When I first published my report from our lunch at the Fat Duck, I did it in small portions. I have friends that really cannot be bothered to read more than a few words each time, so as a service to them, I presented this a couple of dishes at a time. I do however suspect that there are people out there who would rather deal with one simple 14 course lunch in one go, so here is a compilation of the entire thing.
If you have read any of my previous communications, you will know that I am a fan of the British chef Heston Blumenthal and his restaurant The Fat Duck. This restaurant is a temple of modern cuisine, and I have been wanting to go there for years. So I decided that this year I will. They operate a booking system where booking for a specific day opens two months in advance, at 10 am. My plan was to try for every Saturday until I got a table. So on my first attempt, two months before Saturday March 8th, I was online and ready. And ten minutes after that I had a table for four people for lunch at 12:00. Just like that. I was almost a bit disappointed.
There is no difference between lunch and dinner at The Fat Duck. Same menu, same food, just earlier in the day. My plan was to stay in London and go to Bray where the restaurant is, eat and go back to London, and lunch seemed more practical for this than dinner. Going to The Fat Duck from London is easy. Trains leave for Maidenhead from Paddington frequently, and the trip takes around 40-45 minutes. From Maidenhead it is a short taxi ride or a 2.5 km walk. We decided to go there by taxi and walk back, which is a good choice as you may feel the urge to walk the meal off.
Bray proved to be a very cute little village with small cottages, an old church and all the ingredients you expect to find in a small English village. The only bad-ish thing was the steady traffic through the narrow main street.
The Fat Duck is in an old and rather small building that used to be a pub. Actually, the restaurant occupies buildings on both sides of the street, but the ones opposite the restaurant are quite anonymous, even though it is there most of the work is done. In the same village, Heston B also runs two pubs. Also in the same village is a restaurant called the Riverside Inn, which also has three stars. How many tiny villages in the world can boast two three star restaurants? The riverside Inn also has rooms, so it is possible to take a couple of days, stay at the Riverside and eat at both. Bliss!
After a short stroll around the village, the clock was 12, and it was time for our lunch. I walked up to the door to this holy place, pulled it open and went in.
The Fat Duck is a not a large restaurant. It holds around 12-13 tables and can seat a little more than 40 guests. All tables are round (as far as I can remember). Contemporary art line the white walls. There are dark wooden beams in the ceiling, and you are constantly reminded to mind your head from one of the attentive waiters each time you move around. And the waiters really are attentive and professional. Toilets are up the stairs in the corner (mind your head), and there you can also find the wine "cellar". You cannot enter the wine kingdom, but you can peek in through openings in the wall.
We were seated at our table and given a copy of today's tasting menu. I had notified in advance that one of us was vegetarian, but does eat fish. We got two printed menus, one for her where the meat dishes had been substituted with other dishes, and the regular one for the rest of us. There was not an a la carte menu, but only the 14 course tasting menu at 195 pounds. They also offer three different sets of wine pairings with different price tags, but we chose one bottle of white in stead from the large book of wines.
And then the food started coming. The first course was a small amuse bouche made from dried beetroot foam with horseradish cream. You can see a bit of the making of this in this video on youtube:
at around 1:33.
Popping it into my mouth, it proved to be very light and crunchy and released lots of beetroot flavour with a hint of horseradish.
This little mouthful gave us a hint of things to come. It was visually stunning, even though it was quite simple, rather like a small piece of jewellery. It was packed with flavour, and it was perfectly balanced. You could pick out all the flavours, but nothing was overpowering. Just perfectly balanced.
Next up was
NITRO POACHED APERITIFS
- Vodka and Lime Sour, Campari Soda, Tequila and Grapefruit
"Cooking" in liquid nitrogen is something that the Duck is famous for. Liquid nitrogen holds -196 degrees Centigrade and is used to freeze food very quickly.
For this dish, the waiter had three spuma bottles with different foams. We each chose which one we wanted, and the waiter placed a dollop of foam from one of the bottles on a spoon. This was then put into the liquid nitrogen and left to "cook" for some seconds. It was then taken out of the bath and held behind a candle while oils from a piece of fruit peel was squirted through the flame and onto the little ball on the spoon. It was then placed on a plate and presented to the one of us with the instruction to pick it up very carefully and pop it in the mouth.
