My wife took me to Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck last night and I feel compelled to talk about my experience… because it was, genuinely, an experience.

Initial Experience Wasn’t Looking Good

It didn’t start well to be fair. My wife spent an hour on the phone to book a cancellation spot, she couldn’t actually book a table despite them taking bookings two months in advance. I guess this demonstrates the level of demand.

The website was very poor. It should be there to make bookings easier, both for the customer and for the booking administrators. If I compare this to L’Ortalan, which we went to a couple of months ago, with online booking and text message confirmation, it couldn’t be more different (Heston, if you want a website, feel free to contact me).

So, we got the call on Monday that we had a booking for Friday. If they are trying to build Fat Duck exclusivity by making the booking process hard, it didn’t wash with me, but I was genuinely excited about going.

Then Friday came, we drove to Bray and despite being a small village, the restaurant is not exactly sign-posted well. Trying to use an image driven website on an iPhone was impossible so we had to call to ask.

We finally found it, and on entering, I wasn’t blown away. The Fat Duck is a small restaurant with tables quite close to each other and a LOT of waiters (this made sense later), many of whom were French. I understand why many French people work in these top restaurants, but some had accents so thick I couldn’t understand them. After a £28 glass of rosé champagne each, the menus came and this is where my experience began to change.

The Fat Duck Experience Begins

Firstly, the menu was like nothing I have ever seen before, in the style of the little ‘magic’ wallets you used to get when you were a kid, where it opens both ways and keeps going. The 18-course, £130 per head, taster menu just had to be done, with the famous dishes of Snail Porridge and Bacon and Egg Ice Cream.

Order placed, and to be honest, I still didn’t get all the hype. I wasn’t fully sold.

Then the dishes started coming out, the first being a small palette cleanser of a mousse, frozen (by the table) in Nitro (-195 degrees) that you eat in one bite with lime sprayed above the table. The Fat Duck experience had begun.

I won’t go through each dish but the attention to detail on ‘experience’ with every dish was amazing, including my highlights:

• A dish of seafood made to look like a sea shore, complete with an iPod delivered in a conch, with seaside sounds, that you wear while eating the dish.
• A cup of tea that when you drink it leaves one side of your mouth cold and the other hot.
• The presentation of the ‘breakfast course’ including the amazing Egg and Bacon Ice cream ‘cooked’ at the table.
• A small ice cream cone, complete with a leaflet you read before you eat it to explain the history of this specific cone.

Without doubt, I know that it will be unlikely that I will ever experience such a gastronomic experience as I did last night. The Fat Duck can justify their bill (and hype) accordingly.

The food itself, the attention to detail and the presentation (almost like a mini stage show for each dish) explains this. The food was genuinely innovative and the service was like no other place I had been to when the food started to roll… I counted 12 waiters for the (approx) 18 tables. Without doubt, all the other diners were as child-like in amazement of the experience as we were, some even taking photos of the dishes as they came.

One Time Experience?

That said, now I have experienced The Fat Duck, I don’t feel the need to do it again. This creates an interesting point for me… repeat business.

I would suggest that most people in that restaurant were there for the experience like a tourist, as was I, and there were plenty of photos being taken and “woops” and “whahs” when the dishes arrived. And at (in our case) £220 per head, it’s a LOT of money for a meal.

And, I can only assume that the booking process is difficult for a reason. I can’t imagine any business as successful as The Fat Duck would make it that clunky due to ignorance.

But in terms of marketing, they achieve one amazing phenomena. They create an experience that people want HAVE to tell their friends about. A bit like me now.

My advice if you are thinking of going (and I would recommend to at least try it… Save up your money for a couple of months, prepare to be patient when booking and take a journey through that Fat Duck Taster Menu.