dinner by heston blumenthal

certainly one of the most pleasurable meals i’ve had for a long time with the food and service bring a smile to my face on numerous occasions. is it london’s version of the fat duck? no and i don’t really think that it is trying to be.

hmm, is it good - yes. is it amazing - not sure. haven't tasted any of those flavours before - so that was exciting - just not sure if it was value for money. should you go ? yes. twice ? not too sure. waiter was nice.

wow!. totally loved it from the understated decor, watching what was going on the kitchen to the fabulous tipsy tart - can't wait to go again!!

oh what fun!. one thing bound to put me off a hyped-up restaurant in a glamorous location with a celebrity chef hugging the the celebrity restaurant reviewer at the next table, would be the service. or lack of. but not here - the service is absolutely charming, knowledgeable, and (gasp) comprehensible.

the food was delicious... but then i expected it to be so, both from rave reviews and from the price you pay. absolutely delicious if not sock-knocking-off. i love the basis for the menu - this adds interest to what would otherwise be "just" lovely food. highlights for us were the tipsy cake and the meatfruit.

wines by the glass were of a sufficient range and i was very happy with the recommendations made by the sommelier.

in summary: great food; not the best meal i've ever had, but a hugely enjoyable experience. was this partly the influence of hype? absolutely - but who doesn't want to be at the coolest party in town?

if there existed a movie that all your best friends loved, had received rave reviews from every movie critic on the planet, and had smashed all box-office records, would you be interested in seeing it? the answer seems obvious - of course you would, even out of sheer curiosity, and although there would be a risk your inflated expectations didn't quite match up to the reality, you wouldn't blame anyone but yourself, you'd probably still have a good time, and anyway what do you have to lose? and yet for some reason, when a restaurant receives similarly universal praise, there are certain parties who, instead of wanting to see what all the fuss is about, instinctively brace to the opposite position, desperate to not debase themselves by accidentally having anything so trivial as a popular opinion. i find the psychology of this quite hard to fathom - why would you deny yourself the pleasure of a fantastic meal just to mark yourself as separate from the herd? there's no shame in liking some

oh my lordy ...... i had been looking forward to this lunch since we booked before christmas and it delivered on all fronts. three courses with heston and ashley will take you to foodie heaven, put a big smile on your face and oh so gently take a couple of hundred pounds from your wallet.

given the acres of coverage online and in the press i don't think that there is much for me to add. if you want to keep it cheapish tap water is available and the set menu of 3 courses for £28 is a bargain. if you look hard there are a few bottles of wine under £40 and there is a decent selection by the glass.

the meat fruit starter is just divine; a picture on the plate, it melted in the mouth and was like a lighter version of foie gras. b went for the roast scallops which came with a cucumber ketchup and borage; quite different and very tasty.

we washed this down with a bottle of the white il cantante, etna which was crisp, fragrant and complex - not a great fan of simply red but mr hucknall is turning out some great wine. i also had a glass of a rich robust red; the tributo, tejo 2008 which i would recommend very highly.

main courses and desserts were all top notch; not many people have mentioned the fish but b's roast turbot with cockle ketchup and leaf chicory was damn fine. if all cockles tasted like this i would be giving up the clam tomorrow.

more bread, not made in the kitchen but bought in, was offered when we had scoffed our initial offering. service was attentive but not over-bearing; if you enquired about a dish or a wine the staff knew their stuff and could talk at length and with insight.

the room is well thought out; the tables are nicely presented and well-spaced. wherever you are seated you will have a good view of the room, the kitchen or the park; if you are lucky you will have a combination of all three. it reminded me of one of my all time favourites: jean georges next to central park.

just one strange thing caught my eye during our lunch which i mentioned to b and she concurred with my observation. the trousers worn by the lovely lady waiting staff are just not cut right; i have never seen so much vpl in one sitting. heston himself was buzzing about during the few hours we were there but i would think he is much too focused on the food at the moment to have given much attention to the look of his ladies front of house. hopefully he will soon be turning his attention to these small details.

