Mo-Tiki Menu - sorry you cant read it but gives you a feel for the place

Aloha rum lovers … our new garden Tiki Bar is now open. We will be serving up lashing of the Hula Daddy’s Grog, cocktails in coconuts, Zombies in sea shells and the weird and the wonderful in giant, oversized, ceramic pineapples.
Mo-Tiki will be open from 6pm this Thursday, then 4pm on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Go on … live every day like you are on holiday!

Greetings from the Hula Daddy. Its almost official … this Summer Tiki comes to Moseley.

If you love the taste and vibe of warm seas and cold drinks, welcome to Moseley’s Summer of Rum. Mo-Tiki, our new South Sea Paradise in the garden will be opening the next week. A massive selection of over 40 world class rums, home made Grog and some of the finest cocktails this side of Hawaii will be on sale.

Table service, a different kind of space and a party atmosphere will make the evenings at The Prince great fun. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

Here’s some work in progress as Phil Hill slaves away on his own design work to get the Tiki Bar ready. It don’t look much now, but in another week, the place will be transformed.

Say Aloha to Phil Tiki Hill

It's Tiki Time

We are looking for staff to help us create a fantastic night out in Moseley this Summer.

In April we will be opening Mo-Tiki, a new outdoor Tiki Bar. This will be a really fun place with great decor, fantastic cocktails and most importantly, really great staff.

Tiki is a mix of many things … the South Pacific, Rum, lots of Rum, Hawaii, Surfing, Rockabilly, flowers, weird wood carvings and bright colours. Above all its about amazing drinks. We will be serving the best cocktails in town with lots of great spirits,  our own Grog and tropical juices.

It's Tiki Time

So we are looking for cocktail bartenders, waitresses/waiters and someone really special to meet our guests, organise the tables and bookings (and help out with serving drinks when it gets busy).

Now you will need to be able to show folks a really good time! A hard working team player who knows how to make our guests feel like they have had a brilliant night. Personable, confident yet a bit of a party animal and someone who can definitely join in with the fun.

If you are interested, just call in to see Diane or Keith at The Prince and bring your cv.

You need to be quick, so come on down.

The High Life ... beer at 7000 ft

We sell this marvellous wheat beer at The Prince and as the weather gets warmer you can’t beat it for taste and sheer refreshment.

Brewed in Bayreuth in Bavaria, home to the Wagner Festival, it’s a fine example of this style of beer I first enjoyed during my Auf weidersehn Pet period, working on a building site not too far away from Bayreuth.

Me and a couple of English mates spent a few months living in a little village called Prutting am Chiemsee, working for a building company in Rosenheim. It was 1980 and Spring came late. It was cold. We would be picked up every morning, just after 6am.  As we three Englanders squashed into the rear bench seat of a Volkswagen combi, there was always 3 locals up front, weizen beers in hand, chugging away on the bottles and still not even daylight!

These guys would drink, slowly, all day. In fact my job just before the morning break was to go in the site cabin and put half a dozen bottles of weizen beer in hot water. This way they would be warmed up nicely for the “brotzeit” … why have a cup of tea when you can enjoy warm beer.

If you fancy a cold weizen, come and give Maisel’s a try. It has a lovely refreshing Pineapple and Banana flavour and tastes great cold! Prost.

Perry nice indeed

When on holiday in the Alps, even if you avoid apres ski, its hard to avoid schnapps. Good news if you love the stuff. In Austria Schnapps comes in a whole range of flavours, strengths and colours. Over the past few days we have sampled Obstler (mixed fruit), Marillen (Apircot), Kirsch (cherry), Enzian (made with alpine plants with lovely deep blue flowers), Pflaumen(plum) and even one our host told us was home made from wood!

My favouite schnapps is Williams, or as they as locally Villi or Villiams. Named after the pear variety used as the fruit base for the distillation, a good one is an intense combination of pears and alcohol. First there’s the aroma … no need to swirl the glass as it will hit you between the eyes. Then there’s the alcohol followed by the lovely pear aftertaste.

Next time you travel to Austria, buy a bottle, bring it home and drink it straight out of the freezer. Fantastic.

Hubble Bubble windy trouble

On Sunday it was morning coffee in Feldkirch, a charming medieval town in the Austrian Vorarlberg; lunch in Leichenstein, then back into the Austrian Bregenzerwald for a bit witch burning. In Raggal, the village where we are staying, they share a local tradition with many other villages, where a large bonfire,topped off with a witch, is built and set alight to chase the winter away.

