Discover

Philosophy

When I first served crab ice cream in 1998 (which people actually tasted differently if it was called Frozen Crab Bisque), I realised I had discovered a new world of cooking.

I embarked on an incredible journey into that world, which led me to realise that, ultimately, the pleasure we get from eating comes from our brain and, in particular, from our memories and associations and the emotions they trigger.

Discovering fire and eating the food cooked on it helped to turn ape into man by growing and developing the brain. One of the unique gifts we have as humans is imagination. When you add imagination to memory, all kinds of wonderful things can happen. We only need to summon our feelings of curiosity, adventure and discovery to be transported to our most magical memories.

My exploration of multi-sensory dining eventually inspired another landmark Fat Duck dish, Sound of the Sea: seafood and vegetation composed to look like the sea lapping up against the shore, sitting on a shadowbox filled with real sand, and served with an iPod and earbuds playing the sound of waves.

This dish had an incredible impact, because it nudged you. It didn’t tell you what to think or feel. It asked a question – which seaside memory does this take you to?

The dish was a game changer.

A particular food can be rooted in a moment, a location, a childhood memory. What we see, hear, taste, touch and smell determines our perception of flavour: a name, a smell, the lighting, a gesture, a style of lettering, what somebody says or what they wear can all influence our experience of what we eat. We evolved through eating the food that we cooked. Our relationship with it is so intertwined with our nostalgia that a trigger (albeit a very personal one) can transport us to a place of culinary wonderment. And that’s where we want to take people.

Heston

The History of The Fat Duck

When he was 16, Heston visited the three-star L’Oustau de Baumanière in Provence and fell in love with cooking, especially the theatre and multisensory magic of it.

For the next decade or so, he taught himself to cook, inspired by the French classical tradition and by Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, which encouraged him to question everything, including the science and psychology of cuisine. Even before establishing a restaurant, he had already developed a revolutionary technique, Triple-cooked Chips, which has become a common feature on menus worldwide.

In 1995 he bought a disreputable pub in Bray and opened it as The Fat Duck. Although it began as a French bistro, Heston’s restless curiosity meant that it was soon serving some of the original dishes for which the restaurant has become famous, such as Jelly of Quail (in which Heston employed the then little-known technique of ice filtration), Caviar and White Chocolate (a combination that inspired a new culinary movement called Flavour Pairing) and Nitro-poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse – the first dish using liquid nitrogen to be served in a restaurant.

Heston championed sous-vide cookery in dishes like Roast Foie Gras. Other dishes, such as Egg & Bacon Ice Cream, were simply ground-breaking creations that extended the culinary repertoire. His recipe for Crab Ice Cream developed the concept of multisensory perception in cooking.

The Fat Duck gained its first Michelin star in 1999 and its third in 2004, making it one of the fastest to earn three stars. It has also been voted No. 1 in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Ever since, The Fat Duck has maintained its reputation for innovation, pioneering new techniques and ingredients (like gellan gum, which enabled the restaurant to serve Hot and Iced tea, which is a different temperature depending on which side of the cup you sip it from), and pushing the boundaries of culinary expectation in dishes like Botrytis Cinerea (which captures the incredibly complex flavour profile of Château d’Yquem) and Mock Turtle Soup, inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.