we left around 5pm slightly heavy around the middle but light of heart and with a happy disposition as we made our way through the crowds down to green park and the short hop home.

having got this fine dining malarkey out of the way for the year looking forward to getting back down to earth in new cross tomorrow night at meateasy …….

believe the hype. run, don't walk to try and score yourself a table at the amazing dinner, heston blumenthal's latest offering. the restaurant is on the first floor of the mandarin oriental hotel , just upstairs from the excellent bar boulud , making the hotel somewhat of a food lovers paradise. entry to the restaurant is through a glass fronted wine cellar and then once inside the dining area is huge with soaring ceilings, picture windows facing out to hyde park and a glass fronted kitchen delivering the ultimate in food porn theatre. every detail has been finely thought through from the jelly mould light fittings, to the tudor rose ceiling decorations and the huge mechanical clock mechanism that turns the spit in the kitchen. meat fruit the menu is concise but overwhelming, there are only eight starters, nine mains and six desserts but it is almost impossible not to want everything on there. the dishes just sound so intriguing. there is meat fruit, rice and flesh, powdered duck and t

i was lucky enough to be invited to the soft launch of the restaurant in the few weeks before it formally opened yesterday, 31st january 2011. the website describes ‘dinner’ as “the main meal of the day, taken either around midday

few restaurant openings have had the buzz that dinner has had in the past year. foodies have been collectively freaking out ever since it was announced that heston, *the* heston, would be opening up his first restaurant in 16 years right smack dab in the middle of london, and with good reason - it is pretty damn exciting. but was it worth it? in a word, yes. though not the dining experience i would imagine his three michelin star the fat duck to be, dinner is excellent. i wouldn't call it earth-shattering, but from beginning to end, there were a lot of ooh's and ahh's at our table. i dined there with my pal, gary , for what was i thought going to be a posh, but competitively priced 3-course lunch for £28. it turned out, however, that deal is only available monday through friday, which meant while we got to choose from the whole menu, we also had to pay quite a bit more than we thought. starters were in the £10-£15 range, mains around the £30 mark and desserts about £8-10. expensiv

dinner by heston blumenthal is heston's first london restaurant, and opened on 31st january 2011. most restaurant critics have not published their reviews yet, so we decided to have our chinese new year eve's meal there solely based on blumenthal's reputation (as the chef of fat duck , the 3 michelin starred restaurant, one of the top 3 restaurants in the world), and that of the mandarin oriental. it will be interesting to see what our views are compared to those of the professionals. meat fruit (c.13th to 15th century) was my favourite starter as it was fun and playful. we were happy to see the mandarin as in chinese, it has the same pronunciation as 'gold' which is what we like having for chinese new year! what looked like a perfect mandarin was actually a chicken liver parfait enclosed in a thin layer of mandarin 'gel'. the parfait was smooth and it was perfect with the subtle mandarin gel. what you see is not what you eat is also the signature of fat duck. does that mean dinner is

the follow up restaurant is never fun. it's the difficult second album. the time to make good on the unprecedented and unexpected success of your debut effort, and start navigating the treacherous waters of sophomore slumps and shitty sequels. as you try to build on the glory of your early triumphs you can only two ways - up or down. you end up with a terminator 2 or a jaws 2 , a 'morning glory' or a 'second coming' (although, incidentally i'm part of the .01% of the population that prefers the latter to stone roses' debut). heston blumental's first restaurant used to be the best restaurant in the universe, until el bulli and then noma swiped his crown. the fat duck is still currently on the podium though, swinging the bronze. so to say expectations are high is to say muburak is a little short on mates right now. lesser chefs would be sitting back on the accolade and taking that title to their grave with gradually diminishing pride, rather than trying

dinner by heston blumenthal was probably the most highly anticipated restaurant opening in the uk in 2010. the problem was (?) that the opening scheduled somewhat in