A few days ago, I went to The Complete History of Food, presented by Bompas & Parr. Despite the fact that the title was a bit of a misnomer (there was nothing "complete" about their history, and, given that it was sponsored by a cognac company, it didn't really feel much like a history of food), it was an entertaining and unusual night out with two of my best pals, Nikki and Billy. (Apologies in advance for the poor quality of my photos, but the light was very dim in there, and I only had my phone.)

We started in a dark wood-panelled room, which had the ambience of a gentlemen's club after hours, or perhaps the room where the body was discovered in some Agatha Christie murder mystery. (It was clearly a library, although the bookcases were mostly empty.)

There, a chatty young man gave an introduction on what we could expect to see later. He claimed that he was "The Doctor" (although I didn't spot any bowties or extra-long scarves), and that he would prescribe our first cocktail based on the medieval elements of Humours.

Our "prescriptions" were indicated by coloured stickers stuck on our lanyards and, after a rather cheesy recorded introduction, we were sent off down a darkened staircase to find the next room. At the bottom of the stairs we went through a doorway, only to find ourselves having to jump onto stepping-stones through a flooded basement. "Be careful, there are eels in the water, and they're feeling a bit frisky tonight!" warned our guide for this part, but we made it through the room without incident, and boarded the wooden ship at the other end.

As you might imagine, walking across a flooded room filled with eels to drink in a wooden ship moored in a cellar should be a singular experience, and it certainly was. The ship was very dark, mostly lit by candles, with the sound of waves washing up against the hull. There was a jar of leeches on the bar, and for one brief moment I worried that they might be some bizarre ingredient in our cocktails, but fortunately that was not to be.

The three of us had been given different prescriptions, which gave us an opportunity to try three of the four cocktails on offer. I'd been diagnosed with an excess of phlegm (not far off as it happens; my sinuses are always stuffed up) and my prescription was supposed to boost my yellow bile (lovely). My "Choleric" cocktail was a fruity mix of cognac with rose-water, although I must admit I didn't detect much of the rose flavour as it was overwhelmed by the huge amount of ice in my drink (hmmm… since when did they have ice cubes in medieval London?) and the slightly salty flavour of the rather boring amuse-bouche that came with it — a piece of toast with artichoke and red cabbage. Although it was tasty, it looked and felt more like a party nibble and didn't feel like it had been particularly chosen well to accompany the drink. I was also a bit disappointed with the extremely haphazard way the drink was poured, as the woman standing next to me got twice as much as I or the other chap did (maybe the bartender fancied her).

Having joined the three of us in the middle of a conversation about beards, The Doctor had suggested that Billy was a "chin-stroking melancholic" and should have something to boost his blood. To that end, he was prescribed the "Sanguine" cocktail, a spiced mead, which was nice but sweet, and came accompanied by a teeny portion of fig covered in beetroot sauce.

Ironically, given the fact that Nikki is pregnant and can't drink alcohol, she was prescribed the tastiest cocktail. She told the doctor that she was far too knowledgable about the state of her yellow bile at the moment, so he prescribed a "Phlegmatic" cocktail, which fortunately wasn't made with phlegm, nor did it encourage it. In fact, it was a bloody marvellous combination; a cognac and apricot martini paired with porcini and truffle popcorn. The popcorn was extremely moreish (even though none of us are fans of porcini), and the flavours really complemented each other, with the buttery richness of the truffle lightly cutting the sweetness of the apricot. I was a bit jealous that she'd got a better prescription than me, but soon stopped complaining when she handed me most of the martini to finish after she'd taken one teensy sip (there are benefits of going to cocktail-themed night with a pregnant woman).

I was getting quite relaxed in the dim candlelight, chatting to people I could hardly see as the sound of waves came and went, but we had to move up to the next room, so up we went. Literally. First we piled into a teeny box of a lift, then using the lift as a time machine (which was certainly no TARDIS) we left the medieval spice boat and went up to the roof for a twenty-first century "deconstructed" champagne cocktail and a meaty Rocher, overlooking the London skyline. Although the views across London were great, and the herb-garden covering the bar was pretty, aromatic and practical, in hindsight I wish there'd been something a lot more futuristic at this point. But that's just wishful thinking, because at the time I was too busy admiring the view, discussing herbs with the charming French bartender and gasping in amazement at fizzy grapes to complain about anything.