It was like eating a meringue, only that it had not been baked, but frozen. The outside was crunchy and quite cold, but melted quite quickly in my mouth giving way to a soft interior and releasing lots of flavour. Here is a video of some of the proceedings:
Loved it!
Next up on our lunch:
RED CABBAGE GAZPACHO
- Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream
Now, this one was particularly interesting as I have tried making it myself, a feat that I chronicled here:
http://morten-moen.blogspot.no/2013/11/food-from-fat-duck-red-cabbage-gazpacho.html
This is a cold soup made from red cabbage juice with vinegar thickened with red wine mayonnaise and served with a mustard ice cream. There is also cucumber brunoise (cucumber cut into very small dice). Before being sliced, the cucumber has been compressed by vacuum.
Would the original be better than mine? I would guess that none of you held your breath for the answer for that one, did you? My daughter, Ida, was not very shy about it, but stated clearly that it was better. And I would agree with her. It was milder, mine had more acidity, possibly due to me using the wrong vinegar.
And now for one of the highlights
JELLY OF QUAIL, CRAYFISH CREAM
- Chicken Liver Parfait, Oak Moss and Truffle Toast
This stared with our waiter placing a box with moss on our table. On it were four small boxes with a thin film inside. We were told to take the films out, place them on our tongues and let them melt. This produced a forest in my mouth. Not as in stuff growing in there, but the flavour of forest and moss.
Water was poured over the moss, and smoke came flowing out of it releasing the sent of moss and forest. This, of course, is something the Fast Duck is known for. There is dry ice with scented oils under the moss, and this produces smoke (or vapour) when water is poured over it. The whole point of this is that Heston Blumenthal wants all the senses to be part of the meal, and it is a well known fact that smell is a big part of flavour. So filling the air with the scent of moss will add to the flavour of the dish.
Then food was put before us. One fancy looking bowl and one piece of wood with a piece of toast on it. Truffle toast. In the bowl was a chicken liver pate, langoustine cream, quail jelly and (I think) pea mousse. And some sort of tuile, fig according to the book. As I have mentioned, I have the Fat Duck Cookbook, and this dish is in the book. It is interesting to see that the dishes at the restaurant evolve. At the time of writing the book, this dish contained a foie gras parfait in stead of the chicken liver pate.
This tasted really heavenly. But the best component of the dish, perhaps one of the best components of the meal, was the truffle toast. Again according to the book (provided they have not changed the recipe), this is toasted bread cooked in foie gras fat, spread with truffle and oak butter and topped with slices of fresh Perigord truffle and radishes. Absolutely fantastic!
After the meal, we agreed that this was one of the highlights.
Moving on to course 5
SNAIL PORRIDGE
- Iberico Bellota Ham, Shaved Fennel
This is another of the well known Fat Duck dishes, perhaps mostly because of the name. Several in our party had been looking forward to this with scepticism, if not outright fear. This is not, however, a porridge made of snails. This is really a porridge made from oats (that have been sieved to get rid of the powdery bits that ruined the consistency according to the cookbook) parsley butter, ham and, resting on the top, braised snails and shaved fennel.
I had no idea of what to expect, I was quite excited about it but was actually a bit disappointed. It was ok, but nothing more. My daughter did not want to taste it, but tried one bit including a snail, and that was enough. Now, to her it was the thought of snails that ruined it, not really the taste. Also, the other female part of the party left most of it untouched, also due to the thought of snails. I have no problems with snails, and ate it all, but for some reason this turned out to be the one dish of the day that I found un-interesting. Which is quite interesting. We all agreed that this was the low point in the meal.
Next one up:
ROAST FOIE GRAS
- Rhubarb, Confit Kombu and Crab Biscuit
I love foie gras, the texture, flavour and richness of it. This one was perfect. Heston B has devoted countless hours to researching how to treat this ingredient in order to get perfect results. One of the troubles with foie gras is that it can take on a grainy texture in stead of the preferred velvety one. It turns out that the liver, being full of enzymes, starts deteriorating much faster than most meats.
