Ten years on from my first visit, I’m back at The Fat Duck. Back then, the Duck was proclaimed the best restaurant on earth by the newly-born World’s 50 Best, and it also had three Michelin stars. The Fat Duck had it all.
Self-taught Blumenthal would help turn this sleepy hamlet in Berkshire into a destination for food lovers from all over the globe. Stars in the bars followed at the Hind’s Head and the Crown, both just a Scotch egg’s throw from each other and their mothership.
A few miles away Tom Kerridge’s two-star pub, the Hand and Flowers, mightn’t be what it is today without the mise-en-place that Heston had set out for him. Then came Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London, with a nice edible history lesson in a business suit room - the same room where, if you were staying at the hotel, you’d already had your breakfast. Not much magic there.
It’s absolute Hogwarts now at the new Fat Duck though. So what’s so magical? Not the room – that was always a challenge. A 16th century light-starved space then blighted by art that looked like it had been won in a blindfolded trolley dash, is now a simple stage for the daily performances.
There isn’t a menu. Instead there’s a looking glass and a map that charts a journey through one day of an idyllic summer holiday – a beach trip, a walk in the woods, a posh dinner in a hotel before bedtime and sweet dreams.
A journey? Usually any mention of a chef ’s journey would give me sharp chest pains but in a dining room noisy with oohs and aahs, you forget the concept, the props, the actors and even the performance. It is this Duck’s food that wields the magic.
These are some of the highlights of the yellow brick road that was lunch . . . An evaporating aerated beetroot and horseradish macaron that slaps your palate awake. A snowball of mousse mixed tableside in nitro and presented back to you for a puff of an icy meringue cocktail of your choice – mine a freezing otherworldly Campari that sent smoke out my nose. A simultaneously hot and cold and deeply delicious rabbit tea.
A variety pack of bonkers cereals (with hidden toys) that when rifled open made our table look like it was under the tree on Christmas morning. Blumenthal’s golden oldies made reappearances: the Sound of the Sea, savoury ice pops of Waldorf salad, a salmon and avocado twizzler, and a tiny crab 99. All spectacular and all, like his supposedly never-changed menu, continuously refined to perfection.
Then, from a tarry black rock pool an edible cartoon of a shimmying crab that stares up at you but then dissolves, before you can fish it out, into the best tastes of the sea.
There is a walk in the woods dish of earth and tree bark and leaves that looks like it came from the kitchen in Noma, but with easier flavours.
Then a retro 1980s menu – a mini three-course meal – of prawn cocktail, duck à l’orange and a cheese and grape dessert. The first two are three-star dishes all day long, the cheese and grapes course a mind-blowing crown jewel of a boozy cheesy science project.
Along the way, the postman drops off a picture postcard, addressed to me, of the exact spot in west Clare that was my favourite from my childhood holidays.
A week before my reservation, a nice woman had called me with the usual dietary questions, to explain “the journey” and to ask about flavours and experiences from my childhood. During our chat I mentioned the few places that we spent our summers in: Lahinch, Liscannor and Spanish Point. She had listened, carefully. Spookily, the precise corner of Spanish Point that was my favourite was on the card.
Then comes a dessert that floats and carousels with a lullaby in front of your face while you’re gently armed to eat the soothing creamy bowlful with a fluffy handled spoon impregnated with baby powder. Finally, an enormous automaton of a sweet shop that opens up into dioramas of Blumenthal’s childhood home, with drawers stuffed with savoury sweets which you pay for with a coin that has magically appeared under your plate.
If a lot of this sounds like complete tosh, well, it isn’t – or it might have been if every last freeze-dried crumb of perfection hadn’t nailed the holy trinity of food that is flavour, texture and presentation, in that order.
Blumenthal, the sentimental mentalist, is telling stories and selling memories at the new Fat Duck. At first glance you might think they’re just his, but what this trippy journey has given me is another 10 years’ worth of my own.
Lunch or dinner at The Fat Duck costs £255, reservations can be made online at the fatduck.co.uk.
