Heston Blumenthal is a gastronomic legend. His contribution includes, among other things, the importance he has given to the culinary form, its appearance as well as its content. Different influences and passions coexist in his work: French erudition, reinventing traditional English recipes, investigating avant-garde techniques, demystifying values… he communicates his entire message in a spectacular manner. “Oh!” are the constant exclamations and expressions flowing from the clientele. Using provocation as one of his tools, he achieves an omnipresent, astonishing scene. This is a cuisine that needs complicity on the part of the guest: called upon to live, more than just passively participate, the great feast of senses in front of them. A feast of all the senses. The staging goes far beyond the reaches of imagination, creating a truly magical atmosphere.
Heston has an atomic mind. A testimony to this is the fragile, exquisite and incredibly refreshing nitrogen-frozen vodka and lime meringue perfumed with tea powder–genius. Expressive, contrasted, balanced and highly colorful, the mustard seed ice cream with liquid cabbage gazpacho. The homage to Alain Chapel is academically Gallic and very impressive: a bowl containing layers of pea puree, quail jelly, Norway lobster cream and a quenelle of chicken liver parfait, accompanied by another plate with black truffle canapé and further adorned by a third space that expresses a misty, mossy character reminiscent of the forest at dawn. Traditional and gourmand flavors, but elegant and velvety, the escargot porridge: parsley emulsion, strips of Joselito cured ham and fennel bulb julienne. Product and doneness deserve a perfect 10 in clever harmony: foie gras over a bed of al dente kombu seaweed with redcurrant puree, specks of balsamic vinegar and a crispy sponge cake. Alice in Wonderland, or the fantastical false turtle soup: a broth created from homemade meat extract wrapped in thin gold leaf, which takes the shape of a coin before it falls apart, to then cover a parallelepiped formation on the plate created by slices of beef and pork and a false egg made of turnip jelly and saffron. The baroque resolution and incredible precision are astounding: salmon filet wrapped in licorice jelly, salmon roe, vanilla mayonnaise, grapefruit and artichokes. The mental and material effort is always titanic. Nobility and meticulousness are demonstrated yet again in the lamb and squab dishes, more solid and restrained than other constructions. More playfulness is found in the search and attainment of the impossible: sorbet flambéed with whisky presented at the table inside a bowl immersed in liquid nitrogen surrounded by wood; thanks to this system of service, the sorbet never melts even though it is surrounded by flames. The most recent trick from the magician from Bray: the concept of hot/cold taken to the extreme. French toast with egg ice cream and crispy bacon… leaving the guest with an irresolvable doubt: is fiction now reality, or the other way around? Blumenthal is a craftsman of one of the finest gastronomic spectacles in the world.
In any case, we must be so bold as to list, and with good reason, the names of Michel Guérard, Alain Chapel, Freddy Girardet, Joël Robuchon, Michel Bras, Ferran Adrià ... and Heston Blumenthal as those chefs who have left us impressed, moved and speechless… in contemporary cuisine. Heston is a transcendent character that is in the process of making history. He has an atomic mind. His intelligence is summed up with one word: nuclear. His imagination is even greater, breaking all boundaries, like a Jules Verne of cuisine. He demonstrates a permanent dedication with emotions, stirring them through his craft. He involves the guest this way, establishing complicity via childlike, magical games. The spectacle, the culinary circus, is guaranteed. Death defying leaps in the dining room alongside constant ironies that evoke smiles and admiration. He creates a dreamy ambience. The apex of the show comes with the nitrogen scrambled egg ice cream with smoked bacon, French toast and tea jelly. The maître d’ acts as chief conjurer. He takes a petal from the white rose that adorns the table. With his hand he starts twisting it up until converting it into an egg. Next, he breaks the egg and from the interior a kind of egg cream comes forth within which a uniform yolk and white appear. He throws it in the pan and beats the egg, over the nitrogen, into a scramble that is placed on top of a slice of French toast, accompanied to the side by a tea jelly. More detail than this is impossible to ascertain, even seeing the spectacle many times over. Clearly the chef steals the hearts of his clientele, who cannot help but be carried away by so much and such entertaining seduction. The dish is just simply enchanting. A Harry Potter novel in the kitchen.
Like any good dieting gourmand, he knows the precise moments when the gourmet appreciates being refreshed and having the meal lightened in order to continue with the gastronomic orgy. He manages the temperatures, spaces, quantities, intensities and flavors with intelligence and precision. And how important is this: Mother Nature has given Blumenthal an infallible palate. Regardless of how lively the elements used in a dish, wisdom of flavor always prevails: elegance, subtlety, compensation, harmony… words that are repeated time and time again during the feast. Such refinement! And this is captured as much in the innovative compositions as in those of more classical inspiration. It is interesting to observe how he alternates in the menu constructions with galactic formats and techniques alongside others that are talented reinterpretations of ancestral recipes where he ensures that a good part of the sapid memory is preserved.That defines the lucid nature of his mind, knowing how to go beyond epochal, time-bound cuisine, combining diverse styles yet always expressing his imprint and non-conformist spirit. Let there be no doubt, Heston is a brilliant creator.
There is no room to say no. At The Fat Duck, you just have to absorb the designs of the artist, but the open-mindedness is compensated with innumerable stellar moments. Aside from one or two exceptions in the 15-course menu, everything is superb. The oyster with passion fruit jelly and lavender-perfumed radish cream represents an archangelic junction of happy nuances. The mustard ice cream with cabbage gazpacho reaffirms the velvety character of the contrasts while expressing sapid purity. The oak moss film with truffle butter toast is a mind-boggling staging of the forest with aromas of daybreak on a foggy morning; the greatest homage ever paid to Alain Chapel. Any gourmand desires are highly satisfied with the traditional escargot porridge served with Joselito cured ham and fennel strips; it incites gluttony. Honorability of the product, 10. Preparation skill and exaltation of delicacy, both in flavor and feel, has a name: foie gras with liquid almond jelly, cherry puree and chamomile jelly. The sardine toast sorbet with deboned mackerel ballotine and seaweed and fish salad is a daring, infallible capturing of humble yearnings. Colossal for its delicacy and roasting time, the lamb carré, offered with an ethereal onion jelly and a generous dish of potatoes, neck, sweetbreads and oysters. Another trick up his sleeve: the interlude of Whisky-flavored jellies. And so it continued, one “bravo!” after another, until we reached the final madness of this solid star of wise insolence: wine with chocolate.
Heston Blumenthal is a prodigy child with the heart of an elephant who is in the habit of making gourmets very happy. And let it be known that The Fat Duck is wasting no time in debuting many new items on their menu. The long-awaited Fat Duck Cookbook, which recaps ten years of Heston Blumenthal’s work, is set to come out soon and before the end of 2008 the tasting menu replaced the à la carte menu, completely renovated, multi-sensorial and dedicated to the reinterpreted contemporary British tradition.
We tried two dishes off the new menu, which are still in the research phase. The first is a false turtle soup: a broth created from homemade meat extract wrapped in thin gold leaf, which takes the shape of a coin before it falls apart, to then cover a parallelepiped formation on the plate created by slices of beef and Colonnata pork and a false egg made of turnip jelly and saffron. The second is a sorbet flambéed with whisky presented at the table inside a bowl immersed in liquid nitrogen, then surrounded by wood; thanks to this system, the sorbet never melts even though it is surrounded by flames.The most recent trick from the magician from Bray: the concept of hot/cold taken to the extreme. Brilliant!
