and starters are served on wooden platters, the cutlery is very modern, delicate Scandinavian style
and the crockery quite fine plain white.
There are a few gimmicks to get you started on this journey through history. The first is the entrance through a dark tunnel to a black glass door which opens to let you into this new world. Housed in a large high ceilinged room, seating 120, with an open kitchen at one end.
The menu also adds part of the atmosphere with historical notes on where the recipes come from and the period when the dishes first appeared.
Unfortunately on this occasion the tasting menu was not available so we tried what we could manage off the a la carte menu. Interesting little dish.
Next time we come here, and we will, I will definitely try the Salmagundy. This is a salad made up of cooked meats, seafood, vegetables, fruit, leaves, nuts and flowers dressed with oil vinegar and spices. which dates from the early 1600's.
I regret not having Heston's iconic 'Fruit Meat' , made up of Mandarin, well it looked like one, stuffed with chicken parfait and served with roast bread.
I regret not having Heston's iconic 'Fruit Meat' , made up of Mandarin, well it looked like one, stuffed with chicken parfait and served with roast bread.
Incidentally the bread here, which is hard to resist, comes from de Chirico and is finished in house.
We had decidedly boring main courses.
Fillet of Black Angus (c. 1830) mushroom ketchup and fries was a very good piece of meat but the cold mushrooms were disappointing. A $85 price tag is well above the average for a good steak too.
It did come with excellent fries.
You'd think by now I could get a pic of a dish without the odd finger getting in there!
Roast Groper, c.1830, was also quite ordinary though perfectly cooked as requested. A modest $58. Not too much to eat either it came with leaf chicory, broccoli tops and ketchup.
The sides $12 were all excellent.
Carrot and Caraway
Cabbage
Green beans and shallots
And the creamiest of mashed potato.
Desserts were more interesting. The old traditional Tipsy Cake, c.1810, which is reminiscent of trifle, has been heavily modified, using roast pineapple.
It's a great dessret and if you want to try it at home the recipe is on the I'net here
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7805c79e-2bc5-11e3-a1b7-00144feab7de.html#slide0
Sambocade (C.1390) is something special you will not get every day. A goats milk cheese cake, elderflower and apple, perry poached pear and candied walnuts, ($24). It ticks all the boxes for me with attractive presentation, variation in colour and shape and in texture, taste and flavour. Like the Delmonte suit add says: It looks good, it tastes good, it is good!
I noticed the chicken cooked with lettuce included oyster leaf, something I have not seen on a menu since we ate at Alinea in Chicago about 8 years ago. They look like an ordinary leaf but have a taste remarkably like oysters.
A strange experience.
The nitro icecream machine is another gimmick using liquid nitrogen to very rapidly freeze the ice cream mixture produces a creamy ice cream in less than a minute.
Served with a variety of toppings in a sugar cone. A nice end to the meal.
Another odd touch is a mobile sculpture which keeps time with the spit used to roast pineapples for the tipsy cake.
We enjoyed a fine French Bordeaux ($150)
which retails at $79. Mark ups on other wines were considerably greater.
Cocktails $24
Only open for a few days waiters did a sterling job of interpreting the menu and adding historical details. As their blurb puts it:
Inspired by 15th century manuscripts, to the fanciful dramatic dishes of the Royal courts of King Henry the VIII, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal offers diners a very modern interpretation of historic British gastronomy.What started as an exercise in curiosity by Heston Blumenthal, has resulted in almost 20 years of research and discovery. Alongside Ashley Palmer-Watts, the two chefs created a menu inspired by the tastes and flavours of Britain, from the farmers plate to the royal courts, offering a contemporary gastronomic insight from Medieval c.1300 to Victorian c.1800.
In all including a decent tip we paid $250/person for an extremely interesting experience accompanied by, in our opinion, good but not exquisite food.
Score 17/20
Carrot and Caraway
Cabbage
Green beans and shallots
And the creamiest of mashed potato.
Desserts were more interesting. The old traditional Tipsy Cake, c.1810, which is reminiscent of trifle, has been heavily modified, using roast pineapple.
It's a great dessret and if you want to try it at home the recipe is on the I'net here
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7805c79e-2bc5-11e3-a1b7-00144feab7de.html#slide0
Sambocade (C.1390) is something special you will not get every day. A goats milk cheese cake, elderflower and apple, perry poached pear and candied walnuts, ($24). It ticks all the boxes for me with attractive presentation, variation in colour and shape and in texture, taste and flavour. Like the Delmonte suit add says: It looks good, it tastes good, it is good!
I noticed the chicken cooked with lettuce included oyster leaf, something I have not seen on a menu since we ate at Alinea in Chicago about 8 years ago. They look like an ordinary leaf but have a taste remarkably like oysters.
A strange experience.
The nitro icecream machine is another gimmick using liquid nitrogen to very rapidly freeze the ice cream mixture produces a creamy ice cream in less than a minute.
Served with a variety of toppings in a sugar cone. A nice end to the meal.
Another odd touch is a mobile sculpture which keeps time with the spit used to roast pineapples for the tipsy cake.
We enjoyed a fine French Bordeaux ($150)
which retails at $79. Mark ups on other wines were considerably greater. Cocktails $24
Only open for a few days waiters did a sterling job of interpreting the menu and adding historical details. As their blurb puts it:
Inspired by 15th century manuscripts, to the fanciful dramatic dishes of the Royal courts of King Henry the VIII, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal offers diners a very modern interpretation of historic British gastronomy.What started as an exercise in curiosity by Heston Blumenthal, has resulted in almost 20 years of research and discovery. Alongside Ashley Palmer-Watts, the two chefs created a menu inspired by the tastes and flavours of Britain, from the farmers plate to the royal courts, offering a contemporary gastronomic insight from Medieval c.1300 to Victorian c.1800.
In all including a decent tip we paid $250/person for an extremely interesting experience accompanied by, in our opinion, good but not exquisite food.
Score 17/20
