I visited Dinner by Heston for lunch and had great expectations since I tried the magnificent Fat Duck in Bray. It have two michelin stars and are number 7 on the San Pellegrino Worlds 50 Best list. So you can say it’s a hyped place.
Compared to The Fat Duck where you get around 18 courses, this new restaurant by Heston Blumenthal is more for a 4-5 course dinner. The molecular gastronomy is not in focus here – it’s about honest cooking at its best. Here the concept is traditional english cooking using recipes from the past 700 years. And this is done to perfection.
We started out with the Meat Fruit which is an amazing dish. But more bread is needed at it took almost 10 minutes to get this – not acceptable.
I then had the pork chops. The taste of the meat was excellent but it was a little bit dry. The spelt, ham hock, turnip and Robert sauce was absolutely great. Perfect companions to the meat. I ordered the mash potato as a side dish and it was out of this world – probably with significant help of butter.
The final dish was the Tipsy cake with the spit roast pineapple. One of the best desserts I ever had – simplex and like being in a foetal position. You feel warm and loved.
The food is so great, warm and just so easy to love. It’s really comfort food. But unfortunately the room was extremely noisy (probably many americans?) and a bit hectic – this is not a perfect match for this food. The food felt like heavy carpets and a fireplace, but the room was almost the opposite.
The pricing was very, very fair. We payed 220 pounds for 3 courses for two persons including Champaign and a glass of white wine. Very decent.
But, next time I’m in London I will be here again – if I can get a table.