Unfortunately, besides the fact that it looked exactly like a Ferrero Rocher, I don't remember much about how the Rocher D'or tasted. Obviously it tasted of meat, which was less of a shock than I expected, given how it looked, but I think the problem was that I was so bloody hungry I was actually too hungry to pay enough attention to the flavours. And there were only the teensiest blink-and-you'll-miss-'em singular specks of gold flake on each one, which barely justified their poncey name (not a problem, really, but everyone else's review seems to misleadingly imply that they were smothered in gold, which they weren't).

The cocktail, on the other hand, was a definite talking point. It was a classic champagne cocktail, but made with chardonnay instead of champagne, and with grapes as a garnish. Somehow, as the grapes soaked up the alcohol, the cocktail became paler and flatter, and the grapes got fizzy! Amazing. (Definitely one to try at home, although I suspect there's some secret trick they didn't share with us.)

The view was pretty good, too.

Then we all trooped downstairs again to find ourselves in yet another darkened room, this time with a vintage lampshade barely glowing and a vintage television flickering with vintage adverts. Ostensibly this was a celebration of the mass-production of the 1950s, and we were handed sheets of card and told to enjoy our TV dinners.

Our TV dinners were in fact scratch'n'sniff meals, although to be honest they smelled a bit disgusting. There was some debate between Billy and myself, as I was convinced that the roast chicken in fact smelled of coronation chicken (something that Cook Sister seems to agree on), and the peas smelled of mint toothpaste. Overall, it wasn't very appetising, and even now, days later, the artificial smell still lingers on the cards (which we took home as souvenirs), only now it smells even more disgusting! Fun idea, but not quite a success.

By this point we were wondering where our actual real dinner was and if we would ever get to eat it, but it was time to move onto the next room, down another set of stairs. There was nothing to eat or drink in the next room, the only thing to do was bounce. Or get bounced. Inside the room was a giant inflatable stomach that filled the four walls rather alarmingly, but a brief bounce around was quite good fun. (For anyone concerned about it, the pregnant woman sensibly eschewed this part.)

Then we followed a trail of mushrooms down a corridor, past a couple of rooms with hand-written "no entry" signs pasted up on the doors. One door was open, and the room was filled with junk and equipment. It was a peek behind the scenes, but it slightly spoiled the magic, as did the signs written in biro. The mushrooms reminded me a bit of mushroom tunnels, and looked almost as though Fairyland had gone through some kind of urban development.

At the end of the corridor, and down some stairs filled with flickering images projected onto the walls, we finally came to the dining room for our main course, which was good as by this time Nikki and I were ravenous (although we nearly wandered into the bar by mistake, as it was the first door we saw when we got to the bottom of the stairs). In the dining room we were greeted by a female maitre d' in a pretty dress. Unfortunately, given that this was the room for the grand Victorian banquet, although it was a pretty dress, it wasn't a very Victorian one (more like a noughties version of a sixties version of the twenties). I'd been feeling a bit sad that the staff hadn't been in period costume where possible because I think it would have enhanced the historical aspects of the theme and helped us immerse ourselves in each period to better effect. Probably nobody else noticed or cared, but this was one of those moments where my disappointment was reinforced.

Because the dining room was full, we had to wait a few moments before they could seat us for our own moment of recreating the famous new year banquet inside a Crystal Palace Iguanadon in 1853.

Waiting meant that we actually got to have our dinner seated inside the replica of the Iguanadon at Crystal Palace, rather than at one of the many tables at the edges of the room. Admittedly, in reality it was slightly awkward as I was over-conscious of not wishing to disturb the two women already seated at the other end, and the decor of the table cloth and place setting made me think of some stuffy municipal dinner, rather than anything as fantastical as eating dinner inside a dinosaur. Again, that was probably just me — and might have had something to do with the fact that I only had the back wall to look at, rather than out over the small balcony into the main room, like the other two.

Unfortunately by this time I was so hungry that once again I didn't really pay enough attention to what we were eating, a confit of duck with puy lentils with a black champagne sauce, although — tasty as it was (which was very) — I can't say I really tasted much champagne in it, nor could I work out how they'd made it black. To be honest, the room was so dimly-lit there wasn't much way of telling what colour anything was anyway. The duck was nicely cooked, falling-off-the-bone tender, and the puy lentils were perfect. Sadly, the bread rolls they provided were a disappointment; the fact that our waiter arrived carrying a huge tray piled high with them only reinforced my mental notion that they'd been bought in bulk from a supermarket, which undermined the feeling of "decadence" that the chefs claimed to be aiming for in this room (at least, according to the programme).

