The Fat Duck
High Street
Bray, England
+44 (0) 1628 580 3333
www.thefatduck.co.uk
Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck has received a string of awards, including being named second best restaurant in the world four different times by San Pellegrino, generally losing out to the closing El Bulli. The quaint little restaurant in Bray, about an hour outside of London, seems an unlikely spot for a destination restaurant, but it pulls people in from all over the world to try out variations on one general theme. The menu never really changes, but only gets tweaked a bit over time. The menu is generally for carnivores, but the restaurant happily accommodates vegetarians.
The restaurant is about style over substance, and could indeed be called dinner theater - while the food is good, it's really more about the experience. Take the first course, for instance: Nitro Poached Apertifis in a choice of flavors that include vodka and lime sour, gin and tonic, and Campari soda.
Egg whites and the flavoring were shot out of a whipping cream canister at your table and then floated in liquid nitrogen until they developed a bit of a shell (above). The server stood over you to make sure you ate it immediately so it didn't melt, before making the next one. It was a cross between meringue and ice cream and melted in your mouth (below).
Next came red cabbage gazpacho with mustard grain ice cream (below). A tasty mix of flavors.
The jelly of smoked mushroom, truffle cream and pea with oak moss and truffle toast (below) was tops in dinner theater and taste. It was my favorite food course of the evening. The waiter delivered a large box of moss and placed it in the middle of the table. He then poured water over what I assume was dry ice under the moss. It created a billowing blanket of steam over the table. Served alongside were the truffle toast with oak moss, which was divine.
The parsley porridge (above) was special for vegetarians as the carnivores received snail porridge. It was unremarkable.
I generally don't care for aubergine no matter how it's prepared, but the roasted aubergine (above) was done quite nicely. It had a firm, tofu-like texture.
Mock Turtle Soup (above) was taken from Alice in Wonderland. When a friend ate at The Fat Duck last year they had a golden "watch" that they dipped into the soup. The gold flakes came off into the bowl. Now they put the gold flakes in the soup and tell you that they dissolved the watch in the kitchen.
Sound of the Sea (above) was stunning in its presentation as it indeed looked like a mini-version of the seashore. The food was laid out on a glass plate over sand. There was foam resembling the ocean hitting the shore, several seaweeds colored and cut to look like coral and tapioca grains that resembled sand. The waiter brought a shell with a miniature iPod and headphones. You were supposed to listen to the sounds of waves and gulls as you ate the dish. One waiter delivered the dish and said he would only say what it consisted of after I ate it. Problem was, the waiter who cleared the plate was not the same one and had no idea I didn't know what I'd been served.
The beetroot risotto with sour cream sorbet (below) was crunchy - more like chips than risotto. The flavors were a standout though and this was one of my favorite dishes.
The vegetarian bone marrow (above) I had a hard time eating simply because of the name. I'm not sure why anyone would name a vegetarian dish after something vegetarians would never eat. It was a soft vegetable mousse stuffed inside a hollow vegetable.
What followed was hot and iced tea, which didn't blend so the two different temperatures were maintained. It was fun to have that contrast.
Desserts included taffety tart, black forest gateau (the waiter misted you with the "smell of the forest" prior to eating, which did nothing for me), and whisket wine gums. The gums had gelatin in them so I didn't eat them (nice of them to mention though). They were like tiny whiskey bottles stuck to regions where the whiskey was from on a frame. You peeled them from the frame to eat them. Following this, the waiter delivered a bag of sweets to take home.
The service was iffy, the food was good, the theater was a little over-the-top at times, but it was a fun evening. The bill for two was about US $800 and given that and that the menu never really changes, it's a fun place to go - once.
