It's almost a shame that the opening dish of the Fat Duck tasting menu is already so famous, because the familiarity of the idea almost made it disappointing. I think it would have been more exciting if I hadn't been expecting to see it at the start, but it was still a lot of fun to watch the waitress poaching a spoonful of mousse in a tub of nitrogen, because who doesn't like to watch nitrogen smoking away? (I was disappointed that the nitrogen cooker disappeared after that first course, anyway, because it's so much fun to watch.)
However, it has to be said that knowing what to expect visually still doesn't prepare you for the uncommon sensation of eating a frozen meringue filled with the fresh flavours of matcha and lime, especially when the vapours come out of your nose. To enhance the flavours, the waitress spritzed a mist of oil over the table, which provided an incredibly intense burst of lime that was absolutely delicious, adding to the sensation of the flavours already shooting up your nose to hit the back of your throat1. We were already at a loss for words to describe our experience; as Nikki said, "that didn't taste as green as I was expecting." I thought it tasted very green, but it was a sharp, bright green, conjuring up images of young bamboo in white rooms, rather than the verdant green of a lawn. How much of this sort of association was down to the colours of the food was a subject for quite a bit of discussion over the course of the day — the rest of the meal was to be as synaesthetic as the opener, with many of our descriptions conjuring up colours or textures rather than flavours.
After our perfectly-formed palate cleanser, we were offered bread and unpasteurised butter. I never get tired of eating really good bread with really good butter (yes, that is part of why I'm such a fatty) and these were both pretty good. We soon cottoned on that the bread would be offered around whenever there was a dish that might potentially need some sopping up, and so took advantage of every slice offered — all except for Billy, who made the mistake of saying he was okay for bread and then had his bread plate taken away. Lesson learned; always say yes to the bread at a tasting menu.
The first proper dish of the day, Pommery Grain Mustard Ice-cream with Red Cabbage Gazpacho, was a small but beautifully formed delight, with a gorgeously coloured gazpacho splashed over a bullet-shaped portion of ice cream, swimming in the huge expanse of an elegant white plate. It's probably one of those dishes that causes people to harp on about Heston Blumenthal's mad scientist cooking, because of most people's associations of what ice-cream should taste like. Ice-cream is a dessert dish, isn't it? It shouldn't be savoury, right? Except, what rule is there to say that something made with cream and frozen shouldn't be savoury? What rule says that frozen cream has to have sugar added to it? This was something I'd been wondering myself recently, so it was great to actually taste what a savoury ice-cream could be like. If I was the kind of person who made their own ice-cream, I would be encouraged to experiment with all sorts of flavours after this. All the flavours of the dish were as perfectly formed as the way it was presented, with the sharpness of the gazpacho perfectly offsetting the mild heat of the mustard. Although I would never have thought to serve ice-cream in any sort of dressing (rum and chocolate sauce doesn't count), the textures were well suited, too, with the velvety creaminess mingling nicely with the thin liquid. The proportions were perfect, just enough to tantalise the tastebuds for the next course, without sating the appetite too much.
The next course was something rather special, and in fact I might even go so far as to say magical, at least in appearance. In the middle of our table was placed a smallish box, covered in a bed of oak moss. On this bed of oak moss sat some little plastic packets for each of us. So far, so pretty, so potentially pretentious. Except that the oak moss wasn't just there to enhance the visual presentation of the dish. In each little packet was a thin film to melt in our mouths, on the same principle as a breath-freshener, only this one was flavoured with oak moss, too. As we placed them on our tongue, water was poured onto the box of oak moss in the middle of our table, which released the dry ice hidden underneath. Suddenly our table was enveloped in a beautiful swirling mist, and the taste of oak moss in our mouths was enhanced by the subtle scent of the oak moss on the table, all to further enhance the even more subtle flavour of oak moss to be discovered on our truffle toast (truffles are found under oak trees).
