Chips with your molecules?

10 April 2012

It is completely impossible to miss The Fat Duck restaurant in Bray. For today, the day after Restaurant magazine announced that chef Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck restaurant is the Best Restaurant in the World according to 600 assorted chefs, critics and restaurateurs, this tiny Berkshire village is teeming with television crews.

Cameras are being hauled out of trucks, people are wandering round babbling into mobile phones. They all look terribly excited. The words "snail porridge" and "three Michelin stars" keep rising above the babble.

I park my car outside someone's cottage as the rest of the village has been rendered inaccessible. A lady comes out, presumably to remonstrate with me, but, when she sees the cameras, she stops and smiles. "Blimey," she says. "What on earth are all these

people doing here?"

I tell her about the Fat Duck's achievement. "Ooh great," she says. "Good on Heston. I like him. He's a good man. Are you eating there?" I tell her I am. "I've never tried anything he's cooked," she says. "Can't afford it. Lucky you, though! Send

Heston my congratulations."

I tell her I will but this, as it turns out, proves a tad more

difficult than expected. The first

hurdle is the ma"tre d', a Frenchman sporting a straggly cockscomb quiff. He greets me at the door - myself squinting somewhat as it is sunny outside and pretty dark inside - but then turns cold and difficult when I ask if I can congratulate the chef on his award. "'Eston is beezy cooking," he says rather haughtily. "'E will not talk to anyone." I tell him I have a booking for lunch. Maybe Heston will come out later? He shakes his head imperiously. I decide to bide my time. I ask for a menu.

The ma"tre d', who now obviously hates me for reasons which I seriously fail to understand, reluctantly gives me one and doesn't offer a single word after that.

This turns out to be rather upsetting because, as it turns out, the average diner at the Fat Duck needs to be coaxed and cajoled through its rather revolutionary menu with the aforementioned

snail porridge and eggand-bacon ice cream.

On the surface, the Fat Duck doesn't look at all revolutionary though. It is small and could

double as a 1970s tearoom. It's

terribly unthreatening with its linen table clothes and purple flowers.

The clientele, all 35 of us - that's as many as the restaurant can seat - are similarly unthreatening. There's a terribly old lady sitting on the table

opposite me. She is dining with an equally elderly friend. They could easily be at a WI meeting. But then you see what they are eating.

One of them is gently sucking on something lumpen and orange. The other one has a steaming bowl of what turns out to be liquid nitrogen in front of her. A waiter shakes a canister and sprays a small ball of mint green gloop onto a spoon. He dips it into the nitrogen, brings it out when it has magically solidified and the lady pops it into her mouth. "Ooh," she squeals.

I am not sure "ooh" is what comes into my mind as I work my

way through all 17 courses of the tasting menu, which costs £97.50 a head without wine.

Some dishes are eye-poppingly wonderful. I love the snail porridge in all it's chewy, garlicky marvellousness but as one strange spume-covered, semi-liquefied concoction follows the next, I start feeling that maybe Blumenthal's molecular

gastronomy, although fascinating, is actually the equivalent of food torture.

THERE is no doubt it is pushing the boundaries. It may well mix sweet and savoury and ask our taste buds to leave behind our boring associations when it comes to food but, in all honesty, I could barely face eating purple gazpacho, salmon covered in something black and rubbery or ice cream with bacon on it.

There's nothing wrong with it, but it just looks so foul. And what's so terrible about mint choc chip? After two hours of constant eating - I end up being there for three-and-a-half hours

in total - I feel so gloomy I almost try to catch the ma"tre d's eye to beg him not to bring any more.

But as day marches into night, another course comes, this time parsnip flakes in a cereal packet accompanied by a carrot-andorange lollipop and parsnip milk. "This will make you feel better," says the waiter, noticing I am looking less than enthusiastic. "No it won't!" I want to yell. "Nothing will ever again!"

But then, just as I am about to roll over and lie doggo in an act of submission, out comes

Heston Blumenthal. He is, he says to the assembled diners, humbled and delighted by his award.

He comes over to talk. "What do I like best?" he asks me. The snail porridge, I say. Now that's a story, he says. He tells me that a friend of his was in Japan and saw that fish porridge was on a menu. When he got home he telephoned Heston and said "what a strange idea" and that got Heston

thinking. "I thought, why not?" he says. "Porridge is savoury and snails are great with butter and garlic and I thought it would work so I tried it!" he says.

It turns out that the fish porridge was a mistranslation. "It should've said fish soup!" says Blumenthal. "Maybe I owe all this to the Japanese!"

I ask Heston, before he dashes off, what change he thinks the award will bring. "More diners!" he says. "But that's exhausting." Does he cook his kids this? "Oh no," he laughs, "my wife cooks for them."

I ponder on this a bit and, as I leave, I ask a waiter if people bring their children to eat at The Fat Duck. "Not really," he says. "We don't do a kids' menu." Why not, I ask him. "Well, if we did that then we'd have to do

something normal like sausages and chips." And then, maybe,

everyone would want to eat that and not this strange astronaut food? "Exactly," says the waiter.

The Fat Duck, High Street, Bray, Berks (01628 580 333).

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