The Fat Duck

I think this restaurant needs little introduction to UK residents. After all, the chef Heston Blumenthal used to write a weekly column in the Sunday Times, and appeared on TV showing how to cook his version ("perfected" according to the blurb) of various favourites - spaghetti bolognese, pizza, steak, Peking duck etc. Adjacent image from the Daily Mail, who recently reported that the Fat Duck's application for an extension is annoying local residents. I don't think they've ever reported anything positive about the restaurant, or the cooking, which is a bit of a shame. Why can't good food be populist and right wing?

The Pretty Lady and I went there with CL and her husband YY, who kindly drove us to Bray. Thanks YY. We went for lunch, and had the tasting menu, which blew us all away. The Fat Duck's dining room is unpretentious, white walls with some abstract art painted directly onto the plaster, and exposed wooden beams. There are only 15 tables, and they were all full, and having the tasting menu as far as I could tell.

The Fat Duck
1 High Street
Bray SL6 2AQ
Berkshire
01628 580 333

This is the menu we had (the Fat Duck kindly provided copies!).

Nitro-poached green tea and lime mousse
The first bit of theatre. A waitress came over with a jug of liquid nitrogen and a mixing bowl. She squirted some lime mousse into a spoon and dipped it in the nitrogen for about 15 seconds, hardening the mousse into something approaching a meringue. She then dusted it with green tea powder and presented it to a diner on a plate, followed by a spritz of lime essence from a little perfume bottle over the table. The mousse had vodka in it, which created an astringent tingly feeling on the palate, leaving it... clean.

Oyster, passionfruit jelly, and lavender

The oyster came shucked in its shell, drizzled with passionfruit jelly and lavender petals. Sweet, floral and savoury all at the same time. The Pretty Lady and CL were wondering how many experiments were required to get the proportions absolutely right.

Pommery grain mustard ice cream and red cabbage gazpacho

This was absolutely delicious. A dab of mustard ice cream no larger than the first joint of my thumb, unsweetened and fragrant, sitting in a little saucer of bright purple borscht. Except that it wasn't! It was pureed red cabbage of course, with little trace of beetroot sweetness. Garlicky and bitter, it combined well with the natural savouriness of the mustard ice cream. One of our favourites, leaving CL and me wanting more. A lot more.

Jelly of quail, langoustine cream, parfait of foie gras, oak moss and truffle toast

More theatre. The waiter served the jelly, cream and parfait in a soup bowl, accompanied by the truffle toast on the side. He then brought a tray of moss to the table. We were instructed to place an oak moss film into our mouths. He poured a moss infusion onto the tray, which contained dry ice. It evaporated immediately, flooding the table with an impressive mist which smelt strongly of forest floor. We then ate the contents of the soup bowl and the toast, which combined very well, although I'm not sure the oak moss scent added much to it. In any case I think that Sketch serves a better version of enhanced truffle toast - their Toast Pierre Gagnaire dish outdoes the Fat Duck's I think.

Snail porridge with jabugo ham and shaved fennel

This was the first of the main courses. The porridge was oats, coloured green (probably from a spinach infusion) with slivers of ham and fennel mixed in. It was then topped by three stewed juicy snails. Innovative, and actually quite tasty, with the musty snails going well with the savoury ham. The others didn't like this though.

Roast foie gras "benzaldehyde", with almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile

This was absolutely delicious. A slice of foie gras drizzled with sauce (which must have contained the camomile), with a kirsch soaked cherry on the side. There were three little cubes of almond jelly on the side. The Perfect Bite (creating a forkful from all the components of the dish) worked extremely well here, with the almond offsetting the rich foie gras and sweet cherry.

"Sound of the sea"

I enjoyed this dish best of all. There was a gimmick, which involved listening to an iPod loaded with a soundtrack of seagulls and waves crashing on a shore. The actual dish itself was beautiful, looking exactly like a stretch of beach, complete with sand, sea foam, seaweed and driftwood, as if a wave had just washed across. But the sand was elver flavoured tapioca flour, the seaweed was edible kelp, the sea foam was a shellfish infusion, and the driftwood was sliced scallops, clams, a type of root common in Japanese cooking (stewed). Beautiful, and delicious too.

