The Fat Duck (***)

The Fat Duck is Heston Blumenthal’s three-Michelin star restaurant. A few years ago, it was named the best restaurant in the world.

There is no nameplate outside on the wall. The logo hangs on the façade and there is usually someone at the door of the restaurant waiting for guests.

We have to wait outside for a while before we can enter, other guests are standing in the hall and have to go inside first before we can enter, then we have to stand in the hall for a while before we can enter the restaurant. Inside it is neatly decorated. Blue carpet, white walls and tables with white table linen.

Heston loves surprises, his menu is based on sensors: the parts of the brain or mind that are involved in the reception and interpretation of sensory stimuli. Here you can expect surprises. We are curious.

Menu

There is an 11 course menu, here you don’t get an amuse-bouche. There are different wine arrangements available (6 glasses) and there is a juice-wine arrangement and a full juice package. We opt for the juice-wine pairing. The first glass is served with the third course. We have something to celebrate and that’s why we start with champagne from Billecart-Salmon; This time a rosé champagne. The champagne has a soft aftertaste.

The restaurant also serves a champagne by the glass from Pol Rogier, Winston Churchill’s favorite champagne.

The first dish is a cocktail that you can choose yourself. Choice of, for example, Matcha, Vodka Sour or a classic Negroni. I choose the negroni. A ball of foam is sprayed onto a spoon and poured into nitrogen. This creates a cold ball that is like ice, but soft. It is recommended to eat the ball immediately and not wait until it is made for the others at the table. The flavors are refreshing. Our storyteller indicates that it was decided to start with this to neutralize the taste buds.

Then we get beetroot. A meringue made of beetroot and stuffed with horseradish lies on a very nice plate. The foam melts in the mouth and the horseradish is so nice and spicy, it ensures that the nose is well “clean”. Top dish

The third dish is so special, the taste explosion is grandiose. We get a soup of everything green such as spinach, cucumber, green herbs etc., a mousse of artichoke and an ice cream of smoked cumin. The presentation is great, the flavors are even better. Every bite is different, every time you taste a different ingredient.

With the third course we get a virgin cocktail, called The Fat Duck cocktail. Delicious mocktail.

As a fourth dish we get a classic dish from Heston: “Sound of the sea”. This is a combination of sound with food. We first get a shell with earsphones. You are asked to put these earphones in as soon as the food is on the table. After that, a plate of fish, samphire and other sea ingredients is served. It looks like a beach. The sound is from the ocean, you can hear the seagulls, the sea and the wind. When you eat, you can taste the salty taste of samphire, the fresh taste of raw fish. Delicious. As soon as you close your eyes, you feel like you’re on the beach.

As a wine, we get an exclusive sake. This sake comes from the north of Japan and is made from a very exclusive type of rice. The sake goes well with the dish. The name of the sake is Heaven of dipsy delight; The scent of banana comes out well.

Then we get snails and porridge with oatmeal. Heston wants to try strange combinations and he succeeded. The snails have been taken out of their shells and are lying on a green porridge. The porridge is made from parsley and oatmeal. A very nice view and very tasty.

A mistake is made, we are poured a wine: Genoels-Elderen Chardonnay from Belgium from 2019. The wine is very fresh. We ask why we get wine because we expected an alcohol-free drink. Then the lady came up with an alcohol-free drink made from grapes (free spirit), the juice is enriched with vanilla, star anise and mint. The restaurant makes this drink itself.

The next dish is actually not a dish, we get bread with butter. This is served as one of the courses. The bread is made from burnt flour from Puglia. It is a dark sourdough bread. The crust is particularly crispy, what a delicious bread. The butter is completely homemade.

The seventh dish is inspired by Alice in Wonderland. We get a Mock turtle soup. If you don’t know what a mock turtle is: this is the ingredient that a mock turtle soup is made of. There is a teapot on the table with water and a dark wooden box with a pocket watch in it. You dip this pocket watch in the water and the watch dissolves and becomes broth. You pour this over a number of ingredients, including a saffron egg. Sandwiches are served with tea. There is ox tongue in the soup.

Then beef royale. This is very tender meat with a fat edge. In addition to the meat, a mousse of onion and roasted pearl onions. In a served bowl is mashed potatoes and crispy fried sweetbreads, with a gravy of the beef. Wow how lovely.

We get a red wine from Serbia with this: Doja Breg. A very good combination.

Heston wouldn’t be Heston if he came up with something crazy again, we now get variants of breakfast with tea.

A teacup contains tea, it is advised to drink large gulps. You don’t know what you’re tasting, it starts warm and then it gets cold. The tea consists of two parts, a cold and hot part that are connected to each other. The tea is made from gelatin. This is so strange and special. What a great find.

We also get cerials with milk, this we don’t understand, we don’t like it as much. Scrambled eggs are also prepared at the table so that you get a sandwich of scrambled eggs with bacon. The egg is fried in the nitrogen. It becomes ice cream from egg. Of course, all kinds of things have been done with the egg. We think this dish is the least dish of the evening. Surprising, but not spectacular.

We drink a mocktail with this.

The next dessert is Schwarzwalder kirch torte, but with its own version. A pillar of dark chocolate with praline and cherries is served with a layer of cherry jam of amarena cherries and an amarena cherry. There is also ice next to it.

This is one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten.

We drink a Recioto della Valpolicella from 2017 by Brolo delle Giare. What a delicious wine to accompany this dish. The cherry flavor is so present in both. Yum.

Then comes the last dish: friandise. This is also seen as a dish. It’s called Child in the Candy Store. If you’ve seen videos on Youtube you know what I’m talking about. A kind of dollhouse arrives. We get a coin that we can throw into the dollhouse and a drawer of candy opens. We get 4 friandises. We get tobacco chocolate, chocolate with wagyu beef, a game card and a caramel candy of which the plastic can also be eaten. I don’t taste any tobacco flavor in the tobacco chocolate, which is probably a good thing…..

Wine room

Halfway through the meal we are invited to go to the wine cellar and taste wine there. We get a Montepulciano D’Abruzzo. We can indicate what we taste and how we experience the wine. Then the light changes and the music comes on. We are allowed to taste further and then indicate whether the music and the light have changed anything about the taste of the wine. This didn’t really work for us, we don’t taste much difference, but something because of the feeling with the music. Everyone experiences it differently.

The staff is very polite, friendly and knows everything about the dishes. When we ask a question, we are told in detail how something was made. Very handsome. Some mistakes are made, for example, with the first dish a ball falls on the table while it was just made, we were poured a wine instead of an alcohol-free drink. Everything was repaired very well, but you expect just a little more flawless here. There is a lot of staff around.

The interior is bare. No frills, no fuss. Everything is functional. The curtains are closed so that there is no view of the street and everything remains private. They play with the light. With certain dishes, the lights turn on more and with other dishes, the lights are turned off. For example, the lights go on during the breakfast dishes because the sun rises.

It’s not cheap to eat here, you get your money’s worth for the food. I thought it was too expensive for the wine-juice arrangement. 3 juices and 3 wines and then GBP145 (excl. Service charges) is not cheap.

It’s a must visit if, like us, you’re a foodie staying in the London area. Keep in mind that certain evenings the menus are cheaper than other nights.