dinner by heston blumenthal

you know when you really like something / someone, you can justify their imperfections and have incredibly high tolerance? i find myself doing that so often recently. so i might as well apply the same logic here. there were a couple of things that fell slightly below my expectations at dinner by heston blumenthal, but then again given how high i’d held my hopes, some misses were inevitable; most of thedisheslived up to it. this was a stunning meal, just enough elements of surprise to make it extraordinary, but not an overdrive into a gimmick-led idea.

back when i first started writing about food, i do remember that many a quizzical eyebrow were raised. 
there was perceived to be something rather paradoxical about the notion of a vegetarian epicure. spot on for noticing my use of the past tense. critics might have only marginally softened their patronising or unforgiving stance against my lot, but more importantly, there is now much more than meats the eye at even the restaurants renowned for championing an abundance of flesh.

case in point: dinner by heston blumenthal, the two michelin-starred restaurant synonymous with iconicdishessuch as meat fruit and rice and flesh. yet as our party of six recently experienced, it caters more than adequately for veggies too – especially if you let them know of your disposition in advance (as we did)…

the idea of the restaurant is that old british classicdishesare brought right up to date. the menu tells you the date from which the dish originates and the cookery book from which the chefs drew inspiration. it’s difficult to say what british cooking really is, aside from the english breakfast and good old roast beef, but dinner really delivers some truly beautiful british dishes. this is coupled with a beautiful dining room and truly excellent service. it’s not cheap (the place is the 7th best restaurant in the world at the moment, it was never going to be) but it’s so worth it.

when you go in to a two-star michelin restaurant, with the kind of ratings dinner by heston has, you really want to come giving it a 5/5. 

but for a vegetarian, i was really underwhelmed by the options we had. only one main course was available, the rest were starters that could be adapted to vegetarian and then converted to main. 

that said, most of thedisheswere really good for what they were (ie. starters). the dessert was exceptional, especially the tipsy cake. and so was the service. 

would definitely recommend to non-veg friends not to veg ones though.

16th march 2015 · by chris · in eating , england , london i had lunch at dinner.  i can already feel the virtual eye rolling that my readers are engaging in right now. let me explain why i made such an eye catching statement.  dinner generally is the biggest meal of the day.  in antiquity it used to be eaten at lunch.  how fitting that we were to be doing our testing at the traditional time.  dinner comes with an interesting twist.  thedishesare old.  not old like the food your old codger used to eat but old like robin hood and his band of merry men in tights.  alldisheson the menu are marked with their appropriate era of invention as part of their description. see this for an example.  date of origin helpfully located next to source of inspiration. first up, to whet the appetite a bit. some white and brown bread.  nothing too special.  not like the lovely bread i had had at other places, like the ledbury .  i am looking at you with your bacon bread.  not bad.  but just a bit ordinary. roasted scallops with cucumber ketchup.  the scallops were cooked just right and the cucumber ketchup (pureed cucumber) added an interesting dimension.  the sea with a light dusting of the land. next up, the meat fruit.  the item i have heard so much about.  on the left is just normal bread.  on the right, something that looks like sort of a fruit complete with leaf right?  why is it called a meat fruit? cut it open to see.  this fruit has hidden inside it chicken liver parfait.  a very unusual combination.  the sweet skin contrasting with the savory liver.  when eaten with the crispy bread to add a crunchy contrast to the soft texture of the meat fruit, this was an eye opening dish! having devoured the starters, we expected great things

i’ve lived in london all my life and eaten in a vast amount of restaurants, but in the last couple of years one has been picking at my intrigue for a while and i finally took the time to visit – dinner by heston blumenthal at the mandarin oriental hotel. dinner by heston currently holds a whopping two prestigious michelin stars and has been voted no.5 in the worlds 50 best restaurants list.

the restaurant is headed up by the talented ashley palmer-watts, who is the former head chef of heston’s other restaurant, the fat duck. interestingly enough if you search for ashley’s name on google the first result coming up is people enquiring to his salary – weirdly. the idea and ethos behind the menu here is about recreating british culinary history. recipes (according to the website) date back as far as the 1300’s but have been given a thoroughly modern makeover. it’s a very interesting concept which i can see the idea behind, but when we dined heredishesfelt too familiar already – either that or everyone else is copying them?

