The Fat Duck - Part 2

There were lots of tricks and lots of themes in the day at The Fat Duck, but they never tipped over to twee-ness. I think that might have been because the themes were well disciplined, contained to just a fraction of the adventure.

For the next dish we moved into "Alice in wonderland" 

Another dish known from TV, a gold pocket watch dissolved to be the stock to pour over the mock turtle soup. It is fun to try a historical dish. 

Again presentation was precise. In the centre of the table was placed a two-tiered sandwich dish, a dish resembling a mad hatters hat. 

The mock turtle soup was good but I loved these barely toasted sandwiches. I have absolutely no idea what they're contents were, it was creamy, it was crunchy. The almost toasted bit was like a sandwich at 4pm on derby day when they have got a little crusty in the heat. Somehow it worked. I had 2.

Somehow I have missed exactly when the bread arrived. When bread is introduced as "our bread chef has been perfecting this bread for a year", you are ready to be impressed - while you fantasize about a job where you get to spend a year perfecting a recipe.

Apparently the bread was an Italian "burnt spelt" bread. It was dark in colour but light in feel. The crust was crunchy but not too crunchy. Those in the know at our table said the positioning of the wholes showed perfection in proving. 

And the butter, the butter was worthy of being eaten with a spoon.

It was so hard to resist the offering of a second piece but I knew stomach space was at a premium for the final parts of the menu, so I was strong. 

Then the iPod and headphones arrived, it was time for "Sounds of the Sea"

With so much coverage, you wondered whether this dish would live up to expectations. It did. 

There is something magical about popping on the headphones and hearing the ocean, then the dish arrived. 

Served on glass suspended over a bed of sand and shells, it really did look like a wave had dumped it there.

Abalone and butterfish (nothing like the fish and chip shop butterfish) and samphire and who knows what else. 

The sea foam tastes exactly like that first taste of sea water when you dive into the sea.

Most intriguing though was the sand, looking so much like sand you almost didn't want to try eating it. It tasted great but half the thrill was in sand in your mouth not being gritty. Apparently it was tapioca starch and anchovies. 

Imagine the thought and experimentation that goes into figuring out that tapioca starch and anchovies can get the sand look and a good taste. 

When I got that email that said "you've missed out on a table at the fat duck" I keenly jumped on the "but you're better to spend your money locally" bandwagon. 

I think this course demonstrates why a visiting restaurant with over-subscribed ballot has a place in the local culinary landscape. 

While I have eaten at restaurants of most of the current great Australian chefs and had amazing, expertly executed dishes, none have had every course having this level of development, this level of experimentation. I think having  The Fat Duck here meant we could benefit from the level of investment - time and money - that the small Australian market couldn't support full time. 

Headphones removed and he last scrap of "sand" licked from the glass, sounds of the sea was over.

Next dish looked like pork belly or lamb when it arrived.  A dark square of meat.

But no, it was salmon, salmon poached in a liquorice gel. It was sticky and sweet, but one of the best bits was the little dollops of vanilla mayonnaise, contrasting beautifully with pink grapefruit.

Then it was onto the last savory dish - lamb with cucumber.

Despite it being really, really rare it somehow managed to taste just like an old fashioned roast man would cook - maybe it was forequarter? 

And I'm going to try adding cucumber to the plate next time I serve up a roast.

But it was probably the accompanying items that added to the old fashioned roast taste.

The best mint jelly ever. A crispy, crunchy thing that was really just lamb fat. 

Wow, we were getting full and puffed by this stage. Ready for a change of taste and pace.

Some hot and cold iced tea hit the spot. Cleansing the palate and giving a bit of a break. It tasted a bit bergamot/earl grey style. But also a bit chamomile. 

First sip it was a warm tea, next sip it was icy as the hot tea melted the icy ball. Then you got a mouthful with both hot and cold. And your mind was blown.

It also seemed to be something to pep you up for the home stretch. 

Then it was the first dessert "botrytis cinerea" or noble rot. 

It looked like a bunch of grapes, every grape a different flavour and a different temperature. The bit that looked like a stalk was like a salty pretzel. 

Amazing to work your way through a dish where every spoonful was a different taste.

Of the bunch my favourite was the green one that looked more like an olive or a grape. 

Tapped with the spoon, it was a tinted white chocolate, inside there was caramel, honeycomb and popping candy, of course.

Well after all that food what else would you be thinking of but.....breakfast. It was now time for breakfast. 

At just the perfect time, coffee was offered, yet another example of the precision timing. 

I'm kicking myself that I missed a photo of the espresso cups. They were gorgeous. 

Then a tray arrived with a bowl, a cereal box and a small container of milk. 