Salmon poached in liquorice gel, with asparagus, vanilla mayonnaise and "manni" olive oil

I can't imagine how this dish was made. It consisted of a cube of salmon, sheathed in a liquorice layer a couple of millimetres thick, surrounded by asparagus, a dollop of vanilla mayonnaise, and individual grapefruit sacs. Yes, sacs. Someone had gone to the trouble of separating each sac from its neighbour. "A" for effort, but tastewise I'm not sure the vanilla and liquorice worked well with an oily fish, fresh though it was. YY enjoyed this though, so maybe it's just me.

Ballotine of Anjou pigeon, with black pudding "made to order", pickling brine, spiced juices, and pigeon cracker

I was running out of superlatives by this point, but this dish deserved them. The pigeon was perfectly tender, drenched in spiced jus (not sure about the pickling brine), with a dollop of smooth, almost liquid black pudding on the side and a pigeon cracker (think prawn cracker, but made of pigeon) on the top. It was a close contest between this dish and the foie gras for best dish in my opinion, with the foie gras winning out.

Hot and iced tea

This was another palate cleanser. We were hoping to get another nitrogen poached mousse meringue, but instead they served a cup of tea. It was however, warm on one side and cold on the other. I believe the effect was achieved by adding a little gelatin to the warm side, making it slightly more viscous and preventing the two sides from mixing together - at least for a little while.

Mrs Marshall's margaret cornet

After the tea, the waiters left some pamphlets on the table. They were a write up of Mrs Marshall, apparently the inventor of the most efficient ice cream making machine ever. She did it in Victorian times, and it remains superior to anything available today. It could whip up a batch in 3 minutes (beating my record, 5 hours, by some distance). I can't actually remember what flavour the ice cream cornets were, but they were good - creamy texture, biscuity cone of the right crispness, and cutely small. Derivative of the French Laundry's famous salmon mousse cornets, perhaps?

Pine sherbet fountain

I've not experienced the sherbet fizzers that kids in Britain seemed to have enjoyed. This was clearly a reference to that though. The waiters placed a little tube in front of each of us, with a little segment of vanilla pod sticking out. The idea was to either suck up the sherbet in the tube through the pod, or use it as a sort of spoon. Ingenious, and altogether enjoyable, although I couldn't make the pine flavour out. The vanilla in the pod overwhelmed it...

Mango and Douglas fir puree with bavarois of lychee and mango and blackcurrant sorbet

...but only until this dish came along! The Douglas fir puree is pretty piney, but in a good way, since it didn't remind me of floor cleaner, but rather a room with pine flooring. It was a refreshing counterpoint to a fairly sweet bavarois and a tart sorbet. All the flavours were fresh, clean and clear, which must have been quite hard to achieve for such a complex dish.

Parsnip cereal

Shortly after the last dish, the waitress sauntered by and wished us good morning. She then set down a little cereal packet in front of each diner. It contained parsnip flakes (think cornflakes, but slightly paler). They are much sweeter than cornflakes though, and we ate them with milk. An exciting twist on the familiar!

Nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream with pain perdu and tea jelly

The last and best bit of theatre, according to YY. The chef had already filled eggshells with the scrambled egg and bacon mixture. The waitress cracked 2 such filled eggs into a deep pot, added liquid nitrogen and stirred. The resulting "ice cream" was spooned onto triangles of pain perdu and accompanied with a slightly frothy dollop of tea infused jelly. The pain perdu was extremely well done - crispy all around the outside to a uniform thickness, and gooey and soft on the inside. I've never been able to even approach this texture in the kitchen! It was a delicious combination, with the smokey ice cream perfect with the sweet and caramelised bread.

Petit fours

They were carrot and orange lollies, mandarin aerated chocolates, violet tartlets and apple caramels in an edible wrapper (think White Rabbit sweets). None of the famous whisky gums unfortunately. The Pretty Lady and I shared a pot of Red Robe (Da Hong Pao) tea with these. I liked the violet tarts best.

It was quite possibly the best meal I've ever had. Not just in terms of how interesting the flavour combinations were, but also because of the element of theatre. YY put it best: "It's not just a meal, it's an adventure!" Also, based on the raw materials (we must have consumed a litre of liquid nitrogen just for the 4 of us) and the labour involved, the meal was pretty decent value for money. One thing's for sure, such cooking is not available elsewhere in Britain. Practically speaking, I think it's not available to such a standard anywhere else. After all, I've been asking El Bulli for a table for several years now with no success.

Scores:

26 June 2008: TFQ = 29, CS = 30, S = 19, AD = 8, VfM = 9. Total = 95 points.

What does this mean?