The cocktail at this juncture was a bit disappointing too; a summer punch made with cognac, green tea, apple juice and elderflower. Much like my first cocktail, it seemed to have far more ice than necessary (if you must insist on ice, then one or two cubes is much better than five or six, especially in short glasses), and its light fruitiness didn't complement the meal as well as a glass of wine or something with more body would have done (I also would have liked the option of a glass of water at this point, and I'm sure Nikki would have as well!). However, it was quite refreshing as a digestif at the end of the course, and would probably work very well on a hot summer's day eating cucumber sandwiches and strawberries-and-cream. Of course, it wasn't really a digestif because it wasn't really the end of the meal, and there was one more course to go: the Renaissance Dessert.

I was quite surprised on entering the dessert room to discover that there was first an anteroom showcasing the gingerbread Gherkin from the Parliamentary Waffle House (which I sadly didn't get to visit, because I always passed when I had a full stomach). As impressive as it sounds on paper, it was — again — too dark in the room to really see it properly, and it was hardly the reason we were here. In fact, other than as an excuse to show off what they can do, I have no idea why it was even there: it's not like any of us got to taste it, and it wasn't even appropriate to the Renaissance Period anyway.

Although, to be honest, the rest of the dessert room wasn't really very Renaissance, either, as it was being soundtracked by cheesy 1980s pop music and it was full of pink frilly curtains that wouldn't have looked out of place on an 1980s soap opera. (I wanted to compare it to Barbara Cartland's boudoir, but another blogger already beat me to it, so I won't, in case I'm accused of copycatting. You get the idea, though.) Behind all the pink frippery was a giant cake turntable, with dishes laid out on it for us to take (here's a 5 second video).

This dessert was one of the highlights of the evening: an iris jelly with candied orange, ambergris posset and one perfect raspberry. The jelly had the colour and shape of a really good creme caramel, so the light, slightly citrussy flavour came as a (pleasant) surprise. The texture of the jelly was wonderful, too, firm but yielding, and it was complemented very well by the sweet dollop of creamy sauce on the plate.

The sauce provided one of the funnier moments of the evening, as there were people already tucking into their dish when the food guide started telling us what had gone into it. "Does anyone know what ambergris is?" she asked, to a responding chorus of "yeahs" from our corner (hey, we're nerds, we admit it). The look of slight shock and horror on some peoples' faces when she explained it was regurgitated by whales was mildly amusing, because I bet those same people eat honey without ever wondering or worrying where it comes from, even though it's regurgitated by bees. Billy muttered something about how expensive ambergris is, which prompted me to ask whether it had been gathered ethically. The guide was quick to reassure me that no whales had been killed in the collection of the ambergris, but I was no closer to finding out how it was (or is) sourced (but that's what Wikipedia is for). However, it was one of the only moments of the evening where people were confronted with the idea of where their food had come from, and I liked that it got them thinking and talking. I wish there'd been a few more moments like that, really, especially from an event marketed as The Complete History of Food.

Amongst the pretty pastel-coloured frou-frou frills and sugared ornaments, there was a funny little technical gizmo which provided much amusement. This was basically a table fitted with a heart monitor. You could stick your finger in the hole and make the table vibrate, and of course there was a plate of jelly on top of the table to wobble with as much thrust as you could muster. Sadly, because I have short, stumpy fingers, I couldn't even reach the sensor properly, so I couldn't manage much in the way of thrust, but Billy did better — here's a video.

And after that, dinner was sadly at an end, so we popped into the bar to prolong it a while longer. Unfortunately, after ending on such a fun note, the bar was something of a disappointment, especially for Nikki. There was only a choice of two cocktails: a pre-mixed Parisian Rendezvous punch, or a rather boozy cognac Sidecar. It's a real shame that the Parisian Rendezvous had been pre-mixed, because without the alcohol it would have made a very refreshing drink, and even though the evening was sponsored by an alcohol company, I think it's poor service not to provide an alcohol-free option, especially as they had the drinkaware website brashly emblazoned on our lanyards.

