Last weekend we learned that Heston Blumenthal had closed his Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, because 40 or so customers had reported feeling ill. I’m not surprised. I felt ill just watching the start of his new series, Feast (Channel 4, Tuesday), and not a morsel had passed my lips.
(Actually, some years ago I managed to get a table at the Fat Duck. The food was extraordinary, the price reasonable considering it was that year’s Best Restaurant in the World, but the experience was marred by the snotty French waiter who said the tasting menu was for the whole table only, so I couldn’t have it. Since I know I will never eat there again, this was both disappointing and infuriating.)
There is, I fear, some desperation in this new series. Where can Blumenthal go next? He is the absolute opposite of the Delia/Nigella ‘open the tin, whack in the cranberries, and hey presto! A delicious dinner for five unexpected guests!’ school of cookery, leaning more to the tiramisu in the CAT-scan, the tandoori in the steel smelter. Indeed, he opened by declaring, ‘Don’t try this at home!’, as if anyone could or would.
His Victorian feast — all channels are presently obsessed with the Victorians, possibly because the era harks back to when the British economy was built on solid ground and bankers weren’t like those scammers who email from Nigeria, only less honest — had little Victorian about it, apart from its references to Alice in Wonderland. For the ‘Drink Me’ bottle he liquidised the flavours, including toast, custard, cherry tart and custard, emulsified them, dyed them all pink, then put them in a glass contraption like a cross between a test tube and a hookah, so that the guests could suck up each flavour separately, without any clue provided by texture or colour.
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