This was the puzzle part. Inside the box was a piece for the puzzle and the cereal. 

The cereal looked like cornflakes and tasted more like honey with, again, of course, popping candy. 

There was something great about the change of pace that slurping a bowl of cereal gave in such a long meal. 

But there was more to breakfast, a great deal of "cooking implements" were wheeled up to the table and cooking of the not-so-full English breakfast began. 

More liquid nitrogen our eggs were prepared.

French toast with the thinnest, crisp of  candied prosciutto. On top the scrambled egg icecream. So good. 

We knew we were nearing the end.  We were full. Talk started to turn to espresso martinis afterwards. The room was emptying and the staff started to actually chat. As I was dining with hospitality people they were intrigued that the service for most of the meal was more theatrical than interaction. It was only in these last stages some staff started to chat. The sommelier planning to visit Bendigo during his time in Australia, he was especially keen to visit Balgownie and Blackjack. 

Of all the staff (and we lost count), we came across only one Australian. He had been a manager at Dinner by Heston in London and had was asked if he would like to return to Australia for this. 

But there was a little bit more to go before we departed. Whisky gums. Served stuck to a map in a frame showing where the whisky came from. A firey shot to finish.

There were some little touches thatade the difference, like the sommelier writing out the long list of wines we had.

The there were the sweeties to take home.

All in all the most amazing Saturday afternoon. Was it the best meal ever - certainly in the top 5. 

It's actually been hard to eat today - I've never experienced that before, sure some is a little bit seedy from the wines, some is a food hangover where you just feel like you are a lot. But mainly it feels like my tastebuds have been totally assaulted and things just don't taste the same. 

I was so lucky being able to go - special thanks to the friends who made that happen. 

The Fat Duck

So, it has been a while since I wrote here, but there's nothing like winning the lottery to inspire penning a few words.

And by "winning the lottery" I mean a chance encounter of getting one of the hottest seats in town, a seat at The Fat duck.

I felt like the Stephen Bradbury of Fat Duck seats - as others couldn't take up the seat and a gracious nomination from my favourite local restauranter  I skated into a place at the table with 3 Tasmanians, one an ex-bendigonian. 

The excitement before our 1.30pm booking was intense, I took hours to get to sleep the night before and was nearly hyperventilating on the train on the way there.

Such a big occasion bought out the best of my anxiety usually reserved for airports and I arrived at Crown, the temporary home of The Fat Duck a full 100 minutes ahead of time. Can never be too careful that you make it on time. 

A few pre-lunch drinks and we were ready to take our seat at the table. 

Something pretty exciting about hopping in the lift and pressing the button to The Fat Duck, something a little odd when the lift door opens to a whif of chlorine and a marble pillared walk to the day spa. 

Just to the left of the pool entry was a black door, the fat duck sign and where we would spend the next 5 hours.

Through the door there was a long walk up a dark narrow hall - a screen at the end showing live feed of chefs in the kitchen. The Tasmanians were impressed that it was all very MONA-like.

Then another door slid open anticipating our arrival and were in the restaurant. 

Part of the reason The Fat Duck ballot was over-subscribed must be that there are only 13 tables.  Our table was the last for the day - it appeared that the tables were in pairs of starting times 15 minutes apart with military precision timing to ensure careful service.

I'd studied the wine list online for quite sometime. As much as you would love to walk in and say lets go with the $1000 a head matching wines, the matching wines (also $200 and $400 options available) didn't seem to be overly exciting, perhaps picked by a sommelier from Bray who didn't quite realise that Australians generally like to discover more in a matched wine.

So we stuck with choosing ourselves, mainly stuck with whites befitting of the hot day lunchtime. Many of the markups were crazy but the quality was better than I'd first thought from my online reading. But maybe that was a result of the presentation - the most enormous wine bible 

There is no getting away from the fact that the room is a room in a casino. It has that size and cookie-cutter shape. And the view is nowhere near that of something like Quay - there's nothing very special about an uninterrupted view of the lower end of Flinders Street. 

Instead the room is luxurious. The wood paneling, dark but not too dark. Huge tables, a comfy half couch for half the seating. Nothing to tempt you to move for 5 hours. 

On the wall behind our table was The Fat Duck clock. A large Alice in Wonderland style clock that showed not only the time in Melbourne and Bray but also counts down the days The Fat Duck is in Melbourne - a constant ticking reminder to the people in the room that they made it. 

Another wall is a giant jigsaw, the middle section now completed, of course it's Heston. Later in the meal we received our piece of the jigsaw and a small part of the whole thing was bought to re table for us to place our pieces. Or it may just be a subtle way of pointing out you've had a lot to trunk over the distance of 16 courses - I struggled to get my piece in its place. 

