Spotted in Waitrose, Heston's vanilla mayo has jumped from the three starred dish pictured below (Salmon poached in liquorice gel with artichokes & vanilla mayonnaise) to our supermarket shelves. It will be interesting to see if the rolling out of product lines from 'haute' to the mass produced gathers pace. BOGOF's on tins of mock turtle soup anyone?

The Fat Duck, Bray

Time spent honing my knife skills back in '07 at the Fat Duck was a six week stint I wont forget in a hurry. Unpaid yet willing, us stagiers produced for the chefs whatever the prep list told us to. 1oo grams of joselito jullienne, 50 ml of red cabbage juice - you got it! Hours spent in the prep kitchen chopping the prefect cubes for ten hours a day doesn't seem like a lot of fun but when your doing in a kitchen in Bray, the UK's gastro-mecca, it somehow takes the edge off.

Three years down the line a had the opportunity to be on the other side of the pass. The bill was massive but I don't mind, this was a meal that I've always wanted & having been one of the cogs in the machine it was all the more meaningful.

Nitro Green Tea - lime vodka infused egg whites are cooked in nitrous oxide - the anti meringue

The taster menu has taken criticism for being a little stagnant and it certainly bears much resemblance to the one printed up ten years ago but the chefs in Bray haven't been slacking . Dishes I got to know well have been polished, pared down and presented in better ways. Smaller portions, updated table ware with some new dishes and ideas ensure that Blumenthal's tiny restaurant really deserves its three stars.

Pommery mustard ice cream on tiny diced cucumber awaits the red cabbage gazpacho

Theatre, excitement and joy mixed with precision service and a series of a meticulously planned events all perch comfortably on a stanchion of utterly delicious food.

See below:

The cup hides a sneaky stack of diced turnip, vivid pea puree, quail consomme, crayfish cream topped with a chicken liver parfait and a lindi tuille. A musky truffle toast on the left.

An oak moss topped box billows out dry ice activated by watering the moss...

Snail porridge is a pearl barley risotto finished with a intense parsley butter, jabugo ham shaved fennel and snails

Roasted foie gras, rhubarb puree and crab crisp

Mock turtle soup - stacked smoked ham and lardo among other mushroom preparations

The consomme to pour over the arrangement above disguised as a pocket watch obviously (as seen on Heston's Feasts)

Sound of the Sea - edible sand, yellow fin, halibut & mackerel, elvers, sea foam and more

Salmon in licorice, vanilla mayo, artichoke, grapefruit juice sacks and roe

Powdered anjou pigion, navets, pigeon quavers, hearts (umbels) and blood pudding

Off menu pork belly on spelt barley and savoy cabbage with chunky black truffles - classic but never beaten

hot and cold tea - half was hot half was cold, vertically

Rhubarb in four ways, stewed, jellied, dried and iced with coconut

Taffety tart - apple, fennel, candied lemon blackcurrant sorbet

Nitro cooked anti scrambled egg on candied bacon and pain perdu

Black forest gateaux, kirsch ice cream & edible bark served with a kirsch spray

Geographically specific whisk(e)y gums

A bag of sweets included Fact Duck baccy, edible playing cards & apple sweets with edible wrappers

Give it another three years and I'm going back.

Make Hay While The Sun Shines

Fortunately the bank holiday offered the opportunity to get out of town and disappear into one of the loveliest towns the other side of Offas Dyke. The Hay Literary festival is not like any festival that I normally frequent but with the lure of learned speakers, stand-up comedy, welsh countryside and a pale full of Old Rosie I was game. This was weekend of listening, sitting, thinking, eating and drinking. A good kind.

I stumbled across Su Perkins interviewing H. Blumenthal, Heston was elaborating on the range of olde sweets that he had been developing. Confectionary mock chewing tobacco, sweet shop scent and a modern take on the sherbet fountain in elegant traditional packaging were all in his deep bag of tricks. He next took to the larger stage in conversation with Jay Rayner who quizzed him on life at the Fat Duck, future proceedings, health and safety problems, the things that any firm follower of British chefs will have heard before.

One topic emerged that stood out, that is the potential for the ‘Hestonisation’ of restaurant food. Let me explain; Rayner said the he hoped that one day when sitting down to dinner somewhere when faced with some molecular disaster he would be forced to say ‘Heston this is all your fault, the Marie Rose ice cream is fucking butters” (not a direct quote). In food trend terms is molecular gastronomy going to become commonplace on all menus at high street chains? What will happen if it does and what does that really mean for the food that we eat when dining out? These questions are the first ones that pop into my mind and of course are the ones that are potentially very interesting in futurologists speak. Imagine a Green tomato gel, chipotle infused flat bread with avocado emulsion and triple-fried black bean puree sounds, my wanky burrito on a FD tip.

Are the realities are much more simple and as less astounding than the menus suggest? Take the snail porridge as a well known example; its dubbed ‘porridge’ because its oat based but made like risotto with knob of garlic parsley butter stirred through it for its vibrant green and savoury edge. Historically many savoury oat dishes were eaten and it is only in our minds that porridge be some treacle emblazoned sweet wintery breakfast. At another point on the molecular spectrum there is bread, the wheat based nourishment that for that for thousands of years has fed most of the non rice consuming cultures, when leavened is a complex science of active fungal fermentation combined with ground grain to produce a product so legendary it is literally biblical.

These two examples seem to highlight an interesting feature of food fashions. It seems to be play off between nomenclature and fundamentals of edible combinations. The porridge isn’t as wacky as it sounds, are verbose dressing up and wordy descriptions deviating from the more important aspects of what happens in the pan or the oven. Bread is bread and a beautiful thing but no one calls foccacia, fermented baked wheat powder with an olive oil suspension do they? But it could be interesting to see what happens...

Molecular Gastriconomy

Last Wednesday the esteemed three Michelin starred restaurant The Fat Duck closed its doors and sealed its reservations book. Heston’s decision came about due to customers complaining about dodgy stomachs and vomiting – the shits. Fair enough, happens all the time. I have been hit by the runs after a tuna steak at a restaurant and it’s pretty easy to do to yourself or someone else through the food we eat especially if you’re creating haute cuisine for hundreds of ingredients many of them raw.

The problems at the FD are potentially threefold. Loss of revenue after a weeks closure (a minimum of approx. £150/cover x 80 covers/day x 11 services/week = £ 132,000). Loss of prestige and loss of future custom, all potentially ruinous for a gastro-hero in these tight times. Fortunately the Blumenthal breadwinner The Hind’s Head across the road is still open to paying customers but the financial dent must still be massive. Seemingly Heston has a big problem on this plate.

Maybe not so… how much press has the incident attracted, loads. The BBC, Independent etc. and these were the first two Google hits after the FD’s own site. The tone taken by most of the articles I have read are not particularly accusatory, some even sympathetic. Clearly immediate action was necessary to prevent further incidents of gastric irritation and nothing can change what has happened.

I fully believe the FD’s hygiene standards are of the very highest and negligence on this account probably wasn’t the cause. Hygiene tests will probably be returned unresolved and the case will never be solved. The eager, well rested thirty or so brigade will return to the kitchen itching to get the burners cranked. The public has been reminded what a good chap Blumenthal is, publicity has never been higher, the diners who spent a twenty four hours or so hugging the porcelain will hopefully still remember their dinner as being as magnificent as the bill and the kitchen will have never been cleaner.

See Heston explain