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.

Lindsay House

As of the time of this writing, my mom and I have decided this is the tastiest restaurant we've been to in London. The flavors were great - better than Foliage, which we had gone to the night before, and altogether delicious. The bread was also better. yum. Lindsay House was in this little house in Soho, and we had to walk three flights up into this little room with four tables. Very charming, though we felt bad for the wait staff walking up and down the stairs, since I tripped walking up them without a giant tray of food. I unfortunately didn't take a picture of the menu this time, so we're doing this by memory and notes:

Amuse Bouche: Chestnut VelouteStarted with a Grilled Mackerel with artichoke lasagna and horseradish milk. Very good, and definitely not as fishy-mackerely as Foliage's yesterday.

My mom had a ham hock croquette with picalilli and mustard aioli. This was incredible.
Entree I had a Braised rib of beef, snail and garlic, and parmesan gnocchi. I must say the beef was not quite tender enough for my tastes - It wasn't really tough, but it wasn't like mouth-wateringly tender. Not like my lamb at Foliage. It did have a very nice flavor though.
My mom had a very tasty Pollock with lemongrass puree and sauteed shrimp.


Dessert was delicious as well - a rice pudding with spiced figs and mascarpone

or a Yoghurt panna cotta

Lindsay House is our London favorite thus far...

Rhodes W1

Ahh, Restaurant Week. 3 courses for 25 pounds. It's very reminiscent of being back in the States, but instead of cross-listing the restaurant week restaurants with the Zagat guide, I did it with the Michelin guide. So we pulled down 4 Michelin starred restaurants at great prices. Our first was Rhodes W1, who I went with some Wharton friends. I was pretty impressed to begin with, as one of them is vegan and asked them to make a vegan restaurant week menu for her... and they did!

Quite a posh French restaurant with a pehaps overly ornate chandelier at every table, Rhodes W1 is tucked in the Great Cumberland Hotel by Marble Arch.

Here's what I had:

Amuse Bouche: Pumpkin Soup with Almond and Lemon Veloute. I thought this was delightful.


Cured Salmon, crisp quail's egg, shaved fennel. The quail's egg was particularly neat and tasty, I thought.

Braised pork cheeks, butternut squash, and hazelnut. Tender pork cheeks and quite tasty. They even put the sauce on the side. Big fan of the squash.

Biscuit glace, mango sorbet and milk emulsion. This was way tastier than I thought it was going to be. It sounded a little boring, but I ended up not at all regretting not ordering the chocolate brownie.

Arbutus

I heard about the extraordinarily affordable three course pre-theatre (<- look, that's me being British again) menu at Arbutus and Wild Honey for less than a twenty. A word of warning though. Pre-theatre implies a pre-dinner theatre. After rushing through our 6pm dinner at Arbutus and then jogging to Carousel for a 7:30 curtain, we decided our pre-theatre meals should take place a day before the actual show, which is what we did for Wild Honey. They were super nice about being speedy for us, but it just wasn't as relaxing and food-enjoyable as it should have been. I don't even remember what the food was, since I believe I said, "Just give us one of each... fast."

To start, some thinly sliced lamb with some vinaigrette. Warm, and really nice. This was probably the highlight of my meal.
I can't remember what the entree was, though I remember eating it...The dessert was crushed apples and vanilla ice cream or St. Nectaire cheese.
Three Michelin-starred courses for 17.50 - you can't really beat it.

St. John

So we went to St. John a while ago, excited since Restaurant Magazine had it ranked as the 17th best restaurant in the world in 2008. They do nose-to-tail eating, so you eat like all sorts of animal parts. It was very good, and also very affordable which is a plus.

My appetizer was little rolls of pig spleen, which were very different and quite tasty:

I had the special, which was a hare saddle and swede. I don't think I'd order hare again; it has an interesting taste to it. I guess you can call it really gamey, but I think a more accurate and more sophisticated term would be "poopy." But when it comes to eating, I'm all about trying everything at least twice, so maybe the next time will be a better experience. The swede however, was SPECtacular.


I did like the little bullets inside of the hare, althougha little warning would have been nice before I confusingly chomped on bits of metal...

Dessert was a very tasty and very British Eccles cake with a giant slab of Lancashire cheese. Giant, but not unmanageable. Quite good, really.


My mom got a half-dozen madeleines, which were very good warm, as well as the next morning for breakfast.


So St. John. Very tasty, yes. 17th in the world? I think we're going to attribute that to it's uniqueness and nose-to-tail eatingness of it all.