The solution is to very quickly freeze the liver using liquid nitrogen to -18 degrees right after the slaughter and keep it there. Then, to avoid oxidation and to preserve the texture, it is cooked sous vide at 60 degrees. After that it is cooled again and refrigerated for 48 hours to for the flavours to mature. It is then re-heated in a sous vide bath to 60 degrees and finally seared using blowtorch before serving.
A fat dish like this needs some acidity, and the rhubarb fluid gel really lifted the whole thing up a notch. Nice!
And now:
MAD HATTER'S TEA PARTY (c.1892)
- Mock Turtle Soup, Pocket Watch and Toast Sandwich
This is also a classic. At its core it is a mock turtle soup served with pieces of beef, turnip, cucumber, small mushrooms and a mock turtle egg. But that would be too boring for the Fat Duck, so it is served up as a tea party.
First a explanatory "bookmark" was placed before us describing the tea party scene from Alice in Wonderland on one side and the history of mock turtle soup on the other.
Then a teapot with cup was placed before each of us. The pot held hot water and the cup held a beautiful display of different vegetables, miniature mushrooms and beef cubes.
A case containing gold watches was then presented, and one watch was placed in each cup. These clocks are really freeze dried stock covered in real leaf gold. As we sat there twirling our cups, the stock dissolved in the water leaving a beautiful consomme with floating pieces of gold which we then could pour over the items in the teacups.
Since this was a tea party, a mad hatter sandwich stand was also placed before us complete with hats. These miniature sandwiches were really delicious with white bread on top and bottom and crunchy toast in the middle.
The soup was really delicious and refreshing with a nice and deep flavour. Absolutely one of our favourites.
And now, a classic:
"SOUND OF THE SEA"
Heston Blumenthal has always been interested in what he calls multi sensory eating. The idea is that it is not only the taste and flavour of what you put in your mouth that contributes to the experience. All your senses are involved in making you feel whatever it is you are feeling during a meal. Many have experienced that the simple pasta dish that you enjoyed so much sitting on a balcony in Italy looking out towards the distant hills of Tuscany becomes just a simple and possibly a bit boring pasta dish when eaten in a hurry alone by the kitchen table at home. So the theatre that goes on in a restaurant, the "cast", the "props", the smells and the sound are important parts of the food experience.
This next course started by the waiter bringing a shell for each of us containing an iPod. We were instructed to put on the ear plugs to get in the right mood. We did and were immediately transported to the seaside. The sound of crashing waves were every now and then interrupted by seagulls and other birds. I could almost feel a light breeze brush against my forehead. Or perhaps that is just an romantic afterthought, but anyway, it effectively put us in the mood.
Then the next course was put before us. This was definitely one of the most visually stunning pieces of nourishment I had had for quite a while. The "plate" was specially made for the dish and consisted of a wooden box filled with sand and topped with a sheet of glass. On the glass was what looked like more sand, pieces of seafood that visually gave me the impression of a coral reef, and some foam that looked like a wave of seawater had been frozen in time just as i crashed onto the reef.
The sand on top of the glass was of course not not sand. According to the recipe in the the cookbook (which may have been altered since the book was written), it is based on tapioca maltodextrin. I actually guessed that when I ate it because I have tried using that stuff myself. Tapioca maltodextrin has the property of being able to dehydrate fat or oils. You can see this in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5TToltpSUM
And you can buy the stuff here:
http://www.modernistpantry.com/tapioca-maltodextrin.html
There are several types of maltodextrin out there, but you need this type in order to bind oils as shown here. The nice thing about using this stuff in this way is that you end up with a powder that not only tastes like the oil you started with, but actually reverts back to its oily state when you get it in your mouth. So you can serve this as oil for a salad without the oil making the greens soggy, but once you get it in your mouth, it reverts back to oil.