And this brings me back to my main problem with the night: it was misnamed. As a History of Food it wasn't really a great success, no History of Food would forget to mention potatoes, or honey, or fish (although there were eels in the water, there were none in the food, and the ambergris doesn't count because whales are mammals), or rice, or bananas, or cheese (I've just realised there was no cheese! How can you have a food event without cheese?) Instead, what they gave us was a very entertaining cocktail party with some food attached. Often, it felt a bit like the spectacle was the most important part of the night — especially the scratch'n'sniff dinner, or the inflatable stomach — and that was fine, but it meant that we sacrificed sating our appetite at the expense of sating our other senses, which is not really what we were there for. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to sound like I didn't have a great time, because I really did enjoy myself. It's more that the down notes of the evening dragged the high parts down as well, so that the overall good feeling at the end of the dinner was somewhat spoiled by the rather lacklustre experience in the bar afterwards (and to add insult to injury, we had to pay extra for that bit, which none of the reviews mention).

I'm still glad I went, and I did enjoy myself a great deal. After all, it's not every day you can drink cocktails in the bowels of a wooden ship in a flooded cellar, or nibble gold leaf and fizzy grapes in a herb-covered roof garden, or experience a scratch'n'sniff TV dinner, or jump around inside an inflatable stomach, or walk along a corridor that's been colonised by mushrooms, or dine on duck inside a dinosaur, or eat whale vomit and iris jelly, or wobble a plate by the power of your pulse alone. And I'm very grateful I got to do all of those things, because they all add up to a wonderfully eccentric evening of fun times with two of my best friends. And frankly, experiences like that are worth a little disappointment in less important areas.

Other reviews (and much better pictures) from:
Eat Like A Girl | Gourmet Chick | Fernandez & Leluu | Londonist | Cook Sister | the Telegraph | Domestic Sluttery { Crafts' Council | London Eater | The English Can Eat | Caroline's Miscellany

Actually, I should say something about the atmosphere, because it was one of the least stuffy restaurants I've ever eaten in. The food is not the only reason that The Fat Duck regularly ends up listed in the top two restaurants in the entire world. The staff were all, as I said before, utterly charming, but also extremely conscientous, appearing non-intrusively whenever needed, and melting away when they weren't. They were happy to wait while the others took photographs, or to join in a discussion about the merits (or lack of them) in blue cheese. Sometimes their French accents almost bordered on caricature and it was a little hard to understand what they were telling us, but since we were all so willing to go along for the ride, it didn't really matter, especially as we were given souvenir menus to take home and peruse at our leisure. Of course, we could have opened the envelopes at the table, to see what each course was as we went along, but they were beautifully sealed (with a proper embossed seal) and it seemed a shame to open them and risk spilling food all over the beautiful paper. Actually, these envelopes are worth mentioning, too. They're made of thick paper which has an almost calfskin-like quality, with a soft pile that makes you want to stroke it, and creates a tactile sensation that has a similar effect to some of the flavours in the dishes. They'd be strangely covetable even if they didn't come replete with the smart black embossed Fat Duck seal on them. Another example of the wonderful attention to detail.

It's hard to pick favourites after all the amazing food we ate — the oak moss, the edible seaside and that intense blackcurrant sorbet being just a few — but the cheese course turned out to be one of my favourites because it was the most communal. We all picked out different cheeses from the extensive selection, and there was much reaching across and around the table in order to share them. My favourite was one of the light goat's cheeses, which had a pretty brown rind that looked almost like tree bark, although it was probably the incredibly gooey yellow one that Chris had chosen which will be the most memorable, even if I didn't like it as much. It was so runny that it looked like homemade custard, and was served on a spoon and oozed all over the plate; very strong in flavour with an umami effect that was a little overwhelming compared to the lightness of most of the cheese I'd chosen. Again, probably one I would have appreciated a bit more if I hadn't already eaten so much rich food.