The first wine selected, the first dish arrived. The most spectacular plate and in the middle a perfect ball of deep burgandy - aerated beetroot. Put quickly on your mouth as a whole it had the texture of a crunchie, intense beetroot flavour balanced by a soft sharp hit of horseradish cream.

Yes, you knew from this we were on our way with a pretty special afternoon. 

Next, a little side table appeared by our table and then a waitress appeared with a tray of 3 soda siphons, a candle, lemons and limes and a frosted container of liquid nitrogen, of course. 

These were the "nitro poached aperitifs". A choice between vodka and lime sour, gin and tonic or Campari soda. 

Our table covered all courses, I chose gin and tonic with lime. The squirt from the siphon was plunged in the liquid nitrogen and then passed to me. It looked like a meringue, popped in my mouth it exploded to nothingness, leaving a wake of gin taste and a stream of "ice steam" pouring out my nostrils. Delicious and the senses were definitely awake. 

You can see the bottom of the clock in this shot, but it's also worth mentioning the uniform of the waitresses. There would not have been a waitress over a size 6 and they all had severe buns. There were a couple with French accents, but most were English, the type of English where you couldn't pick if they were from the estates or their estate.

The tops were very much a blouse, with a little feather brooch, navy skirts and flesh coloured stockings. Very post-war London looking. 

Now it was time for the first real course: Red Cabbage Gazpacho with Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream

Just a mouthful, the gazpacho was highly concentrated and purified, nice to have gazpacho without lumps and bumps.  Sa court ice-cream, delicious. Every course had the perfect, made just for it crockery. 

Next sa our lollies 

And by lollies, they mean icy poles. On the left, Waldorf Rocket - Apple, Celery and Mayo - the standout of this one was its perfect icy pole temperature, icy but soft like an icy pole eaten beside the pool on a hot summer day.

The middle one, Salmon Twister - a tube of smoked salmon wrapped in stripes of avocado and mayo. No idea how that was made, like most dishes you never think "must try this at home". 

On the far right, the best of the three - "feast" - chicken liver parfait gaytime. A delicious chicken liver parfait, very similar to the flavour of Heston's meatfruit, then a gelatinous meaty flavour shell with nuts. 

One of our table went straight to this one first, then tried to convince us it was terrible in the hope of getting one handed over, no such luck it was one of the highlights of a highlight filled day.

Next course - jelly of quail, marron cream with caviar sorbet, oak moss and truffle toast. 

Theatre galore in this dish. It was explained that this is a dish to remind us of the smell of the forest.

First this box of moss with four plastic cassettes were placed on the table. 

Next the dish arrived

But we weren't ready to eat yet. First we had to take a cassette, take out the thin film in it and place on our tongue. It was like those breath freshners that were around a few years ago, but this one tasted like you would think a forest would - mossy and peaty and mushroomy. 

Then water was poured from a black kettle onto the moss and dry ice saw billowing clouds of mossy smell rolling over the table. It did smell like a forest, or maybe a wet sleeping bag. Or when you leave wet towels for too long before hanging them out. 

We were directed to start eating while the mossy smell billowed. The jelly was delicious but the truffle toast was amazing. I love truffle. I love toast, the perfect combination. 

Next. Snail Porridge. It's interesting working your way through an afternoon of eating when some of the dishes you already know well from television. Having seen it before, I still didn't know quite what to expect. 

This was the dish that probably had the best purpose made crockery. It arrived at the table as a lidded dish on a wooden tray, looking a bit more like a butter dish than a casserole. Two staff took two lids in unison so the bright green porridge was revealed together. That level of choreography adds so much to the experience.

The crockery was a little clever than initially appeared, the dish had a converse base that meant it sat perfectly on the mound in the middle of the tray. Clever. 

Fennel shaved in top, the snails were beautiful. I've never had snails before, they were meaty and tender but not a flavour I can compare. The porridge had little cubes of ham, tiny pieces of oatmeal and I suspect other "ancient grains" so it was porridge-y and chewey. 

One of our group was vegetarian, it was great fun to see the alternatives produced to avoid meat and gelatin. For this course the snails were replaced with 

Next course. Roast Marron. Marron is sooo good. This was cooked to perfection. 

Another spectacular plate, wavy edges that I suspect were hinting at waves of water. Shiitake and confit kombu added rich umami notes. The best bit of the accom apron was the sea lettuce, dried to a chip consistency it was like eating a crisp salty burst of sea water (yes I know that doesn't make logical sense but that's what it tastes like). 

If only it was sold by the bag as a chip substitute I'd be broke.

And that took us to the end of the first half of the meal, think this might be a good point to make this only part 1, stay tuned for part 2.