You know what, I was looking forward to Reform’s party conference in Birmingham. Up there as a journalist, not a member, mind you. Yet you hear a lot of sighing and moaning from journalists about going to these things (never mind the fact that many would kick off if their editors didn’t let them go). What’s the matter, guys? It’s a trip away, lots of mingling, lots of material.

But there’s not much in the way of good food. Not to sound like a child emperor demanding a veal sweetbread at every meal, but the offering at these things is really, really bad. And I think Reform needs to sort it out. Reform-coded conference food could be very good. I’m imagining a little stand for Scotch eggs and pork pies, or ham, egg and chips in a box; Jenrick’s Jerky, Lee Anderson serving the bacon sandwiches (he posts a video of him patting one most Thursday mornings) and Gawain Towler making sure the Landlord tastes all right. Instead, the food and drink is indistinguishable from an HR software expo, ‘lanyard food’ if you will: gyros, halloumi fries, fried chicken and Guinness out of plastic. Food’s not the point, I know, immigration is, but we’ve got to have standards. If we can’t trust Reform to control the refreshments then how can we… etc.

The duck had fat-filled, sweet skin, and they didn’t ask if I wanted it boneless

So on the train up I had a look at where I could have lunch before a weekend of Reform people-watching (Tice: surprisingly magnetic; Kruger: managing to look like he’d be having marginally more fun at a Ghostface Killah concert). What about Chinatown? This isn’t uniquely Birmingham, I know, and I do like faggots and peas, but I couldn’t find any places with them on the menu that would do for a quick lunch.

Birmingham’s Chinatown, just off the Bullring, is a really 1980s Chinatown: lots of red and gold, green-tiled roofs and almost exclusively Cantonese BBQ on offer coz of the immigration from Hong Kong. Cantonese roasting was one of two types of Chinese cooking in 1970s-1990s Britain. First, there was Anglo–Chinese take-away: the world of orange, gloop and sugar, the chop suey, the chow mein and salt and pepper chips. Then there was siu mei: the hanging ducks in the windows, where Cantonese immigrants actually ate. I love me a chickenball, but siu mei is more artful.

I’ve been touring London’s BBQ classics recently, the main two being Four Seasons and Gold Mine. Four Seasons advertises a quote from the FT that they do the ‘best roast duck in the world’. The problem is, this article was written when Gordon Brown was PM. These days their duck is a lean, limpid affair, although the pork belly’s crackling does what you want it to (perhaps at the expense of overcooking). At Gold Mine, things are better, although the pork belly’s crackling doesn’t do what you want it to.

No such problems at Look In in Birmingham, which I will now describe as ‘the best roast duck in Birmingham’. I hope they put that in the window, though it’s more accurate to describe it as ‘my only roast duck in Birmingham’. Look In was established out of rage, which is promising. Two brothers used to run Peach Garden around the corner, but they fell out and one set up Look In. The food: less said about the char siu here, since hardly anyone gets that right. The pork crackling did what I wanted it to, but the meat was still moist. The duck had fat-filled, sweet skin, and they didn’t ask if I wanted it boneless. This was a cultured move, and was, I think, a better lunch than my colleagues had.