Olive, the BBC’s food magazine, recently startled British gourmands when it declared Birmingham, England’s second largest city, the United Kingdom’s “foodiest town,” ahead of London and Edinburgh. The award came last October, just as Birmingham was hosting an annual festival, the 10-day Birmingham Food Fest, which featured such local talents as Aktar Islam of Lasan Restaurant; up-and-comers like David Colcombe of Opus, Andy Waters of Edmunds Restaurant and Steve Love of Loves Restaurant; and a troika of Michelin-starred chefs: Glynn Purnell of Purnell’s; Andreas Antona, Luke Tipping and Adam Bennett of Simpsons Restaurant; and Richard Turner of Turners of Harborne.

The chefs are building on an already rich dining scene. Birmingham is famous in Britain for its Balti Triangle, an area of town that is home to a beloved Pakistani-Kashmiri curry dish invented here; it is also birthplace to such classically British food items as Typhoo Tea, Bird’s Custard and HP Sauce. ALEXANDER LOBRANO

That’s pretty good as it is, but the destination beaten into 20th place was none other than… SPACE. Ha! In your face, final frontier!

Thanks to Charlotte Cooper (and then pretty much everyone in Birmingham who’s on Twitter) for spotting that one.

Come to think of it, one of the most successful chefs in New York at the moment is April Bloomfield, originally from around these parts.

The new series of Hustle started on Monday and featured a bunch of local sights from around the Colmore BID – Metro, Hotel du Vin and One Victoria Square (according to the BPo).

Next week the same area will be sporting a slightly different look for the new series of Survivors.

Over on Channel 4, Lasan is doing rather well having reached the final of Gordon Ramsey’s The F Word. Unfortunately the consensus on Twitter last night seemed to be that their chef was a bit of a pillock. Incidentally, Warwick Uni have a Lasan cookbook featuring healthy versions of various South Asian dishes which you can download for free.

The latest episode of Hustle is on the iPlayer here for the next few days and is on every Tues for the next little while. Survivors is on BBC 1 on 12 January and the big final of the F Word is on Channel 4 on Thurs at 9pm.