Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Dinner by Heston Melbourne (Crown Entertainment Centre) 23/10/2015

We are exceptionally lucky in Melbourne to be able to enjoy a sort of culinary tourism without leaving town. This, of course, is mostly because of the vast variety of ethnic restaurants many serving extremely authentic regional food. Dinner by Heston (DbH) provides a different sort of eating experience. Using the best of local ingredients and modern kitchen equipment DbH takes on a stroll through English cuisine from the 1300's to the 18th century. Of course you don't have to eat off a trencher, a flat round of bread which could be eaten with sauce at the end of the meal or given to the poor. Indeed although the tables are bare

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.