The Fat Duck - Post-Dessert

In order to prolong the meal and to delay the inevitable very sad ending, we of course had a little cheese course. When she came with the cheese cart, I had to hold back from saying "one of each" and instead just said "one of each type." She recommended one of each (soft, hard, sheeps, blue, etc). I wish I was more of a cheese connoisseur and remembered what these were, but I don't. I'll work on it. I like cheese.


A little post-meal Earl Grey, complete with a little ceremony of washing the pot as it all came on a little slotted tray that you could just pour water onto. Fun!



The petit fours - violet tart and mandarin aerated chocolate.


And apple pie caramel "edible wrappers" - edible wrappers! I wish all wrappers were edible.


And that concludes my Fat Duck posts. By the time I've finally gotten around to posting these, Heston's come out with a new tasting menu. A lot of the same stuff, and a higher price tag, but possibly worth going back...

The Fat Duck - The Breakfast Desserts

The next course began some breakfast-like desserts. We found a little box of parsnip cereal on our bowls.

Once opened, you put a little bit of the parsnip cereal in the bowl, and poured some parsnip milk on it. I'm not a huge fan of parsnips, but this was delicious!


And then more coolness came. They came out with a frying pan and a case of eggs. They then proceeded to make scrambled eggs (with liquid nitrogen, and custom eggs, not real ones). Of course they have this great little spiel about how they're making breakfast for us.

When they're done, they put the scrambled eggs on some pain perdu, a strip of caramelized bacon and a side of tea jelly and tomato jam. It really was scrambled egg and bacon flavored ice cream, which may seem a little weird, but it was delicious. It was a little sad though, as this was the last course.



To be continued...

The Fat Duck - The Early Desserts

Now that the savory courses were over, we moved onto the sweet half of the menu. The first one was awesome. It was a hot and iced tea. The top half of the cup was filled with cold ice tea, and the bottom was hot tea. Incredible! It was like kind of gelatinous maybe on top, but still went down like liquid. Crazy that it would go down both hot and cold, though. I could have drank a pitcher.


This was another one of my favorite courses. We got a little booklet to read first about Mrs. Marshall's Margaret Cornet, and then got this great little ice cream cone. It was delicious and super adorable. It was a mini cone. Amazing.

The Pine Sherbet Fountain (Pre-hit). like a little woodsy fun dip. So much fun.



And followed by a bit of an intricate dessert - Mango and Douglas Fir Puree, Bavarois of Lychee and Mango, Blackcurrant Sorbet, Blackcurrant and Green Peppercorn Jelly.


To be continued...

The Fat Duck - The Middle Courses

The meal continues with a few more main-course type deliciousnesses. The following course was my favorite of the evening, the "Sound of the Sea." Quite cryptic on the menu, and they don't reveal what you're eating until after you finish it. So if you don't want to know, skip to the next photo, otherwise [spoiler alert!]. First of all, you put on the headphones from the ipod shuffle in the conch shell and listen to the sea as you eat some raw fish, seaweed, foam, and sand. The sand was what made this my favorite, as it was amazing and made from tapioca and fried baby eels. mmm...baby eels.

The next course was pretty fun as well, delicious but probably not my favorite of the evening. Still, better than I expected, given that it was a salmon poached in liquorice gel, and licorice is not my fave. A lot of flavors which were awesome though, like vanilla mayonnaise (along with artichokes and "Manni" olive oil).


And now the red meat of the evening in the form of Ballotine of Anjou Pigeon, Black Pudding "Made to Order," Pickling Brine and Spiced Juices. Yum.


To be continued...

The Fat Duck - Early Courses

On Friday, May 1st, I went with my family to The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire. For those of you unfamiliar, The Fat Duck is the best restaurant in the UK, and has been the #2 restaurant in the world every year since 2005, when it was #1, according to Restaurant Magazine. We were a little apprehensive about molecular food with high expectations, but this was better than anything I could have imagined - a sensory overload of amazement.


We started with a little liquid nitrogen action with a little spray thing of egg white, lime, and vodka liquid nitrogenized and powdered with green tea powder for you to pop quickly into your mouth. Complimented with a little lime air spray, you got a pretty unique and incredible palate cleanser.

Next came a little pommery grain mustard ice cream with a red cabbage gazpacho. Mustard ice cream you say? Yup. And it was totally tasty. This course was totally amazing. You start with these little oak moss things you put on your tongue (think listerine strips), and as that dissolves, water is poured over the big oak moss dry ice thing in the center of the table that makes the whole table overflow with the scent of oak moss. Then we got to eat the Quail Jelly, Cream of Langoustine, Parfait of Foie Gras, Oak Moss and Truffle Toast. Phenomenal.


The next course was Heston Blumenthal's famous Snail Porridge; Jabugo Ham, Shaved Fennel. It's kind of awesome not only because it's snail porridge, but also because it's bright green. It was a bit salty for my tastes, but still quite tasty.

Next course, Roast Foie Gras "Benzaldehyde," Almond fluid gel, Cherry, Chamomile. Perhaps "Benzaldehyde" is chemist for delicious.



To be continued...

Foliage

My second restaurant week foray was Foliage. Foliage is a very swanky place inside the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel, and I read all about its design going in, particularly how the wait staff picks leaves in the morning from Hyde Park and puts them under the glass plates.

That was true.

The service was spectacular, with a head waiter for every table basically just hanging out and filling our water and whatnot. The food was also very good, but we're going to say the Michelin star was due in large part to design and service as well. It was a little surprising that a restaurant this swanky was amuse bouche-less. That's retrospectively quite upsetting. I guess that leaf counts.

So to start was the warm calves head terrine/picallili/speck/watercress.


This was not bad but not as good as my entree, the lamb neck / olive mash / sweetbreads / pepper. The lamb neck was super tender and delicious, and the glazed sweetbreads were like little bits of happiness.


My mom had Mackerel/Escabeche/Aubergine/Parsley, which was a surprisingly mackerel fishy I thought, but the little onion rings on top - phenomenal!

For dessert, I did the Stilton/Port/Poached Pears/Honey Jelly. Very good as well.
and my mom had the Chocolate Fondant/Amaretto Parfait/Pearl Barley Sorbet

Wild Honey

Wild Honey is Arbutus's sister restaurant, and this time we learned to do the pre-theatre menu to give us ample time to enjoy the meal and make the theatre on time. So we had dinner on Friday, and with tickets for Madame de Sade on Saturday. The pre-theatre menu was also very affordable at 18.95 for three courses, though my mom decided to spring for the regular menu. In general the food was tasty (the butter was particularly good), but it did feel a bit heavier than the other restaurants. This might be because I ate most of my mom's appetizer and her dessert, but it left me feeling a little heavier than the other guys.

My mom's organic belly of pork, English snails, parsley and garlic, was great, especially the snails and the garlic cloves, which I love.
My thinly sliced pork with poached egg vinaigrette was tasty, but awfully familiar... (see Arbutus). It was not as good as the sliced lamb from Arbutus, but still tasty.
I did the slow cooked Elwy valley lamb breast, which I thought was surprisingly fatty. It kind of had the texture of the like end of the shwarma at a street stand in Istanbul, which they shred up and serve to American tourists. This might have contributed to the heaviness. It was no Foliage lamb neck, but the vegetables on the side were really good.

My mom's grilled sea bass, leeks, and boulangere potatoes was not bad. The potatoes were especially good, I thought. The sea bass skin was interestingly anisey, but the taste I had was pretty good.

My 'Floating Island' pink pralines was the highlight of my meal. Delicious.My mom had a Sicilian lemon tart, which was also very good.