And this was only one magical part of the course, because we still had the other half of it. This was served in a funny little tilted cup that strongly resembled Aarnio's Ball Chair, prompting me to say that it really needed a little white cat and someone plotting evil for it to be properly complete — but I'm not sure what they could have added to an already wonderfully complex dish. Inside the cup were layers of flavours; a Parfait of Foie Gras, Cream of Langoustine, Quail Jelly and, unexpectedly, a bright green pea purée right at the bottom. The combination of flavours was quite intense, and reminded me suddenly and surprisingly of sitting in the dining room at my great aunt's house; a place I've not seen since she died in 1993. Odd. Especially as I never ate foie gras, langoustine or quail at her house — but a nice memory alI didn't want the course to end, because sitting in that swirling and roiling mist of oak moss was utterly enchanting.
However, even though it did have to end, it was only to move onto the next exciting culinary experience; the famous Snail Porridge (or the infamous Snail Porridge as some naysayers would rather have you believe. I find it interesting that the naysayers, the Heston-haters, are always people who've never eaten any of his food). Like many people, I'd never eaten snails before, because the idea of eating them when you see them uncooked is understandably not all that enticing. Cooked, however, they look more like cooked mushrooms, of which I am fond. They seemed to have a similar texture to mushrooms, too, but with a slightly meatier taste. This may have been down to the flavour of the ham permeating the dish, but it's interesting to note that although I did recognise the ham taste, I didn't immediately connect its familiarity to the thing that produced it, until I saw it listed on the menu later. (This mental disconnect between recognised flavour and the thing that produced it was a phenomenon that we all experienced at regular intervals during the meal, so I will come back to it.)
When I say that this dish was good peasant fare, I don't mean that negatively. I mean that it was hearty and comforting, made with simple ingredients, but solid with flavour. The one thing I really remember about this dish was saying to Nikki, "now, this one really does taste green." And it did, even though now that I'm sitting here recalling it I can remember how the ham flavour came through when I was eating; at the time I was eating it I didn't register the porky-pinkness that ham usually suggests. It's probably because the dish was very green, to look at. As I said before, how much of the flavours we found were down to the colour of the food we were eating?2
I have to say at this point that I was disappointed to discover that the edible Stroop test was no longer on the menu when we were there, because it seemed likely to be the perfect example of colour influencing flavour, and I would have loved to try it. (Take two items of like consistency but different flavour, give them colours that suggest the opposite of what their flavours are, e.g. beetroot and orange jellies coloured orange and red respectively. Confused? Well, yes.)
In fact, since I started looking things up to write these posts, I've noticed that there were a number of dishes missing from our tasting menu. No oyster with passionfruit jelly and lavender, no sardine-on-toast ice-cream with mackerel and daikon — although that has been replaced by something which does seem more special. However, I'm not going to talk about that one yet, because there was another dish that came first. But I think this post is long enough now, so it's time to take a break before I start part three.
1I actually had a preview of this dish before the rest of the table; on the way back from the toilet, I was hit by the most amazing waft of lime trailing up the stairs before I even knew what it was. Most of the other tables at the restaurant were also working through the tasting menu, and every time that initial palate-cleansing starter course occurred I was able to take huge great sniffs to fill my nostrils with that wonderfully intense lime mist. I wish I could have some to spray in my flat. Heston Blumentahl should market it as room freshener; I'd buy loads!
2Interesting aside; I just looked up "flavour" on my computer's dictionary, to discover its secondary meaning: "2: Physics: a quantized property of quarks that differentiates them into at least six varieties (up, down, charmed, strange, top, bottom). Compare with color ." So I compared it with "colour" and learned: "5: Physics: a quantized property of quarks which can take three values (designated blue, green, and red) for each flavor." And now I wonder how to find out more about this sort of thing without melting my brain too much. Can anyone recommend a good primer in about this stuff that doesn't require any prior scientific knowledge to understand?
This is pt.2 of my Fat Duck restaurant review.
Read all the parts here: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5
