The fat duck bill

After a 6 hour connecting flight from Santorini we landed at Heathrow, despite all I had heard about LHR it was relatively painless going through passport control and customs. There were 2 ways to Paul and Laci's house(Paul and Laci from now referred to by their couple abbreviation Placi), either catch the tube, then a cab (this was the cheap option) or the Heathrow express train then a cab (expensive option). I was all for the expensive option to start with but Heidi said we should be thrifty. When we got out to where the trains were there was some advertising saying 45 minutes by the underground tube vs sub 15 minutes on the express. After 6 hours of already commuting Heidi was immediately swayed to the express option.

A short black cab ride later (which I was pretty excited about for a London cultural experience) we arrived at Placi's house in Islington which they had recently moved into only a few days beforehand. Laci made a Hungarian chicken dish called Csirke Pörkölt and it was awesome to finally have a delicious home cooked meal.

We went out exploring Islington as it was Placi's first weekend there too. After hitting up a few cocktail bars we ended up at this rum bar which had a pirate theme. Heidi was trying out some weird cocktail which is served in a monkey head glass. All I can say is spiced rum is maybe the best thing ever.
The next morning we got up had a small breakfast and caught the train to Maidenhead(lol) then hopped a cab to Bray to go to Heston Blumenthal's restaurant the Fat Duck. It usually places in the top 5 restaurants in the world, but this year it has slipped to number 13. When we got to Bray we walked around the town for a while as we were a bit early. There were graves all around the church there and you had to walk through the "lich gate" to get to the cemetery. The buildings around there were build circa 16th century. Apparently all the people were a lot smaller then as they were almost hobbit (or Heidi) size.
When it was 12pm we wandered back to the Fat Duck and walked in. This was another 16th century building so you had to duck your head or it would hit the rafters on the way to the table. Inside the restaurant it was smaller that we expected and apparently only sits around 30 people. No wonder it's so hard to get a booking!
We were seated and the champagne cart came around. Laci, our resident wine aficionado had the wine list with the prices and ordered the vintage Moet 2002, there was also Dom Perignon on offer but I realised it must have been pretty ridiculously priced for Laci to go with the Moet. After a toast and a chat the amuse bouche came out and I think it was some kind of really light macaroon puff thing but made with beetroot and had horseradish cream cheese in between the layers. 

A waiter wheeled out a trolley with a few soda stream bottles and a smoking pot of liquid nitrogen. The waiter offered us the choice of 3 "nitro poached aperitifs". The others ordered the vodka and lime sour or gin and tonic. I had the campari soda as I was already missing Italy. The waiter who made it squirted some foamy cocktail then threw it in the boiling liquid nitrogen and made it into a solid, once popped into your mouth it instantly melted. He also sprayed some citrus scent in the air I have no idea what this is for but maybe one of us forgot some deodorant.

Good cocktails

The first food course was a red cabbage gazpacho with pommery grain mustard ice cream. Let me just get this out of the way, every course was amazing and delicious. I will just describe the courses were freaking amazing or had theatrical value otherwise we'll be here all day and I don't want to make this blog sound like more of a pretentious foody blog than it already is. So if I just say what a course is and don't leave much description, it doesn't mean its bad, it's just average for Heston which in normal terms means it's fucking spectacularly delicious and has weird flavour combinations that work.

Red cabbage gazpacho with pommery grain mustard ice cream.

The first lot of matching wine was brought out by the sommilier and it was a 2004 Peter Lehmann riesling. I told the sommilier that we cain heaps of the $10 versions of Mr Lehmann's rieslings back in Australia. He smiled but was probably thinking that I was about the 50th Aussie to tell him that this year. A waiter brought out a box of what looked to be turf but on checking the menu it turned out to be oak moss. He poured some liquid nitrogen into it so it created this fog that spread across the table. Then they brought out the chicken liver parfait in crayfish cream with quail jelly that had been turned into a chip and some truffle toast. Then they placed what looked like a little breath strips on the oak moss. This turned out that they'd somehow got the oak flavouring into a breath strip which was supposed to go with the truffle toast, you know because the truffles grow on oak tree roots.

Chicken liver parfait in crayfish cream with quail jelly.

The next 2 "average" courses were snail porridge with iberico bellota ham and shaved fennel(kinda like a chunky pea and ham soup but with snail), then some roast foie gras with gooseberry, braised kombu and crab biscuit.

