We arrived in Bray with perfect timing, just as our friends arrived from Central London, so we were off to a good start. The restaurant is seriously subtle from the outside, just the fabulous logo on a hanging sign. The inside is low ceilinged with beams and really bad abstract paintings in yellows, blues and greens. The place was packed, not bad for a Thursday night.
There were some pretty ordinary but tasty green olives on the table and then no sign of any food for an hour, by which time we had polished off one bottle of stunning Chardonnay and were frankly getting a bit peckish - a bit of bread would have been nice. We questioned the lack of food and were fobbed off with a lame excuse along the lines of "We were waiting for you to choose your wine" which really doesn't make sense as we were all having the tasting menu which is set, apart from a few substitutions and we had ordered and drunk our first bottle. The boys wanted to add one of the A la Carte dishes to their experience, so after a bit of negotiation with the very helpful staff, it was included for them. Perhaps this little deviation from the Fat Duck norm is what really slowed the process down?
Eventually the food started to arrive (we were onto our second bottle of wine by then), the first series of dishes were the appetisers:
The starters
NITRO-GREEN TEA AND LIME MOUSSE
Little frozen nuggets which we were told to eat in one mouthful, lovely silky texture on the outside and runny on the inside. The lime was by far the dominant flavour. No way near as impressive as the El Bulli nitrogen performance.
OYSTER, PASSION FRUIT JELLY
I am no fan of oysters, but this was delicious. Or rather the passion fruit jelly was delicious. The oyster was like oyster.
HORSERADISH CREAM, LAVENDER POMMERY GRAIN MUSTARD ICE CREAM RED CABBAGE GAZPACHO
This was stunning; the mustard made a delicious and beautifully textured ice cream and the gazpacho was a revelation.
JELLY OF QUAIL, LANGOUSTINE CREAM, PARFAIT OF FOIE GRAS
I think that this was my favourite dish on the entire menu. Which is odd as I have only very recently come to eat foie gras and I have a bit of a problem with savoury jellies – it’s a texture thing. The delicate little quenelle of foie gras was delicious, it was sitting on a pale and creamy langoustine cream which broke into dark brown and vibrant green once you dug in to the bowl. Visually stunning and delicious
Then came the main courses
SNAIL PORRIDGE - Jabugo Ham, shaved fennel
The infamous Snail Porridge……I saw this being made on BBC2’s Full on Food a couple of weeks ago, and it looked much nicer than this one did. The snails were much bigger and plumper and were sitting proudly on top of the porridge (perhaps bigger and plumper snails aren’t such a good thing?). Despite this, the porridge was delicious, really herby and I must say that the snails didn’t really taste of much at all. Somewhat overrated. (recipe here, if you feel so inclined!)
ROAST FOIE GRAS - Almond fluid gel, cherry and chamomile
Delicious – I seem to be developing a bit of a taste for Foie Gras! The almonds on this dish were fabulous, really fresh, waxy and crunchy. Almonds were used quite often in the El Bulli meal too – must be a seasonal thing.
SARDINE ON TOAST SORBET - Ballotine of mackerel ‘invertebrate’, marinated daikon
This is the one dish I didn’t have – I can’t stand sardines. The others liked it though.
Substitute dish – FENNEL VELOUTE
Fabulously delicate creamy soup which had an oyster lurking in the depths. Very nice indeed. Much nicer than sardines!
SALMON POACHED WITH LIQUORICE - Asparagus, pink grapefruit, "Manni" olive oil
The salmon was perfectly cooked, very rare and as soft as butter. The liquorice was a jelly-like wrapping around the salmon, dark and glossy and tasting of liquorice root, rather than liquorice sweets. I wasn’t too keen on that. The pink grapefruit complemented it perfectly, and you can never go wrong with asparagus.
