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db Eats: The Fat Duck Christmas dinner

21 December 2023 By Douglas Blyde

Douglas Blyde enjoys a festive feast at the legendary The Fat Duck in Bray. While there, he tries Christmas classics such as prawn cocktail, mince pieces and Port, but will the Heston Blumenthal twist go too far?

Adhering to the motto, “question everything”, of former credit controller turned self-taught chef, Heston Blumenthal, The Fat Duck was praised as “the top of the totem for inquisitive epicurean eating” by the late, inimitable, AA Gill, while Square Meal reported it delivered “five hours of sheer magic.” We reserved our seats for the performance that is the annual Christmas banquet along with the lilac of braces sporting restaurant authority, Richard Vines.

Design

“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath” said actor, Michael Caine of his calling, a sentiment pertinent to the three Michelin-starred Fat Duck, whose waddling of 90 staff cater to a maximum of 42 guests per sitting. These enter via the premise’s only door, through which everyone and everything must pass, to be instantly faced with a mirror image of themselves on one wall and a celestial hologram in a hearth on the other which offers what one staff member, or “storyteller”, called “an insight into Heston’s world of curiosity.” With art-free walls and low beams, the dining room beyond is at first hushed and always dimmed, with calibrated, globular spotlights orbiting tables. These vary in hue according to the course served. As Christmas crackers snapped, bringing the glorious aroma of silver fulminate, the atmosphere warmed.

The thick River Café blue carpet leads upstairs to loos with heated seats which is where one guidebook inspector remembers “having to be helped out after overindulging” by his wife, a former super-yacht chef. Such facilities are reached via a partition of glazed windows which blink into clarity as guests pass, revealing curved wine racks above which a multi-sensory gantry operates as part of the Sensorium menu. Combining this stash with the three fridges below brings the inventory to approximately 2,300 bottles of wine. Also on the landing is the outsize Robert Higgs pocket watch which ticked down The Fat Duck’s “sojourn” in a Melbourne casino while the building, formerly known as The Ringers pub, was refurbished. Also on this floor is a stripped-to-the-bones wall showing the modest, though lasting, 16th century fabric.

Drinks

“Be humble, be human” is how head sommelier, Melania Bellesini, describes her modus operandi. The victor of the Italian Sommelier Association Best Junior Sommelier in Italy at just 16 years old, Bellesini went on to grand hotels in Lake Garda, the Alps, and the USA. On reaching England, she attended two interviews in London and Bray. “While I’d heard the name, ‘Heston’, I didn’t realise what a completely different world he had created in rural Berkshire,” she recalls.

Bellesini, sporting a pin depicting the pink-skinned Koshu grape, cites previous head sommelier, Isa Bal, who later launched Bermondsey’s Trivet with former Fat Duck head chef, Jonny Lake, as her mentor. “He helped me progress from chef de rang to joining the sommelier team, always allowing me to participate in tastings.” Today, Bellesini oversees eight sommeliers, for whom she strives to provide a work-life balance, including former DJ turned assistant head sommelier, Raku Oda, himself a Koshu enthusiast and sake sage.

Accessed via an easy-to-use console, Bellesini’s 65-page drinks list is wide-ranging, taking in vintage ciders, a Swedish ice wine drawn from a chestnut barrel, and rare Ratafia, with wines stretching from near and far, including Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia. Though the Champagne cart went into abeyance, a precise Champagne selection is supplemented by sparkling wines from nearby Chilterns estate, Hundred Hills, where the sommelier team participates in annual harvests.

Wines by the glass range from 2021 Turkish Fume Blanc 900 (Sevilen Guney Denizli) to Sassicaia 2009, and the 28-year-old Trockenbeerenauslese from the Pfalz (Sämling 88, Weingut Lang). Warre’s may also be portioned from Heston’s birth year of 1966. Circa 90 bottles cost fewer than £100, with Portugal and Greece offering particular value. By the bottle, prices start at £48 for the 2022 Puglian Chardonnay, Sea Change, to Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2001 at £25,000 which seems decent value given a well-known wine showroom in Mayfair retails it for £7,600 more. Meanwhile, Le Pin 2006 is yours for £4,900.