And even after that, our meal still wasn't finished. We were offered hot beverages from a rather dauntingly full tea menu, studiously avoiding the £35.00 price tag of one tea, although our curiosity was piqued (it's an "aged" tea with a 1970s vintage; one for the tea connoisseur). Nikki chose one of the Puerh teas, but it was brewed too strong for my tastes, so I was glad that I had opted for the Jasmine Pearls Green Tea, blended from Jasmine Dragon Pearls, Dragon Phoenix Pearls and Moli Long Zhu, hand-rolled and then scented with jasmine six times. It had a lovely delicate flavour and a delicious perfume which I found so evocative that I found myself "remembering" places I'd never even been to; cities in the Far East that I've always daydreamed about visiting. This was ehanced by the Mandarin Aerated Chocolate, as the jasmine tea complemented its flavour rather nicely, bringing out the sharp mandarin flavour of the chocolate to wonderful effect. There was also a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel to the chocolate, which was almost like sucking a pebble, or rather like the way you hope a smooth pebble would feel in the mouth, but never does. (What do you mean you've never put a pebble in your mouth?)

The Apple Pie Caramels were quite nice, but mostly remarkable for the fact that their wrappers were edible as well, so you could put the whole thing in your mouth. Which frankly raises the point of them being wrapped in the first place, but oh well, it was clever. The Violet Tartlets were also delicious, benefitting from the same salted caramel flavour that you get with Ladurée macarons, although I unfortunately didn't really notice any of the violet flavour, which was a little disappointing. I think by this point though, I'd actually become a little intoxicated by all the food, all those flavours combining to make me quite tipsy, making me wonder if a shorter tasting menu might actually offer more benefit.

Fifteen or sixteen courses is amazing, and all of them were wonderful, but after a while it is quite easy to become almost inured to the new experiences provided by each course, because there is too much to take in; by the time we got to the end of the meal I'd become quite blasé about it all. Don't get me wrong, I had a fantastic time eating all of the courses — obviously, or I wouldn't have written five posts' worth of reviews. I'd happily sit through the same menu again (although perhaps with some substitutions for the salmon and the pigeon — to try other new dishes as much as anything), but I would have been just as happy with a menu that was half as long and half the price. I still would have experienced some amazing dishes the like of which I'll probably never taste again, and I still would have had a lovely time discussing the synaesthetic qualities of all those things, but I don't think I would have become quite so blasé towards the end. Plus, if it was half the length and half the price, I could afford to do it again sooner rather than later! Because I definitely do want to do it again. Only a person who really hates food would say no to five hours of culinary inventiveness designed to evoke memories and debates and interest. And while I can't afford to dine out at the Fat Duck for a while (or anywhere else, really), I can at least dine out on my memories for a while.

This is pt.5 of my Fat Duck restaurant review.
Read all the parts here: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

As tasty and interesting as the bavarois was, it was the Blackcurrant Sorbet which did it for me. It did it so much for me that I suspect it's going to be one of those things I end up randomly craving for the rest of my life — in fact it's making my mouth water just typing this. And I don't even like blackcurrant all that much. I don't hate it, it's just not a flavour I specifically seek out at all. Mind you, when I was a toddler I was addicted to Ribena (my mum tells me I refused to have anything else put in my bottle), so this taste for blackcurrant flavour isn't really anything new, although I've never tasted anything so intensely blackcurranty before, except maybe some blackcurrant wine, once. It wasn't just the flavour, it was the way it was so cold as well. Of course it was cold, it was a sorbet. But it was quite a solid, dense sorbet, without feeling packed full of ice the way most sorbets are. The coldness was why the intense flavour was so surprising, because colder temperatures tend to dull flavours. I can only imagine how intense the flavour was before it was frozen!

And then there was the delicate flake, garnishing the sorbet, which appeared to have the flavour of roasted beetroot, and was again an unlikely flavour to find so perfectly accompanying something unexpected. Marvellous.

After this, I was ready for anything again, and what we got was the first course of the famous "breakfast" part of the menu. Again, I got disappointed here, but this time it was because I realised that the meal had reached its final section and was coming to an end.

The Parsnip Cereal with Parsnip Milk was quite fun, and tasty as well. It was probably the only dish I could imagine being succssful in a mass market, and not just because it came packaged in its own little box. It was a fun way to mess with standard conventions again, demonstrating with playful irony that food doesn't have to be put into little boxes — in this case, the little box that says parsnips aren't dessert food, even though they can be sweet enough.

