Today was the 18th anniversary of me joining the BBC. Normally me and my fellow trainees go and have a cheap meal and drink too much and get unwell. This year we decided to do something nice. So we went to The Fat Duck for lunch.
A few quick points. It’s clearly the best restaurant I’ve ever been to, but that’s not saying much; my starter was the best thing I have ever tasted ever anywhere ever, but everything was amazing; it’s worth every penny.
Just so I don’t forget, this is what I had – on the a la carte menu:
- Pommery grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage gazpacho
- Oyster and Passion fruit Jelly with Lavender
- Starter: Lasagne of Langoustine with Pig’s Trotter and Truffle
- Ice-filtered lamb jelly with braised tongue and cucumber
- Main course: Best end of lamb with onion and thyme fluid gel and hot pot of Lamb Neck, sweetbread and oyster. Never tasted lamb like it. Amazing.
- Cheese course – amazing selection of French cheeses, couldn’t begin to tell you what they were but some soft, some blue, some goat’s…
- Mrs Marshall Margaret’s Ice Cream Cornet
- Pudding: Delice of Chocolate – chocolate sorbet with cumin caramel. This was a work of art – a pure shiny chocolate cylinder which looked solid but was soft to touch. I was told to ensure I sliced all the way through to the crunchy base with each mouthful – and I found out why. The cumin caramel base was infused with something like Space Dust – a 1970s confection – which literally explodes in your mouth.
- Yellow tea. Well, I’ve never had a £20 cup of tea before. The making and serving of it was a theatrical event in itself. Lovely.
When I go again I’ll have the langoustine lasagne to start again, the delice of chocolate again – but the pot roast loin of pork for main course. Lee had this – it was divine, even better than my lamb.
The bill came to just over £1000 for five of us – this did include a bottle of champagne, white wine, two reds (2005 Cotes de Nuit I think), and a full bottle of desert wine – plus teas and coffees. Honestly, genuinely worth every penny. Heston Blumenthal clearly is a genius.
