads via its tasty Pay-As-You-Feel (PAYF) Pop-ups and Freegan food boxes (see our full preview here) and we want more. The good news is their Pop-ups just keep on popping and along with their Sparkbrook Community Centre HQ and regular Monday cafe at Kings Heath Community Centre comes this little beauty at Ort. Our favourite funky little ramshackle cafe offers the perfect laidback space for this monthly musical food-for-all fest. Get down.
www.ortcafe.co.uk/real-junk-food-project/

Street Food Showdown with Digbeth Dining Club &  Taste & Liquor’s No.21 Digbeth.
It might still be a bit nippy outside, but damn we’ve never had it so good when it comes to street food style winter warmers with not one but three operations currently servicing all our sizzling street-based face-filling needs. Not only have we got Digbeth Dining Club doing the double every weekend with their new weekly Saturday shift adding to their funky Friday evening food fests (see our full preview here), but now Taste & Liquor, the people behind School Yard in Harborne and the annual Holi Rave has launched a rival Friday event down the road. Their venue No.21 on Milk street had its inaugural street-meets-food party on the last Friday of January and will open every Friday for global street food and alcoholic cheer at very competitive prices with live music and DJs. The venue will also host themed events on the last Saturday of every month, kicking off with February 25th’s Gin & Meat Feast details here. We’ve got a veritable Street Food Fiesta of independent, innovative, funky fresh food going down in the city. Fill your boots. *Hawker Yard is currently closed* www.facebook.com/HawkerYard

Food Assembly at The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath – Tuesdays 7.30pm – 9pm.
And finally, if you call yourself a foodie in this city and you haven’t got wind of the Kings Heath Food Assembly then you need to shake a well-turned leg and hot foot it down there. This weekly food co operative gives you direct access to all the finest in local produce every week offering up a comprehensive and gourmet range of foodstuffs, snacks, prepared meals and ingredients that are the stuff of a foodie’s cheese dreams. Pre order what you want from the Food Assembly’s online market, then collect your handpicked, home grown/made, ethically sourced and affordably priced delights on the night. We’re not going to list all the endless fine fodder available but from ethically farmed meat & fish to gorgeous homemade veg curries, posh porridge and Birmingham’s best bakeries, it’s properly got you covered. www.thefoodassembly.com and www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk.

PS: All eyes on new independent Zindiya on Woodbridge Road Moseley – Opens February 7th and the pre-released menus promise some funky sounding flavours & cute prices to match its colourful, bustling Indian street market style decor. Indian high tea and authentic small plates for sharing like chaat and bhel puri will help soak up the cocktails. For bookings: hello@zindiya.co.uk or 0121 439 0593