And then it was the dish that the Heston-haters love to pick on, the one which causes people to call him Dr Frankenfood and all the rest. This is the dish that everyone else most wants to try, and well they should, because it's a lot of fun, as much as anything. Out came the nitro-cooker again, as we sat in awe and watched as the waitress cracked a couple of eggs and we watched the already-beaten mixture run into the pan. Later, we speculated on how they managed to get the mixture into the eggs, summising that they must be injected with a hypodermic needle. I already suspected this, and being sat closest to the waitress I tried hard to keep an eye out for clues, but I suspect that there really is magic involved — Magic Circle kind of magic, anyway. It's the perfect environment for plenty of deflection and sleight of hand, as most people would be too entranced by the nitrogen swirling around to notice anything else.

Before we ate our egg-and-bacon ice-cream, we were given one of the other trademark gimmicks, the tea that's hot and cold at the same time. From discussions with friends, I'd already worked out how this was done, so I wasn't too surprised by its arrival. It is a slightly odd sensation to have both hot and cold in your mouth at the same time, but not really any different to the simultaneous hot and cold you get with, say, a fresh-out-of-the-oven crumble served a la mode. Different flavours and textures, though, obviously. Nikki had trouble getting her head around it, but I find myself wondering if that's because she's more of a tea drinker than I am, so she has stronger expectations of what tea should feel like.

As for the egg-and-bacon ice-cream, I didn't notice much of a bacon flavour, but the scrambled egg was quite strong. Actually, it was quite delicate, but it was more distinct than the bacon. I think the trouble was that the pain perdu must have been over-soaked in caramel, because it was sickeningly sweet, which really spoiled the overall effect and flavour of everything else because it was far too overwhelming. I read a few reviews with interest yesterday, and noticed that we'd lost another item on the tasting menu, a sharp-flavoured tea jelly, which sounded like the perfect antidote to the sickliness of the bread. So, in the end, I was amused and delighted by the spectacle and disappointed by the flavour, because one of the original component parts was missing. This is interesting to note because the menu is changing in July and I wonder if they're going to put some things back.

I thought that was going to be the last dish on the set menu (having lost count), but we had more to come. The next thing on the menu was interesting, more for the discussion of flavours it sparked off, than for the dish itself. It was a Chocolate Wine Slush served with Millionaire Shortbread and a little card with some information about its origins. There was no real reason why this particular course should come with background information if the previous ones didn't, and in fact it made me wish that the others had, because of course we were curious about them. It also wasn't as interesting a piece of ephemera as the pamphlet that came with a dish that had been on the previous menu. The dish itself was okay, largely because the slush had an intriguingly familiar flavour that none of us could identify until I realised that its appearance reminded me somewhat of a blackberry milkshake, at which point I made the leap and recognised that it had a blackberry-like flavour, too. But it was Billy who noticed that I said blackberry-like, and pointed out that was different to blackberry-flavoured, and that got me wondering about some of my reactions to flavours based on their appearances in previous courses.

This one was mostly remarkable as a talking point, as I mentioned, prompting a conversation about unlikely flavours that work well together. Things like strawberries with black pepper, or cheese and marmalade. This prompted Chris to suggest apple pie with a slice of sharp cheddar melted on top (a dish I know my friend Jen also enjoys), and Billy to suggest McDonald's fries dipped into McDonald's strawberry milkshake, the latter of which made Nikki squeal, "you're going to get us thrown out, talking like that!" But actually, I think St. Heston would approve of such experimentation. Hey, if it works, why not, right? Bizarrely enough, on Sunday evening one of my friends on Facebook sent me an invite to a ridiculous group entitled "McDonald's fries dipped in chocolate shake is the yummiest thing ever!!". Who'd have thought this discussion was actually a zeitgeist?¹ (No, I didn't join.)

And that's all the desserts, but it's not the end of the meal. Tune in for part five soon.

¹Even more disturbingly, when trying to find the link to that group, I discocvered that there is a whole raft of these groups on FB. Maybe they all ought to consolidate.

This is pt.4 of my Fat Duck restaurant review.
Read all the parts here: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

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

So, as some of you may have discerned from Monday's hint, I had lunch at the Fat Duck on Sunday. And yes, it was fantastic.