i came to this restaurant with completely no idea of what to expect. i’d ignored reviews and shied away from photos as i didn’t want anyone elses experience to get in the way of mine, but from the moment we arrived everything seemed a little relaxed and a bit clumsy. with two michelin stars and commanding high prices such as here – they need to create an experience. the bar for example, where you enter lacked atmosphere and felt as cold as an airport waiting lounge with garish hotel lobby tables and a bleak 90’s styled bar. when time to dine arrived we also had to prompt someone we were still here. the dining room did have some nice features such as the centre kitchen area with chefs cooking away and some sublime views over hyde park, the rest of the room however was nothing spectacular. we chose to eat from the set-menu, something i’m told was a mistake (not by staff of course). a starter of hay smoked salmon c.1730 with smoked beetroot, pickled lemon salad, parsley and sorrel was a perfectly lovely dish to start, although perhaps a little small in portion size (i should reveal i’m actually quite small). hay smoked salmon seems to be the in trend across london right now – maybe dinner by heston blumenthal kicked it off, who knows? either way it felt too familiar and i was expecting to come here and eat more of history.

a ragu of pigs ear on toast with anchovy, onions and parsley was finally something which got me excited – it sounded unusual. not unusual in its flavours, but more its textures, the mixture of them and cooking techniques. pigs ears were i’m sure cooked slowly as they had a very soft, glutinous jelly like texture which melted in the mouth upon entry (that sounds wrong). the flavours were very rich, deep and concentrated and seasoning could not be faulted, the balance was simply perfect. however – the bread was a little soggy. intentional or not – i didn’t enjoy it this way. the temperature of the food was tepid at best, something no food should be. hot or cold – no excuses.

now you may think i’m going in to too much detail or you love this restaurant more than i do – so hate me already but this was my experience from my personal meal and no one else’s. we moved on to the mains anddishessuch as this roast quail c.1590 was yet another tasty dish which failed to get us excited. again the temperature was lukewarm (i hate that word) at best and the portion size was abysmally small – they could have at least told me i’d be needing a side.

the most accomplished and definitely the best dish we ate here at dinner was this c.1954 roast pollock with a buttery parsnip puree. again it was by no means breaking any boundaries or providing a different dish experience which i’d struggle to find elsewhere but i will say this – the cooking of the pristine white fleshed fish, the seasoning and the puree were faultless. i think my main concern was simply expecting too much. with two michelin stars behind its name – i thought there’d have been more originality to thedisheshere. were these rather ordinarydishesbecause i ate from the set-menu? personally it shouldn’t be the reason and one restaurant can not rely simply on its two signaturedishes– meat fruit and tipsy cake – both of which i did not try.

a silky smooth chocolate pre-dessert later our second best dish of our meal ended up being this millionaire shortbread c.1730 – finished off with crystalized chocolate and vanilla ice cream. stunning ice cream too. the dish had just about everything going for it from its picture perfect presentation, right through to its rich and glossy well-tempered chocolate, all the way thorough to its crumbly biscuit base. this is how you do dessert and make every bite a joy to the palate. the tamarind prune tart was also a faultless beauty in terms of its cooking but for me the prune element too discreet – i really wanted to taste it.

it was almost time to finish up here, but not without sampling the theatrics of liquid nitrogen instant made ice cream right before your eyes. again a little eye watering with its pricing you can’t forget the time and effort which goes into creating this small experience, which actually still sticks in your mind days after. dinner by heston blumenthal was certainly an experience i’m glad i had, but for now i’ve not been left with any longing to return anytime soon. if dinner by heston blumenthal want to serve a set-menu that’s fine – but if you’ve got two michelin stars and ranked the 5th best restaurant in the world then perhaps a sub standard menu like this one, shouldn’t be served.

all thedisheswere so good and perfectly executed. we also loved that each dish was quite unique and stylistically different from other (french) fine dining places we are used to. our favoritedisheswere oxtopus starter and pigeon main dish as well as the pineapple dessert!

the service was friendly and attentive. would love to come again.

fantastic food and service. very good wine recommendations for food matching. we had lunch set menu which was very good value for london. all thedisheswe tried were refine and faultless. love it!

we celebrated our first anniversary dinner at this place
i would always get fascinated by watching heston blumenthal on master chef and here we were
we ordered the standard hits
meat fruit
tipsy cake
steak and pork chop

meat fruit stole the show . the rest of the food was pretty okayish
may b next time we try otherdishesthat suit are palate

if ever there was a contrast between the old culinary world and the new, this was it.  lunch was at a brash up and coming restaurant in a cool part of town; dinner was at a 5 star hotel in the heart of london.  more so, it was at a restaurant credited with reinventing historical britishdishesand giving them the heston blumenthal treatment.

