#throwbackthursday review: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London

This is a semi repost from my tumblr; apologies for the crappy iPhone pics.

After seeing a Christmas matinee showing of the Nutcracker by the Royal Ballet and getting to see one of my faves, Federico Bonelli, dance, we made our way over to the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park to dine at one of the most anticipated restaurants on our trip. Because of the ridiculous demand for a table here, we had to book three months in advance, on the day that bookings opened for the date we wanted. The effort, though, was mostly worth it.

Starters: Salamugundy and Meat Fruit

You probably can’t come to Dinner without getting the Meat Fruit. It’s the house’s signature dish and one which comes with a great deal of hype. M got it because he’s a bigger fan of liver parfait than I but we stole bits off each other’s plates anyway. In this case, I was so glad he let me steal as much as I wanted because it was even more delicious than I had imagined. While I find that liver parfait/paté can often be a bit iron-y and heavy, this was light as anything, perfectly smooth and the flavour was just unbelievable. A lot has already been written about this dish so there’s not much I can contribute other than to say that I regret not ordering 10 of these. I got the Salamugundy, which although no Meat Fruit, was still very delicious. It also introduced to now one of my new favourite vegetables: salsify.


Mains: Hereford Ribeye & Black Foot Pork Neck

To say that M loves pork is a bit of an understatement so it was no surprise that he chose the pork main. I didn’t really try it but according to him, it was great. Obviously the Iberian Black Footed Pig (pata negra, from which jamon iberico is made) is the king of swines so I imagine it was pretty bloody delicious. I was however too busy wolfing down my steak to pay attention to his pork. The steak, although it doesn’t look that amazing in the photo (nor in person), it was the by far the best steak I have ever had (and beats anything I've had since by a mile). It was just amazingly tender, juicy and flavoursome, to the point that it has probably ruined all other steaks for me. The triple cooked chips that accompanied it were also amazing, although I wasn’t crazy about the mushroom ketchup.

Desserts: Brown Bread Ice Cream & Chocolate Bar
 

M is a huge chocolate lover so his dessert really hit the spot for him. Mine was a different story, sadly. Whilst on paper it sounded right up my alley, I really really didn’t enjoy the Brown Bread Ice Cream. I found the taste strange and eating the brown bread ice cream by itself was frankly, disgusting. One was meant to eat it all together but even then I couldn’t get over the flavour of the ice cream. The dessert as a whole was also just too sweet for me. I’m not a huge dessert person and this just wasn’t to my tastes at all.

The setting was as beautiful as you would imagine for a restaurant of this calibre. The service was very polished and attentive, but did have that air of stuffiness which I could do without. But alas, I suppose I can't expect the service everywhere to be like that of the Ledbury. Overall, though, we had a great time at Dinner and would definitely go again. We'll get the opportunity to soon enough since a Dinner will permanently open at Crown in Melbourne, at the site where the Fat Duck will be stationed during its 6 month stay.