So the sand on top of the glass is maltodextrin with an oil made from miso, cod liver oil and grape seed oil. This is mixed with sauteed baby eels, kombu, breadcrumbs and brown carbonised vegetable powder (whatever that is). By the way, according to the book, the real sand in the wooden box is a bit of Venezuela's shoreline. Just so you know.
The foam is (from what I can make of the recipe) based on a light broth made from different seaweeds, seafood and vegetables foamed by adding lecithin, just like I described here:
http://morten-moen.blogspot.no/2014/01/in-my-lab-foams-part-4-lecithin.html
The sand and the foam is then plated with different seafoods and seaweeds. It all came together as a dish that really took you to the seaside (nicely helped by the sound from the iPods). The delicate flavours of the seafood were heightened by the saltiness of the foam and the richness of the "sand". And did the sound help? Yes, it did. It actually generated an atmosphere of summer by the sea.
Amazing!
Course #9, more seafood:
SALMON POACHED IN A LIQUORICE GEL
- Artichokes, Vanilla Mayonnaise and Golden Trout Roe
This dish is in my cookbook, and I must admit that I have been a bit doubtful about it, but I was of course wrong. This is a piece of salmon that has been coated with a gel containing liquorice and then cooked sous vide. The picture in the book shows a piece of fish entirely covered in a glossy layer of gel. The recipe may have evolved a bit, because what was served seemed to have less of the liquorice gel.
As I mentioned, my scepticism was uncalled for. As with all the dishes this day, the combination was perfectly balanced. The moist and perfectly cooked salmon had a hint of liquorice that suited it nicely, and the vanilla mayonnaise was one of my favourite components during the meal. I need to try to make it at home.
The last savoury dish was
THE DUCK
- Bay, Blood Pudding and Umbles
It goes without saying that the Fat Duck should serve duck. This one was tender, succulent and served with blood pudding, umbles and a potato pure. I would guess that the duck breast had been done sous vide and the skin seared afterwards, but that may not be correct. Anyway, the piece of meat was perfectly done.
The potato pure was one of the best I have had anywhere. It had lots of taste and was very smooth and creamy. I know that Heston B has a recipe where he first heats the potato pieces to 72 degrees for 30 minutes or so. This is done to bind the starch in the potato so that it does not leak out and makes glue of the whole thing.
After the 72 degrees treatment, the pieces of potato are boiled until very tender and then mashed and passed through a sieve. Butter is added and the mash is then mixed with milk that has been infused with the potato peels. This makes a very smooth and creamy mash with lots of potato flavour. I do not know if this is the recipe used at the Fat Duck, but it probably is something along those lines.
The umbles were made up in a thin, crispy and very tasty pastry roll. This was also one of our favourite elements of the meal.
Bring on the desserts!
HOT AND ICED TEA
So, all the savoury stuff done with, on came another of Mr Blumenthal's most famous contraptions: The hot and iced tea.
Modernist Cuisine in general and perhaps Heston Blumenthal specifically is to many people known for creating strange dishes. I must confess that I was a bit concerned that the Fat Duck experience was going to be too much circus and too little food, but I was relieved to find that the predominant experience was good food and not "strange stuff", even though much of the food had obviously been prepared using untraditional techniques. The hot and iced tea, however, which is used as a sort of entry to the sweet section of the meal, is, in my view, mostly for show. A bit of novelty, just because they can. Humour in food, but why not?
For those of you who have not heard about this dish, it comes in the form of a cup (or glass) of tea. Nothing fancy there. Not until you take a sip. You see, half of this is hot, and the other half is cold. And it is divided vertically down the centre and there is no physical separator. This creates quite a surprising experience when you are not aware of it. And the glass is actually insulated so that you do not get any clue about the different temperatures until you get it in your mouth.
So how is this possible? The hot and iced tea was actually the second of our dishes that I had made myself at home. You can read about my attempt here:
http://morten-moen.blogspot.no/2014/01/food-from-fat-duck-hot-and-iced-tea.html
For those of you wanting the short version, what we were drinking was not a liquid, but rather two different, thin fluid gels. And now you will want to know what on the planet a fluid gel is. This I had the ingenious foresight to describe in my previous post which you can find here:
http://morten-moen.blogspot.no/2014/04/a-great-intro-to-fluid-gels.html
So the hot and the cold portions are thin gels that never the less are thick enough to stay apart. And they contain malic acid which when in your mouth makes you produce extra saliva witch helps dilute the gels in your mouth masking the fact that they art too thick. Now, that is clever.
