Lunch at Dinner
Lunch at Heston’s Dinner in the Mandarin Oriental
I bumped into a friend at Waverley. About to get on a train south, I smugly announced that I was heading to the Mandarin Oriental – to Heston’s restaurant there and he responded ‘oh I was there last weekend’. And then when I was reading a discarded Times magazine on Saturday and there was an article about the Queen’s wedding party at the Mandarin Oriental hotel last weekend… Clearly all the party debris had been cleaned up and all the guests had left when we arrived. We did keep an eye open for any celebrities but were reduced to look-a-like spotting; I saw someone who looked very like Mr Weasley, and Vicki thinks she saw someone who might have looked like Bill Nighy. From behind. Vicki actually arrived really late – the table was booked for 12.30 (she was still at a train station in Kent, tearful, and worrying she might have jeopardised the booking), so the rest of us met outside and asked if we could wait in the bar for our friend. They were absolutely fine with the delay, until we ordered water, and then they punished our cheapness by seating us around the corner from the glass-fronted kitchen where the pineapples for the Tipsy Cakes were spit roasting and the chefs were sweating. I was annoyed not to be able to see in, but it probably would have detracted significantly from my ability to have conversations with my friends.
I always find menus distracting, usually I have to ask for a few moments to pay attention to the menu and not talk so I can think about what I really want but in Dinner you need a waiter to come over and translate it for you, because, even with the little historical origins appendix, it is impossible to guess what anything might be. Salamugundy? Cucumber ketchup and borage? ‘Do you have any questions?’ A few… Vicki decided she’d rather not know what anything was and just pick something to order, but the rest of us had to indulge the waiter – who had clearly been trained to recite a little explanation, with a little bit of recommendation, and I reckon he doesn’t understand half of what he says to us. To start we ordered the Savoury Porridge (had to, didn’t we, even though it wasn’t snail), Meat Fruit, and the Rice & Flesh, hardly M&S advert material is it? Rice & Flesh. I would never actually want that put on a plate in front of me, it sounds caveman not Michelin star. The Meat Fruit is one of the restaurant specialties I think, it’s chicken liver parfait that comes in the shape of a mandarin, its meat but it looks like fruit. It looks like a it might be made of marzipan to decorate a cake, and it was incredibly rich and incredibly smooth and though I appreciated it, it didn’t convert me into a pâté or a parfait fan. The savoury porridge was green, and had little cod cheeks and pickled beetroot sitting on it and it was really delicious. The Rice & Flesh was a saffron risotto with calf tail, and again it was so rich and so strongly flavoured with saffron that I don’t think I could really describe the flesh part of it; but it looked beautiful.
We had by this point ordered a bottle of wine. I did start a vague complaint, I was the honorary student there, but I stopped myself; we were already there and we may as well really enjoy it and it was actually reasonably priced.
For my main I had Spiced Pigeon. It was delicious and tender and juicy, served with artichoke hearts and originating in a 1777 ‘Ladie’s Assistant and Complete System of Cookery’ book. Sophia had a Sirloin of Black Angus steak, with a mushroom ketchup and perfect chips (triple cooked). Gabbie had a Roast Turbet with cockle ketchup – divine – and Cesca, on the assurance of it being the waiter’s personal favourite, joined me with the pigeon. Vicki tried to pick the most peculiar sounding thing on the menu opted for Powdered Duck, with out the ready explanation. I think she was hoping for a Heston-Tim-from-Masterchef performance where you add water and mix it over liquid nitrogen and the sachet of powder turns back into a duck and walks off your plate. But alas, there was no drama or smoke, just a pair of very soft duck legs, some smoked fennel and potato purée. All very appetizing apart from the potato, it was so smooth that it had gone a bit gluey… like they had put it in a blender rather than sieving it through tiny holes.
We shared a tipsy cake for pudding (you have to pre-order it when you sit down because it takes at least 2 hours to prepare), it was spit roasted pineapple with literally the most delicious little honey cake I had ever tasted. It’s the pineapple that takes all the time, but I really wouldn’t have missed it, but I could have had another of those little cakes. I wonder how much they would have laughed if I had asked for the recipe? And we also had a Taffety Tart (c.1660), it was apple rose and fennel, delicately put together on little pages of double-wet-rolled pastry (apparently that makes it crispy) and served with blackcurrant and vodka sorbet and crystallised rose petals. To me it tasted like rose water and aniseed, to Sophia it ‘tastes like my face cream’, and she works part-time in an Aveda salon, so she would know. Probably better it tasted like an Aveda product than anything else though, at least their products are all made out of edible things.
When we had finished everything (and yes Lizzie, they pass the free bread test too – and Matt would have really approved of the butter, yellower than egg yokes and flaked with salt) they brought us each an espresso cup fillet with whit chocolate and earl grey ganache and a caraway biscuit. Lush.
By this time we had been there for four hours, there hadn’t been masses of food but when you give your food that much attention and take that much time over it, its really very filling, and everything had been so very rich. We left and walked Sophia to work across Hyde Park and it made me smile that my student belly was full of dishes that took so much time and care and money and flavour. But I don’t know that ridiculous food is my favourite food, I don’t know that I like not know what anything is when I look at the menu, and I might be inclined to go for beans on toast over meat fruit again… I do love that lunch at Dinner was such an event, I love that it took up so much of my day, that the company was good, that it was an experience. And I love that our total bill came to less than one person at the Fat Duck and that I can still say that I have been to Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant.