Josh’s Journal – Fantastic Meals (The Fat Duck)
Nov 5, 2008 St. Louis, chefs, restaurants
The Fat Duck is a hideaway restaurant in Bray, outside of London. The food is science driven in many respects. Heston Blumenthal, the chef, uses scientific research, molecular knowledge, and classic techniques to heighten the dining experience. During my time in London, I had heard about his kooky food, but it was not until I graduated from culinary school that I splurged on his food.
Once you sit down, a palate cleanser arrives after you’ve nibbled on picholine olives. The cleanser acts as an amuse bouche, quite literally. The foam goes down smooth and the lime strips your mouth of all those bad flavors like the double espresso you needed just to find the right train. By this point I’d already decided on a few strange courses for my meal, but I didn’t know about the other surprises.
The real amuse came out: a purple cabbage gazpacho with grain mustard sorbet. Sounds sick, yeah. It was sublime because of the mustard oil in the cabbage matching with the grain mustard and the cream in the sorbet mellowing the effect. Cool stuff. Then a little layered action came out with the bottom layer of petit pois puree, then quail jelly (a highly concentrated reduction of quail stock that gels when chilled), and the top layer was a langoustine cream. Each bite had a different flavor, but the most memorable bite reminded me of coffee or a mocha. I still don’t understand how that flavor came about, maybe through some strange nostalgia.
Finally, a dish I ordered as an appetizer came to me. Cauliflower and chocolate risotto. Yuck might seem appropriate, but in truth it was yummy. In this large chipped glass bowl sat a bed of cauliflower risotto, topped with cauliflower carpaccio (thin and raw slices), cauliflower foam, chocolate jelly squares, and fried cauliflower chips. The the waitress dusted the dish with cocoa, which deflated the foam. The sound of it was cool. When was the last time you really listened to your food? That Mexican place where they brought your fajita meat out on a sizzle plate?
Next was a little more restrained, spiced cod with sweet lentils and cockscomb. I’d never had cockscomb so I did it. It was gelatinous and meltingly sweet. The fish was served warm, 52 C, so that part was the science to ensure the fish would be moist. For a little pre-dessert, there was a red bell pepper lollipops and basil bavarois. Plus, there was a mind trick: pate de fruits are little jelly treats and there was an orange jelly and a beet jelly. The beet was yellow from golden beets and the orange was red from blood oranges. So, when you take a bite, your mind expects a particular flavor based on color.
Dessert was something I had heard of by many friends. I had to go for it, no holds barred. Bacon and egg ice cream. Yup, but get the accompaniments: tomato chutney under the ice cream; the most fantastic, crunchy, custardy pain perdu; caramel with morel mushrooms. All of the flavors played havoc with your palate while I enjoyed each bite combination. The creativity was unparalleled, and I haven’t even discussed the skill.
Quenelles are three sided domes made by scooping a somewhat firm mixture between two spoons. To make a proper quenelle takes skill, but to make a one spoon quenelle (a rocher) takes mucho skill. First, the mixture has to be at the right consistency. Next, you have to know what you’re doing. Last, your timing for plating the dish must be spot-on, else your quenelle falls or melts. The one spoon quenelle of ice cream was perfect and so was the one spoon quenelle of caramel. All of this excellent food and skill from a tiny kitchen the size of a large bathroom with four to five guys jostling about.
The finale was coffee and chocolate. The Fat Duck buys their chocolate from L’Artisan du Chocolat in London, and this chocolatier combines great flavors. There’s a wide range of coffee flavored chocolates with different coffee beans. There’s sea salt and caramel, basil, banana and thyme, nougatin, rose, and many more. The flavor chosen for the Fat Duck was no surprise — tobacco and chocolate. Sublime.
Note from Bill: Nice guy that I am I scoured the internet for photos of the food Josh ate. Any menu item he had, that shows up as a link above, links offsite to a picture of the dish.
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?
November 7th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Great article. I wanted to visit when we were in London a couple year ago, but didn’t make it. We’ll have to make sure we get there next time we visit!
January 26th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I just posted a review of my meal at The Fat Duck (December, 2008). You can find photos on the blog and on my Flickr account.