At the heart of Birmingham’s gastronomy, just before the last note of Black Sabbath.

First published in FNL-Guide in July 2025

In the past few days, the entire city of Birmingham, home to over a million people, has tuned itself to the sound of Black Sabbath. Hotels, bars, and restaurants are working at a frantic pace. With their final concert at Villa Park — Back to the Beginning — not only does a monumental chapter of music history come to an end, but the city’s dining scene braces for an economic storm. With hotel occupancy reaching 89%, local authorities expect more than £20 million to be spent across the city.

Black Sabbath emerged in the 1970s from a city steeped in working-class grit. Factories, beer, and cheap entertainment defined the everyday life of Birmingham’s residents. Around the same time, Pakistani communities introduced the Balti— a dish of meat (chicken, lamb, or beef) cooked with vegetables in a spicy, aromatic sauce of cumin, coriander, curry, pepper, and cardamom. The dish became hugely popular in Birmingham, giving rise to its own culinary identity: the Balti Belt. It was the food of workers who wanted something fast, hearty, and good value for money. Even today, the metal bowl in which the dish is both cooked and served — and from which it takes its name — is still made locally.

The Balti became a symbol of immigration and the city’s industrial past. The “triangular” area where it flourished also became the beating heart of Birmingham’s music and cultural life. Pubs, gig venues, and bars that once echoed with the birth of heavy metal and punk fostered a food culture built on energy and endurance — one that today evolves under the influence of modern gastronomy without abandoning its roots.

Now home to five Michelin stars, Birmingham ranks among the UK’s most talked-about culinary destinations. Restaurants such as Aktar Islam’s Opheem, blending Indian tradition with contemporary haute cuisine, or Carters of Moseley, where fermentation and local produce take center stage, exemplify a new culinary language born from the city’s industrial soul. Chef Brad Carter, the city’s culinary star and an ardent lover of British charcuterie, often describes his dishes with the same raw energy Ozzy once brought to the stage. In today’s Birmingham, kitchens don’t just cook — they tell stories. Stories forged with the same respect for toughness, chaos, and electricity that shaped the sound of Black Sabbath.

This year, the band’s farewell concert aligned perfectly with the city’s annual Colmore Food Festival, where stalls offered dishes inspired by Sabbath songs and their dark, heavy energy. As the final show draws near, the restaurants around Villa Park and the food stalls at Colmore overflow with people. Gastropubs brim with fans searching for burgers named Iron Man or War Pigs, washed down with local craft beers. Others start their day with walking tours that stop by the Crown Pub (one of the first venues where the band ever played), Ozzy’s childhood home, and end at Shahabs, for the ultimate chicken Balti with warm naan bread. Even hotels have adapted their menus, serving breakfast coffee to the sound of Sabbath’s discography — proof that the band’s return to their hometown is more than a concert. It’s a homecoming that fuels Birmingham’s transformation into a gastronomic destination with a metal soul.

Black Sabbath will give their city one last musical strike — but it isn’t a goodbye. It’s a ceremony. A return to the roots, to where it all began. In Birmingham, where heavy industry, wet red bricks, and the clang of metal from the factories fused with the comfort food of migration, the music of four working-class musicians became art, myth, and philosophy. Sabbath are doom. And doom never ends.