Paul Wilkinson

Review of The Fat Duck "Gastronomic Rest...

Incredible

Incredible
It's hard to know where to start with a review of this place so I'm just going to mention my personal highlights.

I had a call a couple of weeks beforehand from the team and they asked a few interesting questions which were used to personalise bits of the meal - the highlight of this was the "toy" in the cereal box which was a small coin box you had to assemble - the logo of the university sports club where myself and my fellow diners originally met had been laser etched on the side of the box. This drew gasps from all of us and wasn't the only element they incorporated into the meal from the same inspiration.

It's a classic but my favourite course was probably "Sound of the sea" - the plate of food just looked like someone had scooped up a small bit of beach and arranged it nicely on the glass to the point that you didn't really want to put it in your mouth for fear of gritty sand but once you got over that and put it in your mouth it tasted amazing. I know there's not much skill in the preparation of sashimi compared to some dishes but the quality of ingredients shone through here too.

The other stand out for me was the desserts, as part of the main course we had "Botrytis" which had an amazing number of components that all went really well together. The "counting sheep" dish was light with everything very white served on a white cloud like plate with some of the components floating in the air in the centre of the table - even the lighting on the table changed at this point, a degree of control I doubt many other places have or even consider. Despite the seeming uniformity of the dish it had a number of great flavours that again all went very nicely together.

The theatrical flourishes were impressive too, my favourite was probably the mechanical sweetshop which delivered some of the petit fours, i'll not say much more though as I don't want to spoil the experience for others but it brought the story of the meal together and added a bit more personalisation.

Overall a great meal and an incredible experience, currently my best of all time!