To accompany the festive menu, Bellesini created a quintet of pairings. At £170, we largely adhered to the globe-trotting “Myrrh”, while the more premium “Frankincense” (£420) included bottles with greater age, such as Terlaner Cuvée Riserva, Nova Domus 2010, and 30-year-old Graham’s Tawny. At £1,700, “Gold” shimmers with such delights at Etienne Sauzet 2012 Le Montrachet, and d’Yquem 2017. There is also a dedicated sake pairing titled “Kurisumasu O Matte Iru” (Waiting for Christmas), including the barrel-aged Kijoshu from Toyama, while other options by the glass include Katsuyama and white and pink IBI. The final pairing is allotted to those “who must drive the sleigh” said Bellisini, and therefore titled “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” (£120). On the subject of zero ABV drinks, the first liquid a guest encounters is water from a carafe containing pink crystals “for positivity”, said our server.

Dishes

The kitchen is led by executive head chef, Edward Cook, who has worked here for close to 14 years, and his just-promoted head chef, Karl Jaques, formerly of City Social.

Beyond a wax seal, the menu was presented as a starry advent calendar, with hints on the courses unpeeled beyond windows. While a previous Christmas menu followed the potentially melancholic life cycle of a Christmas tree, this year was about “clichés”, said Bellesini, as summed in the preview text issued to entice potential guests: “There’ll be sprouts, chocolate, guilty pleasures, baubles, mulled wine, indulgence and magical transformations.”

Setting the scene, lunch opened with a refreshing, evanescent take on the 1970s hit Snowball cocktail, poached in liquid nitrogen, then zested over a flame.

Next, starring Piedmontese pine liqueur, Green Chartreuse, Manzanilla Micaela, and two potato-based vodkas, Arbike from Angus, and Edwards 1902 from Yorkshire, a Pine Martini brought body and sweetness to a dish of spiced Jerusalem artichoke tuilles, pine, and smoked cumin, finished with tarragon, parsley, chervil, green fruits and fennel, its scaly appearance debatably closer to a “hedgehog” than the intended pinecone. Offered in tandem, the non-alcoholic alternative to the Martini combined Seedlip’s Spice and Garden, Everleaf Marine, and Fox pine syrup, being whistle clean and blotter dry, like the most artisan of mouthwashes.

To set the scene for “Decorating the Tree”, a gaudily illuminated tabletop Christmas tree arrived. Served in a custom-made bauble, truffled egg with smoked salmon cream concealed bubble tea-like salmon roe, into which we added fish flakes made of potato, parsley, tarragon and chive, lemon puffs, and black pepper wholemeal Cheerio’s, drawn from a cereal variety pack. For the second aspect, we were instructed to open a present from beneath the tree bearing our names, spreading the ensuing glossy bauble on a toast served on Attraction crockery, bearing Paul Smith-esque stripes. This plum and chicken liver parfait evoked the meat fruit of Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. With this multifarious selection, Bellesini poured the incisive, sherbet-evoking 2019 Blanc de Blancs from the Western Cape’s highest-lying, and remote, wine farm, Cederberg.

Next, a tercet of dishes paid homage to the humble prawn cocktail. A glass of profound, umami-rich saffron-scented, langoustine consommé was poured over Fat Duck logo branded ice, which spun like Torvill and Dean when swirled. Langoustine carpaccio, topped with home-smoked Imperial caviar, concealed baby gem and avocado. Finally, served in a mouth-blown, mind-blowingly slender, Usuhari Daiginjo Shotoku glass, sourced by Isa Bal and Jonny Lake when they visited Tokyo, TOKU Junmai Daiginjo from Japan’s frozen North dovetailed with the subtle vanilla notes of the triptych. “I would not serve wine with this course,” said Bellesini. This proved our favourite savoury dish.