Snail porridge.

Oh man roasted foie gras.

The waiters brought out the next dish which was Heston's take on the Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice and Wonderland. A three tier high tea set was brought out with toast sandwich(like little club sandwiches but the middle layer was toasted, really cool texture). The waiters then stacked a glass teapot on top of a glass bowl filled with what looked like egg with mushrooms growing out of it, bits of  meat and other things, then filled the teapot up with hot water. They gave us all what looked like gold pocket watches. On the table there was a card with an illustration of the Mad Hatter's tea party and a quote "The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily then he dipped it into his cup of tea". So we put the "pocket watch" into the hot water and it dissolved into gold leaf and stock which created the soup base. Then we poured the stock into the soup bowl at the bottom and created the mock turtle soup. The mock turtle character illustration was on the other side of the card along with a paragraph about how mock turtle soup came to be.

The pocket watch going into the soup.

The finished soup with gold leaf and sandwiches. That nearly demolished stick of butter in the background is unpasturised. I was eating it like cheese. How come the French get to inflict pasturisation on us then don't even use the process to make their yummiest cheeses?

 

I kind of wish there was one of the previous non theatrical courses in between these 2 but the next course was titled "Sounds of the Sea". Basically if you haven't heard of this before you get an iPod in a shell with waves crashing and the occasional bird. While there's a dish with the surf foam, sand, seaweed and seafood that you eat while listening to the ocean sounds for a fully immersive experience. I was slightly skeptical about this dish before going in and thought it was a bit over hyped. Well believe the hype. It was amazing, it felt like I was at the beach, especially when I had a mouthful of sand and foam because I'm a crap surfer. There was 2 types of sashimied mackerel and halibut, some abalone sashimi and little sea cucumbers. The sand was made of tapioca and I think the foam was made with seaweed extract. The matching wine was actually a saki, ohhhh yeah.

Sounds of the sea.

Heidi and Laci listening to the sound of the sea with the conch shell iPods.

Course eight was salmon poached in a liquorice gel with artichokes, vanilla mayo and golden trout roe. Artichokes when done well are some of my favourite things. Even though I hate liquorice it was a really mild flavour and the salmon flavour dominated it.

Artichokes are supposed to put the flavour of wine off but I don't care because they are so delicious.

This was followed by a course just called "The Duck". I figured this must have been a signature dish as it beared the restaurant's name but not so by looking at other blogs. Anyway it came with bay, blood pudding and umbles. I have no idea what most of that stuff is but it was freaking awesome.

Best duck ever oh and the mash potatoes smashed Joel Robuchon's famous pommes puree.

The course before deserts was a "hot and iced tea". I have no idea how this works but the drink starts hot, then midway through goes hot and cold then completely cold at the end and the taste was the same the way through.

Hot and Iced tea.

I'm not a massive sweets fan, but these deserts were pretty amazing. The first was clove caramelised blackberries with hjicha tea ice cream cornet which was supposed to have a picnic theme I think and the second was just called "the BFG" which stood for Black Forest Gateau.

Clove caramelised blackberries with hjicha tea ice cream cornet.

The BFG

The waiters then brought out what looked like picture frames but on closer inspection was a map of the Scotland and a floating map of Tennessee in the USA, with little bottle shaped gummy things on them. WHISKY GUMMY THINGS! There were 5 whiskys from 5 areas the one from Islay was super smokey and tasted nearly like having a cigar. I don't know why they bothered with the American whiskey, it's lame.

The bracketed E in the photo is for the dumb American spelling for the Jack Daniels.

The last desert we couldn't even fit in but luckily it came in a carry bag. It was a bag of sweets called "Like a kid in a sweet shop". The card which told you what was in the bag had a message on it saying "sniff me" so we did and it smelt like walking into a sweets store. The thing I liked best was a caramel which you eat the wrapping at all but when it dissolved it tasted like apple pie. There was also Fat Duck coconut baccy (came in a tobacco pouch, but was coconut infused with an aroma of Black Cavendish tobacco), the queen of hearts playing card(who made some tarts - was white chocolate with a berry tart inside) and like an aero chocolate with jelly.

The queen of hearts.

Mmmm chewing baccy which didn't taste foul.

It really is like a Willy Wonka experience at Heston's and is well worth the big fat duck bill at the end of because you'd only do it once, (unless someone wants to take me there again).