I'd been wanting to go ever since I read Alasdair's review a few years ago, but it was always just something to include on a dream list, and nothing I'd ever considered seriously planning for. I wasn't alone in this, as several friends always said the same thing, usually after watching Fat Duck proprietor Heston Blumenthal on telly (although not in my case, as I've never actually seen him on telly — I don't have a telly). I've lost count of the number of times his name came up in conversation, prompting the immediate response, "I must try the tasting menu at the Fat Duck one day!" followed by hearty agreement in every direction. Nothing ever happened, but I was content to dream.

A couple of months ago, Nikki told me she'd decided to organise a trip to Bray, and asked if I wanted to go. Of course, I immediately said yes without even thinking about it. Hadn't I been daydreaming about this very thing for a couple of years? Later on, it started to sink in just how much I'd committed to spend on a single afternoon, and I started wondering if I'd made the right decision. If I was going to spend all that money on eating posh food, wouldn't it be more cost-effective to eat out at several restaurants instead of just one meal? Wouldn't I just be paying for all the hype, and how could it possibly live up to all the hype anyway? It's a lot of cash to drop on a single meal, and what if it had been built up so much in my head that I came away disappointed?

These are the thoughts you're all probably having about the idea of trying the tasting menu at the Fat Duck, too. They're not unreasonable thoughts to be having, especially in our current financial climate. However, at a length of fifteen courses, the tasting menu is the equivelent of several three- or four-course meals in other places, anyway. And, as Nikki pointed out, at a length of fifteen courses, it breaks down to less than a tenner per course, which is no more than you'd pay in most restaurants, and in fact quite a lot cheaper than you'd be expected to pay in some gastropubs. But how many gastropubs have three Michelin stars? How many have any Michelin stars? And how many gastropubs successfully do such amazing and inventive things with their food, or leave you thinking so much about the process and culture of what it is you're doing when you sit down for a meal?

So, yeah. It's expensive, but it's actually not that expensive when you start to break it down. Where it gets expensive is the same area it always gets expensive: the additionals, like drinks. Fortunately, Billy decided to take one for the team, and order the matched wine menu as well (this comes in three price ranges, the cheapest one of which is just shy of a ton). The rest of us — me, Nikki and Chris — opted for a single glass of wine each, plus plenty of sparkling mineral water¹, and the opportunity to pass Billy's glass around whenever a new wine came along (thanks to Billy's generosity in being willing and keen to share). I won't be able to offer you any tasting notes on the wines, but I will say that they all seemed very well chosen, with each course getting a completely different drink that not only complemented the food of that particular course, but often complemented the food in the next course too, and were also delicious on their own. A regular source of amusement was also the ongoing change of glass size, with some being regular, some smaller, and one being almost the size of my head.

On the recommendation of the charmingly French² and always-smiling sommelier, I chose from their massive wine list a glass of 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape from Domaine de Beaurenard (in a normal-sized glass), a deliciously light and crisp white which complemented all the dishes very well. Nikki and Chris opted for a 2004 Pinot Gris from Rolly Gassmann, which was a slightly more full-bodied wine, but also sweeter, so I was glad to have chosen the wine I did, as its light crispness was a good palate³ cleanser between courses.

Speaking of palate cleansers, this is going to be a long post to read through if I don't break it down into more manageable chunks, so I'll take this opportunity take a break there and let you do the same before we move onto the meal itself. See you back here soon…!

¹I'm so used to ordering tap water in restaurants, because I hate the way they gouge you on the cost of mineral water that tastes exactly the same as stuff from a tap, that I almost said, "no tap water is fine" out of habit! But it wouldn't have been sparkling, which is not something I ever drink except in posh restaurants, so that was nice. Although five or six bottles of the stuff can add up…

²In fact, all of the staff were charmingly French, something I'd read about but forgotten.

³Petty annoyance. Yes, that's spelled palate not palette or pallet. People get that wrong all the time!

This is pt.1 of my Fat Duck restaurant review.
Read all the parts here: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5

On New Year's Day, I went to see Aime Maeght & His Artists at the Royal Academy, which I would be recommending to you all if it hadn't closed on January 2nd. It was pretty good, though, with rooms organised by complementary artist pairs: Bonnard and Matisse; Miró and Calder; Braque and Giacometti. My favourite was the Miró and Calder room, which was full of exuberant colours and shapes, designed with humour and playfulness. It was a very uplifting thing to see on such a grey, cold day, and the two artists complemented each other very well.