RHUBARB
Sheep's Milk Yoghurt and Bergamot
What we needed now was something refreshing, and that was exactly what came next. The galette of rhubarb, the rhubarb sorbet and the dried rhubarb chip all combined with the tartness of the yoghurt and a light and fragrant experience into something perfect.
This dessert was very good and came as a perfect refresher in the meal that now started to get really big (this was the 12th dish), but it was the next dessert that really made us euphoric...
On to dessert number three.
BOTRYTIS CINEREA
Those of you steeped in wine knowledge will already know that botrytis cinerea is a fungus that is responsible for what is known as noble rot in grapes. Grapes attacked by noble rot give rise to beautiful sweet desert wines like Sauternes and Tokaji.
So, what is this dessert, then? A fungus? No. The chefs at the Fat Duck analysed the flavour of typical wines of this type (no doubt having a good time while doing so) and tried to break it down to separate flavour components. Then they made small dessert components with those flavours. And what a dessert!
First of all it was stunningly beautiful to look at. It consisted of various spheres of different colours and textures on a base of some crumbly stuff. with a few other bits and pieces thrown in for effect. Some of the spheres were ice cream, some were jello-like. Some where hollow with fillings. One was golden. They all had different flavours, all very fragrant and aromatic and sweet, but rather impossible to describe. There was some white chocolate in there somewhere. Something tasted of berries. There were citrus tones. Somewhere in the crumbles we definitely spotted parmesan cheese. The whole thing was just WOW. This was definitely the best dessert I had ever had.
Following this masterpiece were two smaller items just to round it all up.
WHISK(E)Y WINE GUMS
This is like wine gums, but with five different whiskies. These were presented on a map showing where the all came from. Printed on the map was also the preferred eating sequence, from mild to heavily smoked. The small bottle shaped sweets had good whisky flavours and also melted well in the mouth. This was when my 17 year old daughter decided that she likes whiskey. I do believe that she will have a small shock when she tries out the real thing as these ones lacked the alcohol and the kick that comes with it...
"LIKE A KID IN A SWEET SHOP"
The meal ended with a bag of candies. Two pieces of chocolates and one piece of pie in the shape of a playing card, presented in an envelope, all delivered in a paper bag.
ENDING AND VERDICT
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I told one of the waiters that I had made some of these dishes at home, and he then suggested that a look into the kitchen might be of interest. It was. After the last little crumble was gone from our plates, we were led to what is known as the pass, where the waiters pick up the food. From there we could look into the kitchen, or one of the kitchens.
The fat duck owns several buildings in High Street. The one where the restaurant is contains a rather small service kitchen. This one was actually slightly smaller than my own kitchen at home. This is where all the dishes are finished during service. Across the road is another building with more kitchen space. There is the prep kitchen that starts at 0530 in the morning and is run on two shifts until 10-ish at night. And there is a special chocolate kitchen and the development kitchen where new stuff is developed and tested. The food is prepared on that side if the road, loaded into a van and driven over to the restaurant in preparation for service. All in all we were told that 36 chefs had been working that day, 9 of them in the small service kitchen in the restaurant.
We came in at 12 and left at 5pm. I guess we were finished with the meal just after 4pm, the last part was seeing the kitchen, buying a book, chatting to the staff etc. That is one long lunch. It did cost 195 pounds plus beverages, and that is of course a lot of money for food. Was it worth it? It was definitely worth it to us.
So, was that the best meal I ever had? I find that a bit hard to answer. I have had several very good ones. Noma in Copenhagen, Maaemo in Oslo, the restaurant at hotel Bristol in Paris. They all had something special. But, yes, I think that when all is counted and analysed, the Fat Duck is my best restaurant experience ever. For now.
