Restaurant review: Opus  Birmingham's Opus is as macho
a restaurant as you could imagine – despite the fact that it's
run by women Opus in Birmingham Style over substance: Opus is
all bright colours and hard surfaces. Photograph: Andrew Fox for
the Observer Andrew Fox/Observer  54 Cornwall Street, Birmingham
(0121 200 2323). Meal for two, including wine and service, £130
A while ago I asked the marvellous Angela Hartnett why there
were so few women in restaurant kitchens. "Because they've got
more bloody sense," she said. The hours are brutal, the culture
too sodden with machismo. And then of course there is a
biological imperative. Careers in kitchens rarely cooperate with
the demands of motherhood. And so for all those great names
moving forward – Hartnett herself, Hélène Darroze at the
Connaught, Skye Gyngell at Petersham Nurseries – they are still
rare, which is ludicrous. I check my watch. Oh look. It's the
21st century. Aren't we beyond this? Certainly when I started
searching for a restaurant in the B