There was also some film footage of the artists at work, and I was fascinated to see how considered and meticulous Giacometti was. His drawings look so effortlessly spontaneous and almost slapdash, but in fact he took his time working out exactly where each line would go. Discovering that was quite a revelation, and a new way to think about working. It's actually quite hard to take a long time to make something look effortless and still good.

In contrast to that, the following day I went to the Osbert Lancaster exhibition, which I really enjoyed, despite the fact that it was badly hung and the picture captions were really confusing, and recommend it if you're in the Bond Street area in the next week (it finishes on January 11th). I'm not sure how many others will appreciate the dated digs at moneyed establishment (which Lancaster was himself a member of), but fortunately there's more to the show than that. I particularly liked his elegant book jacket designs, which show off his skilled draughtsmanship, and wonderful use of colour and composition; and his witty illustrations of architectural design throughout the ages should be seen by anyone who has an interest in the urban environment (and his description of "Stockbrokers Tudor" is so much better than "mock Tudor"). There are also some brilliantly funny pastiches of portrait styles throughout the ages (his take on Cranach had me giggling particularly loudly), and some charming paintings of Egypt and Europe. It was fascinating to see the clever way he used the texture of the paper to create textures of buildings, which is something you never properly see in reproduction.

I was quite surprised that the exhibition was at the Wallace Collection (somewhere I'd been meaning to visit for years), as it seemed to be more suitable for somewhere like the Cartoon Museum, but in fact it was perfectly at home. Most of the people looking at the pictures looked as though they could have stepped off the page, and if Paul hadn't been so hungry, we would have loved to have stopped for a cream tea in the delightfully pink and posh tea room, and had a proper look around the rest of the House afterwards. Something to save for a rainy day, I guess.

We had quick, filling nosh-up at Bodean's, which is an okay but not brilliant American-style BBQ sandwich place, that massively overcharged me £2.50 (TWO! POUNDS! FIFTY!) for one regular can of non-imported ginger beer. And sadly I have to knock them off my list of potential places that do proper hash browns because they don't (they don't even serve the frozen potato cakes that people usually serve in place of proper hash browns). Nowhere does proper hash browns in London, so far as I can tell. Getting hushpuppies in London is even harder, but I started craving them in Bodean's and now I must find them!

We also took a look at the new Photographers' Gallery, the ground floor, anyway. The current Soho Nights exhibition is tiny but really interesting, and with some fantastic photos. It was fascinating to see Slim Hewitt's photos of people dancing to jazz in the 50s, because the women's clothes and hairstyles could have come from last year. The only thing that really dated the pictures was the men's hairstyles, in particular that floppy-fringed one that I always associate with Ian Carmichael in the film of Lucky Jim (see pic). There are also some brilliant candid photos by Ken Russell, which capture people in unintentionally hilarious poses, as they try to dance in a tiny club so crowded they can only hand-jive. (There's a good post about this over at History is made at night).

The other thing that interested me was a series of pictures which accompanied an article about Soho's Little France, which mainly congregated around one pub, called the York Minster, now more famously known as The French House (which has some nice photos on its website). Anyway, it's a fascinating little exhibition which really demonstrates that it's a subject which deserves to be in a bigger space, with a more in-depth overview. Maybe someone will curate one, one day.

After that, on to the original Amato in Old Compton Street (not the johnny-come-lately branch in Charlotte Street), because I've had a crazy craving for some of their insanely rich and almost hazelnutty hot chocolate, but their machine is still out of order, and will be for about a month, according to the waitress. Oh noes! Where do I go to satisfy that craving now?¹ But chocolate disappointment was smoothed away by the unexpected pleasure of bumping into Gaetan and his lovely fiancee (who is also called Anna). We were soon joined by Billy and had a very nice chat about Turbine Hall installations, pizza toppings, wedding cakes, wine tours and other cultural things, before they went off to the theatre and the three who were left went to The Red Lion in Duke of York Street, which one of my favourite central London pubs. It's tiny, but fabulous; full of Victorian mirrors, great real ale and St James' toffs. Real character.

¹ I did try the Old Compton Street branch of French chain Paul a few days ago, but it's bloody expensive and it certainly wasn't hot — it was lukewarm in fact, and if I hadn't bought it as a takeaway en route to somewhere else I would have complained, but I couldn't, so I complain here. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.