the best meal i've ever had. from thr start to the end. absolutely a must for every foodie. the service was great and thedishesunbeatable.

booked a table through opentable and was able to be seated 10min earlier than expected. the menu set lunch was chosen for two, with a sharing experience in mind. that being, both starters and maindisheswere eaten along with the best two looking desserts out of three. in a few words, this was the best meal of my life, starting with the anchovies, the pork belly or the rare salmon, ending in a peach flavoured ice cream with amazing things on the side.

my growing fascination with medieval history lead me to explore medieval cuisine. food has always been a defining element of any culture and our culinary culture reflects our history and identity.  what fascinates me even more is learning what people ate at that time and that gives us a deeper understanding on how they lived.  heston blumenthal, one of the rock stars of the culinary world explores the medieval era for recipes and magically transforms them into something different and mind-boggling. like his most famous dish the "meat fruit", a surprise chicken liver parfait coated in orange fruit jelly. it is velvety light but rich and exquisitely good. definitely the highlight of our meal.  so here it is, the magnificent medievaldisheswe had during our visit.  eat your history.

i was looking forward to eat at dinner for over a month. i put this on my london itinerary then. i'll dive straight into my experience:
the staff:
everyone at the mandarin oriental, from the red jacket bellhop, the black suit concierge to the restaurant staff were courteous and delightful to have my sister and me there.
the staff at the restaurant were helpful, polite and patient explaining every dish. the sommelier helped me pair my wine and food.
the food:
i had ordereddishesfrom the a la carte, whereas my sister went with the set lunch menu. the starter- meat fruit, was my favourite. a chicken liver parfait disguised as a mandarin (gotta love heston).
the staff let us into the pass and in the kitchen, showed us around, explained how thedisheswere made and promptly answered all the questions i had about the food or about heston.
thanks guys! was an amazing experience.

lunch at "dinner by heston blumenthal”

we decide to experience the brilliant heston food in london at ‘dinner by heston blumenthal’, mandarin oriental. just overlooking hype park it’s a great place to have a meal. with the sun shining in london, it couldn't have been a better day.

heston blumenthal is the mad scientist of the culinary world, coming up with out of the world ideas. he always comes up with weird fooddishesthat will really amuse you, confuse you and at the same time are freaking delicious! he is a magician and an artist with food. he makes you believe what you see is not what you taste.

to book a table at dinner by heston blumenthal you can use their open table widget on their website. though keep in mind you need a debit/credit card as you have to provide them with the details of your card incase you cancel at the last minute.

we had our reservation on saturday and thus couldn't go with the set course as that is only offered from mon - fri. so we went with the ala carte menu. the menu is filled with a variety of differentdishesand some unusual things, just the way heston would have wanted it to be. the menu is inspired by historic british gastronomy with a futuristic touch.

we guess we should start telling you what we ate now, before you stop reading!

so for the starters we had :

salamagundy (c.1720) made of chicken oysters, salsify, marrow bone & horseradish cream.

earl grey tea cured salmon (c.1730) made of lemon salad, gentleman’s relish, wood sorrel & smoked roe.

frumenty (c.1390) made of grilled octopus, smoked sea broth, pickled dulse & lovage.

all thedisheslooked stunning and had some kind of symmetry going on. they tasted so delicious that we wish we could have licked the plates clean. oysters were our favourite but just by a tad and we would have been happy with any of them without a thought.

for the mains we decided to share a powdered duck breast (c.1670) made of smoked confit fennel, spiced beetroot & umbles.

though we ordered only 1 main it was great for the restaurant to divide it into 2 plates so we didn't have to fight for the last bite. the beetroot puree was so rich and tasty it went perfectly with the duck, just like a match made in heaven!

it finally was time for dessert and we ordered a spring tart made of gariguette strawberries, rose, lovage and basil yoghurt and goats milk ice cream.

the basil yogurt was something we had never tried before and was quite good. the dessert looked immaculate and we managed to scrape ever last bit and some more.

though the portions look small, they pack quite a punch. a 3 course meal is filling though you may still have some space left, however, the beauty of the experience is absolutely satisfying. but keep in mind it will make a significant hole in your pocket at the end ( totally worth it! )

dinner by heston blumenthal is officially the best food we have eaten till now and we hope to visit them again soon to try out their set course menu.