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. Yum!
Then he went over to the Deep South to discover that turtles were no good for turtle soup (why for 4,000 miles with a full team? I thought Channel 4 was strapped for cash). He returned to make mock turtle soup out of a cow’s head. Then there were crisped-up crickets and meal worms injected with mayonnaise and tomato sauce, a whole edible garden, including chopped black olives for soil, and finally fluorescent absinthe jellies that were made to vibrate by having built-in — well, vibrators, of the type you might find in Anne Summers. In future episodes Heston is to demonstrate a dish made out of a chicken sewn on to a pig, and a pie containing 24 blackbirds.
It was fascinating in a grisly sort of way, but I did wonder what the point might be and whether he shouldn’t spend more time in the Fat Duck giving the surfaces a wipe-down. I suppose the aim is to make us gasp and ask what monstrosity he is going to make next, and you do wonder what he can do for an encore. Here’s my suggestion: cannibalism. He could take the liver from that snotty waiter, bung it in the CERN particle collider, and see what comes out. I might even try it myself, on toast.
The Old Guys (BBC1, Saturday) is one of those sitcoms that got no publicity at first, but has built a decent following. Last weekend’s, set in a crowded Scottish cottage, was funny but not quite funny enough. You wanted to be helpless with laughter, but couldn’t quite manage it.
Finally, Andrew Marr is presenting Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (BBC 2, Thursday). He does it very well, and shouts convincingly. The BBC’s plan seems to be to have every single programme presented by either Marr or Paxman. The trouble is, they are good, and worth the money.
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