Eating at what's been ranked the best restaurant on the planet is quite a blessing. Doing it twice, frankly, is an
embarrassment of riches. I'll just have to acknowledge my shame, admit that life is good and share it with you.
And so it's back once more to the Fat Duck, Heston
Blumenthal's gastronomic Mecca ranked No. 2 this year behind Spain's El
Bulli and just ahead of Denmark's
Noma. Of course, it helps that this place is local. So while getting a table requires a significant amount of effort (making the attempt exactly two months in advance as
reservations open, trying repeatedly to get through on the phone, then taking whatever you can get before all the tables are gone within an hour or two), getting there is a quick 10-minute ride. Subtracting the average cost of travel most gastronomes rack up in order to visit these famous
establishments, you could almost call our outing a bargain.
Regular readers may remember my first visit (see 15.01.08); certainly it's the gold standard by which I have measured every fine meal since. A few have gotten close, and the reviewers who make up those rankings should certainly spend more time in Luxembourg. But when it comes to the overall experience, combining taste with theatre, exquisite ingredients with creativity, food spectacle with chemical innovation, the Fat Duck simply can't be beat.
This was, to a large extent, a repeat of my first visit. These days an a la
carte menu isn't even available. If you're going, you're there for the 13-course tasting menu. In for a penny, in for £130 pounds. Which, I must point out, amortised at a tenner a course ... isn't half bad.
A little over half the menu was a repeat of what I had the last time, one assumes first because there are some trademark dishes that everyone wants, and second because you don't get a lot of regulars pushing for variety at this kind of "destination" restaurant. The
showstoppers of forest and sea still anchor the menu: the first a quail jelly,
langoustine cream and chicken liver parfait served in a swirling mist of oak moss; the second a mix of seafood, seaweed and froth that appears to be lying on a bed of sand. The at-the-table showmanship of the liquid nitrogen preparation turns up in the frozen lime meringue palate cleanser and
Blumenthal's iconic
nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream. See the original review for more detail on these dishes.
But it's clear that the master never stops tinkering. Other dishes were similar to my first visit but
had been enhanced. The salmon poached in a thin film of liquorice (at right), which I found
underwhelming the first time, was now mouth-meltingly memorable. This, I suspect was due to the addition of dollops of vanilla mayonnaise (bliss) and roasted artichoke hearts.
Anjou pigeon turned up again, this time as a delicately presented breast served with blood pudding and a
confit of
umbles. Which, it turns out, is pigeon hearts. Which sounds positively vile. But the offal side of the dish was so subtle it merely added a richness to the fowl rather than a distinct additional flavour. All nicely counter-balanced by the deep cherry and berry flavours of the Bordeaux we were drinking at the time.
My only great
disappointment on the return items was the wine gums. Somehow I thought they were just that bit more amazing when they were taking you through the range of single malts. This year they celebrate the Historic Trade Routes of Britain, with flavours like mead, cognac and rum. Good, but except for the cognac I didn't have the feeling I'd had last year that a piece of candy was
transforming into a drink as it
metamorphosised on my tongue.
Of the entirely new dishes, the most visually arresting was the mock turtle soup, aka "Mad Hatter Tea". First came a large white tea cup. Lying within it was a gold pocket watch (remember the White Rabbit?), actually a moulded,
concentrated stock that would become the soup, covered with gold leaf. Next the boiling water, which fragments the gold into a score of dazzling shards and triggers the creation of a dark broth. Finally, that gets poured over a dish in which sits a mound that appeared to be an egg with tiny mushrooms protruding from it, next to a striped rectangle that turned out to be layered ox tongue and Italian
lardo. With the addition of the stock this became a swirling, quite
bizarre visual feast ... pretty much exactly what you'd expect food to be like after you'd swigged some of the
psychedelic drugs that sent Alice to Wonderland in the first place. And the taste? Good, but probably my least favourite of the night. The theatre was amazing, the tastes just average. And, frankly, I've never felt comfortable with the idea of eating real gold. It seems the ultimate in waste; the kind of thing consumed by people whose peasants are plotting to burn down the castle.
My taste prizes go to two new dishes. In the savoury category, three delicate little morsels of roast
foie gras, sitting atop an opalescent film of a type of seaweed called
konbu, separated by almost translucent shards of crab biscuit, with a dash of gooseberry sauce on the side to cut the richness of the dish. In this case a strange combination that really worked, and proof that a dish only needs to be a few tiny mouthfuls to sate your taste for something. This was, after all, only course four of the 13. Ninth along the way, and first of the sweet courses, was the dish most widely acclaimed at the table:
Taffaty tart. This delicate pastry, layered with caramelized apple, fennel, rose and candied lemon, was an explosive taste sensation and, unlike the
foie gras, could easily have been consumed in a "normal" sized slice. But when you have five dessert courses to get through, you have to thank the chef for the wisdom of his portion control. Even if you also craved seconds on the
millionaire's shortbread and chocolate wine slush that came later.
To go along with this mind numbing, palate caressing meal, we opted for the least expensive of the three wine tasting menus. Having done the maths and considered what the wine bill could be if five drinkers went by-the-bottle over the course of four hours off a wine list where "cheap" was £45, we decided that £90 per person for the eight glasses that matched the meal actually represented fiscal prudence. Or, at least, avoidance of extreme
irresponsibility and the potential for things to get badly out of control. The pairings were interesting, often unusual but in each case bringing out accents of the food beautifully. (For example, a mildly aniseed-flavoured sake to go with the "sound of the sea".)
Two wines stood out as remarkable. a 2001 Quinta
da Lada from
Casa Ferreirinha in the Douro Valley had all the character and richness of its cousin port, but in the form of a classic red wine. The 2006
Breganze Torcolato, from
Maculan in the
Veneto, has bumped the Kiwis from first place on my favourite dessert wine list. Sweet yet not
overpowering, with elements of honey, flowers and vanilla, I would happily end every meal this way. Unlikely, however, as I see from their website that the family only produces 2000 bottles of this nectar each year. Perhaps it's time for a shopping trip to Venice?
The most unusual pairing of this whole meal, however, was that of the group around the table with the event itself. This visit to one of the world's most extra-ordinary restaurants, to indulge in a feast that would trigger comfort levels with Louis XIV or the tsars of Russia, was organised and attended by my buddies from Weight Watchers. Six women sat around that wildly indulgent table, between us celebrating a loss of 232 pounds. (Of course, that would have been a bit less the next morning.) Some of us have made our goals, some have a long road still ahead. The ethos of Weight Watchers, and one of the reasons I believe it works so well, is that it doesn't prohibit anything and it understands that the occasional treat is what makes life worth living.
Granted, our
interpretation of "treat" might have been a bit lavish. But life goes on. And the memory of that roast
foie gras is going to carry me through a lot of salads, melba toast and strenuous bike rides in the months to come.
First, the cheerfulness. I have rarely been in a happier crowd, or one more excited to be embarking on a task at hand. And yet the second, contrasting mood was a somber respect. Each racer bore a label on her back commemorating whoever she was racing for. I was fortunate enough to have a living, cancer-fighting mother behind me. But far too many of those labels were in memoriam, reminding us of the horror of the disease we were all fighting. Which then kindled the third emotion: Defiance. It was a group of fighters, confident we could stop cancer in its tracks.