While pouring a subtle 2022 Vouvray from Marc Brédif, a producer known to have a particularly striking cellar with a rotunda at its core, Bellesini revealed she likes to compare wine with people, this Chenin being “a lady with blonde hair, blue eyes, who is light in spirit.” This accompanied a cross-section of scallop rising like a cliff from a silken almond velouté, oriented on chocolate jam, its bitterness intriguing against the sweetness of the shellfish and the tenderly aromatic almond. Bellesini also shared her non-alcoholic pairing, which combines Chardonnay from “juice maestro,” Alain Milliat, with grapefruit, toasted hazelnuts, star anise, and vanilla, leading to an appealing, convincing, long-lived shortbread character.

For “’Twas the night before Christmas”, a flaming fireplace moored tableside, framing a duet of mince pies “for Santa,” said the white-gloved storyteller, with “gold carrots for the reindeer”. Topped with caviar, the pies contained meat, as per tradition, in this case, short rib of wagyu beef with Lardo di Colonnata and spiced fruit beneath a skilfully slender pastry. The gold carrots, meanwhile, dissolved when stirred into a sherry and beef consommé. 24 carat carrots, if you will. Heightening the mood, Fat Duck branded crackers contained a wooden yoyo, spinning top, and paper crowns.

Behind door eleven of the advent calendar was not the introduction to a dish, but an idealised “smell of Christmas”, based on Blumenthal’s memories of “fires on red leather sofas, the adults drinking merrily and smoking cigars and pipes”. Door 12 was a portal to the most substantial, and least eccentric dish: “King’s Venison (C.1066)”. Arranged on a platinum-rimmed plate which would cost, like today’s menu, around £500 apiece to replace according to the kitchen, saddle of wild fallow deer from the Reeth estate in Yorkshire came with chewy smoked chestnuts, Brussels sprout leaves, sadly, reticent of aroma truffle matchsticks, sleek beetroot, and a dish of “umbles”, comprising veal sweetbread, spelt risotto, and being slightly messy to scoop though delicious, Madeira gel. This was paired with the precise, powerful, impressive 2022 Salsedine Primitivo, Richard Geoffroy’s wholemeal bread scented IWA Assemblage 3 Junmai Daiginjo sake, served warm, to make it “spark on the palate” said Bellesini, as well as a plush, zero-alcohol beetroot, blackcurrant, clove, star anise, cardamon and vanilla option.

Billed as “Cheese, nuts and Port”, the cheese course manifested as a sort of cheesecake made of Riseley ewes’ cheese and white chocolate, accompanied by assorted candied fruits and nuts, a cranberry fluid gel, and a “walnut” comprising Manjari dark chocolate with popping candy. The final component, which we had glimpsed being churned on a kitchen tour, was an evocative Port slushy.

The famous Botrytis Cinerea pudding ensued, originally created for a Chateau d’Yquem dinner, including, not as per a recent Daily Mail article, literally “edible mould”, but citrus ice cream, an olive-like sphere of passion fruit, apricot foam, and dehydrated red grape skins, atop a “soil” of powdered Parmesan and Roquefort. Seemingly untweaked for the Christmas menu, it was paired with Moscatel Caesar Florido, Dorado, Chipiona 2016, and, punching above its price, gracefully developing Chartreuse de Coutet Sauternes from 2007.

Bringing the lunch to an end, now that it was nearly time for dinner, a candle was brought, snuffed, then, without a word, promptly cut and plated; it transpired to be made of passion fruit.

Last word

Although perhaps not a true Christmas feast, given the avoidance of turkey or goose, today’s experience, running to almost five hours, had zipped along, with neither of us wanting to escape a meal of many moments. Between Vines and us, we realised we had accrued eight visits to this unprepossessing former pub. We reflected, at nearly 30 years old, The Fat Duck still has a sense of dynamism, and based on today’s visit, merriment. After lunch, Bellesini mentioned that over her 12 years here, “it feels like I’ve worked in three different restaurants…”