POACHED BREAST OF ANJOU PIGEON PANCETTA - Pastilla of its leg, pistachio, cocoa and quatre épices
This was very gamy, very strong, especially the leg. The tiny little leg. The last time I had pastilla (shredded pigeon layered with filo pastry, pistachio nuts and icing sugar and cinnamon), we were in a palace in Marrakech sitting in an outrageous room scattered with rose petals. So it had a lot to beat! This little samosa shaped pastilla didn’t do too badly, a bit more pigeon and a little less deep fried pastry would have been a better ratio. The overall effect of the dish was very very rich and tasty.
Lasagne of Langoustine, with Pig's Trotter and Truffles.
This is the course which the boys wanted from the a la carte menu, the girls paused for breath while they inhaled this rather interesting little offering. Actually I did have a taste and it was beautiful, really melt in the mouth tender, sweet and powerful. Strange and interesting but still tasty.
WHITE CHOCOLATE AND CAVIAR
Delicious chocolate and salty caviar which worked rather well. But then sweet and salt always do.
MRS MARSHALL’S MARGARET CORNET
Fabulously whimsical and very pretty, the crystallised rose petals were divine.
PINE SHERBET FOUNTAIN
Very witty– the dipper was a vanilla pod. It bought back lots of warm fluffy childhood memories.
MANGO AND D0UGLAS FIR PUREE - Bavarois of lychee and mango, blackcurrant sorbet
I have no recollection of the bavarois at all, but recall the sorbet as being about as perfect as a blackcurrant sorbet can be. A big bowl of it would have been nice! Or perhaps some in another Mrs Marshall's Margaret Cornet would be more appropriate.
CARROT AND ORANGE TUILE
A really intense burst of orange, a bit like the Middle Eastern apricot leather but much thinner and crisper.
SMOKED BACON AND EGG ICE CREAM - Pain perdu, tea jelly
Out of all the very strange things I have eaten in the last two weeks, I think this was the strangest, and it was just wrong. Weird for the sake of being weird and slightly disturbing. Mind you, the tea jelly was fantastic.
PARSNIP CONFLAKES WITH PARSNIP MILK
Fabulous packaging, very amusing. The little white flakes were intensely parsnippy and I quite liked them as a gimmick, but I couldn’t face the parsnip milk. The others said it was tasty.
The verdict
A really enjoyable meal, Heston Blumenthal can certainly cook (and in the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen, even by domestic standards). Many of the combinations did seem to be gratuitously odd, but most of them worked with aplomb, some didn’t i.e Bacon and Egg Ice Cream but perhaps that was just me. The service was excellent (apart from my long awaited bread being put on the side plate to my right – the waitress said she was new…..) and the dishes we didn’t fancy were substituted with good grace, M changed four of hers and they smiled graciously even at that! The sommelier (I was reliably informed, that he knew his stuff) and he recommended one bottle out of the four which we greedily enjoyed as well as the glasses of Tokaji with our puddings.
How did it compare to El Bulli? I liked the fact that the main courses here were more substantial so that you could taste a bit more of some of the lovely ingredients (for example the salmon and the second foie gras dish). The packaged puddings were very clever, but so was the El Bulli milkshake, this also tasted divine, much more delicious than sherbet and parsnip cornflakes could ever taste. The sheer cleverness of El Bulli is unbeatable; many of the dishes there left us with smiles on our faces whereas The Fat Duck seems to take itself a bit too seriously. Perhaps the Spanish/British character difference. Bray is one hell of a lot easier to get to than Roses, but that’s neither here nor there really – I’d rather fly to Spain than drive down the M6 and M40 after work.
This makes it sounds like I didn’t really enjoy the Best Restaurant in the World and that would be misleading – it was great. I have been unbelievably lucky to eat at both of these restaurants within two weeks of each other and deciding between them is pretty hard, but I think that for me El Bulli must come out on top.
We will go back to The Fat Duck as I would love to choose from the A la Carte menu, in fact we could go any time we like – because we can, it is only three hours drive away. Chances are that we will never go to El Bulli again; it took four years to get there this time……a true one in a lifetime experience.
If you click on any of the photos, you'll go straight through to my Flickr site where the pictures can be viewed bigger with some more comments. Enjoy and please let me know what you think!
High Street, Bray, Berkshire, SL6 2AQ
