The Fat Duck, one of the nine restaurants in the UK with three Michelin Stars as of 2024, and the only UK restaurant to win the World's Best Restaurant award by The 50 Best (way back in 2005), is celebrating its thirtieth year in business next year. As a result, The Fat Duck's current menu – aptly called 'The Journey' – is a Journey through the restaurant's history, taking in some of Heston Blumenthal's most iconic culinary creations.
The Fat Duck is an infectious mix of avant-garde cookery (though application of that term may be stretching it now, what with a lot of what Heston worked with some 20 years ago being more readily adopted in the interim) and playful theatre, resulting in a multisensory feast for the senses. While Heston's culinary credentials are irrefutable (he pioneered working with liquid nitrogen, and was an early adopter of sous vide cooking and the use of water baths and dry ice), eating at The Fat Duck is not just a case of 'here's a dish, here's an explanation of the dish, enjoy': almost every course is given showmanship. Perhaps the most iconic dish from The Fat Duck, 'The Sound of The Sea', is accompanied by headphones that play an audio track recorded on a beach. The sounds, the smells, and taste of seafood and brine all do a very effective job of transporting the diner to the seaside (for me, having grown up on the East coast of England, it really was like returning to the place of my childhood. A wonderful experience). Nothing is as it seems at The Fat Duck. Cheese is not cheese, a playing card is the world's thinnest Bakewell tart.
The menu, as well as being a journey through the restaurant's most iconic dishes, is also represented via a figurative spatiotemporal journey, starting off wirh breakfast before heading to the beach, then into the woods, and then to sleep. Of the latter segment, at the end of the show (or thereabouts), you are asked to put on a facemask while lavender and bergamot is spritzed around the table and a lullaby plays as you eat the dish of all-enveloping whiteness that is deceptively texturally varied. All of the theatricality would be moot if the food didn't pass muster, and fortunately it does, though not always to the level of 'Best of the Best' that one would hope for. For every Beef Royal, there is Jelly of Quail that – while interesting – lacks on the flavour profile (with regards to Jelly of Quail, it is the bitterness of turnips that pushes towards uncomfortability). However, while every dish may not hit the heights of what one would expect from one of the world's best restaurants (granted, this accolade was given almost 20 years ago), pretty much all of them have an element of surprise, a means of making you ask 'what's going on there?' Personally, I would rather this – would rather be surprised and stimulated – than be bored. Don't mistake me though: the cooking here is outstanding, but you can tell – via some of the more subdued profiles – that most of the dishes were created some years ago (the crab ice cream being a key example: I feel it didn't blow me away as much as it should. Twenty, even ten years ago it might have, but the world has moved on. Time to not hold back and give us the most crabby of crab ice creams). Would I still take this over most UK restaurants though? Absolutely.
In short, a "journey" to The Fat Duck is still a wonderful experience, and one that I would be happy to repeat (particularly for Christmas).
Courses:
1. Nitro-poached Aperitif "Lime Grove" (second picture, with all but the scallop dish being in order via the pictures)
2. Aerated Nitro Beetroot, Horseradish Cream
3. Hot & Iced Tea
4. Breakfast in a Bowl
5. Crab and Passion Fruit '99'
6. Sound of the Sea
7. Jelly of Quail, Oak Moss
8. Mindful Sandwich
9. Bread and Butter
10. Roasted Scallop, White Chocolate, Caviar (first picture)
11. Beef Royal
12. Veal Sweetbread "Scampi"
13. Cheese and Grapes
14. Palette cleanser à la Horlicks
15. Counting Sheep
16. "Like a Kid in a Sweetshop" (Tea Cake, Tobacco Chocolate, the world's thinnest bakewell tart on the form of a Queen of Hearts, and a Pie Caramel)
by MaaDFoXX
3 Comments
Looks incredible
Sounds great fun. We’re going at the end of the month and more excited after reading this.
I think it’s to be expected that some of the dishes may feel dated given they were created a long time ago and to me that’s part of the point of going. It’s a journey through many of the things that have influenced the ‘modern’ fine dining scene.
Out of curiosity, what was the total bill for this, in £?