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