The children from the village go round to every house, trick or treat style, chanting the words to scare the cold weather off before assembling with the entire village, its brass band, bier tent, wurststand and fire brigde to witness the climax of “Funken Sontag”.

It was so exciting, but then disaster. The night before the next village had gone ahead with their bonfire and inadvently set fire to the wooden roofs on a couple of nearby houses. The fire officer was nervous. The 40ft high tower of wood that formed our bonfire was “up wind” of a group of houses with old wooden roofs. Not normally a problem as at 1000m up in the alps, most roofs are still covered by a thick layer of snow, even in March.
This year’s warm weather has stripped all but the highest areas of snow. The warm Foehn wind has dried everything out and so the witch was spared, winter was not set alight and the party fizzled out early.

The next day I noticed the bonfire was gone; a great spectacle reduced to humble kindling, handed out around the village. I guess we will need to come back next year, when Easter is earlier and snow still forms its protective covering on the rooftops of the Bregenzerwald.

I found a new variant of my favourite Don Pepin Garcia, this time the Blue Label. Exciting though this was, my chosen “on the spot” smoke was a recommendation by my host, a La Flor Dominicana ligero Oscuro.
This had a wonderfully dark, oily wrapper. Easy to light, easy to smoke, with a good draw and plenty of smoke. The cigar burned well throughout and developed lovely grey ash.
Of course you all want to know about the flavour. Well a very full flavour with loads of spice. As the smoke progressed, there was dark chocolate, coffee and when I started on the last third, I could swear, there was even mincemeat. Not minced beef, but English mince pie variety.
It was a very good smoke and I look forward to trying the other La flor Dominicana sticks I bought, including to Double Ligero with the chisel tail.

It is a Martini Jim, but not as we know it

If you are ever in Manchester and in the mood for cocktails, check out Cloud 23 on the 23rd Floor of the Hilton. Enjoy the great views and great drinks, then pop round the corner to Epernay and try one of these Martinis. Now,  if your are stuck in Brum, don’t worry as our version is just as good.

Finlandia vodka, muddled strawberries, a dash of balsamic and finished with a sprinkling of black pepper. Hits the spot like an Andy Murray ace! Enjoy.

Whoever you support, a great day for Brum

Congratulations to Birmingham City Football Club and all their Fans. Sunday’s Carling Cup was an excellent game, a showcase for football and something the whole city can be proud of. I know a few Villa fans will begrudge their rivals this success, but hey, its good for Brum and the FA Cup may yet see the two Birmingham sides meet to thrash out who’s best.

As a long suffering Blackburn Rovers fan, its seems like ancient history when we won the Premier League back in 1994/95. It was a great moment … repayment for years of boyhood disappointment watching miserable games against Grimsby Town and Stockport County. This was the dawn of big money in football and Rovers where one of the first clubs to have the benefit of a massive investment from a wealthy businessman fan.

So our trophy cupboard has been empty of proper trophies for 16 years (and currently we don’t look like changing that) which seems like a mere blink of en eye compared to the Blue Noses 48 year wait. Oh yes I quite forgot we did win the same competition back in 2002 (thank you Simon) when it was the Worthless Cup.

Empty no more, Europe beckons for the Blues beyond the relegation fight ahead.

Monday Morning at The Council House

Many of you will know that Exlax, a developer that works in partnership with TESCO, plans a new supermarket on the site of the former Meteor Ford dealership on St Mary’s Row in Moseley.  The due process here has been hijacked by the bully boy tactics of the developer. Now most of us know that money doesn’t talk it swears, but what’s happening here is truly a travesty.

There is no due process.

Despite good technical planning reasons to refuse the application (documented very well elsewhere), despite massive local opposition, despite Councillors on the planning committee voting earlier this month to refuse the planning application, the Planning Officers have been bullied (or some would say bribed) in to trying to push this through for approval.

What is the point of the planning system if applications are decided on the basis of the City Council might lose an appeal.  It’s simply not right.

It’s  criminal that the councillors on the committee have been threatened by “maladministration” and personal bankruptcy if they refuse the application. They are now between a rock and the poor house, assuming that Birmingham will still have any poor houses after the coming cuts.

The only decent thing to do is resign. Every single councillor on the Planning Committee should resign before the next committee meeting and every other councillor should refuse to join the committee.  Surely no committee, no decision.

Come on councillors … just do it!