Still the world's best

From a restaurant critic's point of view, The Fat Duck is a nice, juicy target. For one thing, it has three Michelin stars, making it ripe for a takedown. For another, it's woefully expensive - a single espresso costs £3.95.

But, above all, its owner, Heston Blumenthal, is wildly pretentious, claiming to specialise in 'molecular gastronomy' and concocting things like snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream in his 'laboratory' after consultation with historians, flavourists and experimental psychologists. Given the forbidding sound of these dishes, it's hardly surprising that The Fat Duck chalked up losses of £78,229 last year.

For the purposes of putting the restaurant through its paces, I set a whole afternoon aside and invited my friend Sean Langan to accompany me. Sean is a BBC documentary-maker who regularly risks his neck in places like Kabul and Baghdad, so I thought he'd be able to cope with sardines-on-toast sorbet and Douglas fir purée.

We took the train to Maidenhead from Paddington and then got a taxi from the station to the restaurant. It was an inauspicious start to the day - we'd already clocked up a bill of £25.20 before we'd even sat down.

The Fat Duck certainly doesn't look like 'the best restaurant in the world', an accolade it was awarded last year by an international panel of 600 chefs, food critics and restaurateurs. At first, I thought our taxi driver must have come to the wrong place. He pulled up outside a very modest-looking cottage on a main road somewhere in Berkshire. From where I was sitting, it looked like a tearoom.

Once inside, the impression doesn't improve much. Apart from a couple of works of abstract expressionism on the wall, there's nothing to indicate this isn't just another petit bourgeois restaurant of the kind found in every village in England.

A full complement of middle-aged couples sat quietly at small tables covered with white linen, while a French maitre d' glided around, addressing his regulars in a low murmur. Were these really the lab-rats for the world's most innovative chef?

Sean and I opted for the tasting menu and it wasn't until the palate cleanser arrived that we got an inkling of what all the fuss was about. Our waiter appeared with the bottom half of an ice-cream maker, a large aerosol can and a canister of liquid nitrogen.

He then poured some of the nitrogen into the icecream maker, sprayed a dollop of what looked like green hair mousse into a spoon and dropped it into the smoke-filled cauldron. Seconds later, he fished out something resembling a meringue and told me to pop it into my mouth.

As soon as I inserted it, the shell shattered, releasing an ice-cold liquid that tasted first of lime and then, after I'd swallowed it, green tea. It was an extraordinary sensation, as though someone had sandblasted the inside of my mouth with alpine air. Needless to say, the moment the experience was over I wanted another one - and the waiter was happy to oblige.