I am in the fortunate position of having been able to take my wife to one of the world’s best restaurants, the Fat Duck in Bray, for our wedding anniversary. Heston Blumenthal is now famous for his eccentric TV programmes, the theatre of some of his dishes, and the quality and scientific and technical competence of his cuisine. Booking a table required redialling approximately 550 times over 40 minutes on three phones for both of us, just hitting “redial” on various phones the moment we heard the Engaged tone.
We got the last table for two at lunch.
I spent £600 on two tasting menus, two glasses of Champagne and half a bottle of Chateuneuf du Pape, and left feeling impressed but faintly miffed, and at the same time somehow insipired. After much thought I’ve realised what I felt leaving the restaurant is exactly how I’ve felt after leaving a demo of some of the world’s best hifi equipment, and exemplifies why I now blog about the art of the Gentleman audiophile, he (or she) seeking not technical perfection, but a connection between the musician and the audiophile’s heart.
To explain further. The best restaurant I have eaten in was in Eugenie-les-Bains in Southern France, the 3 Michelin-starred restaurant run by Michel Guerard and in an idyllic, countryside setting. There were Ferraris on the driveway and we sipped cocktails on the veranda before lunch in the sunshine, reclining in magnificent wicker chairs and perusing the menu. I was only 12 or 13 at the time, so they had prepared a large fruit cocktail with umbrellas, ice and a straw which amazed me, and I was a fussy eater so, whilst my parents had a complex, multi-course menu I was served a massive piece of Foie Gras and infinite supplies of toasted Brioche, followed by a huge piece of magnificent fillet steak that seemed to dissolve as my knife travelled through it, and finally something chocolatey for dessert.
I think it is here that I learned what an orgasm feels like. It is etched in my memory.
There are other fine restaurants – Gordon Ramsey, Nico Ladenis, Michel Roux, Raymond Blanc – and similar fond memories of complex, delicious food in a great setting.
Heston’s restaurant the Fat Duck is beside the main village road, a converted cottage which has been knocked through in the front two rooms to make a restaurant with low ceiling, a few paintings on the wall and a “Mrs Miggins Tea Shoppe” feel. The curtains on the small windows are drawn to block out the road, the lighting is overhead, illuminating the table so you can see what you will be eating, and tables are close together, as close as possible to fit in as many covers as possible, without (hopefully) inducing claustrophobia or the knocking of chairs as guests shift, arrive or leave. It is not just unprepossessing, but uninspiring, unwelcoming and stark despite the linen and odd luxury item. Perhaps designed to focus on the food and nothing else?
Waiters are polite and charming, but there seem to be more waiters than guests. There is only the tasting menu, with the option of two possible wine menus to accompany your meal, a carefully chosen glass with each course, but I am driving and the cost substantial so we stick to water and Beaucastel for the four hours we have allocated to the experience.
Tiny things come and are eaten in one go. A plate of something layered is presented and we are instructed to slice through it, balance the lot on our fork and eat all at once to get the flavour. I am intimidated by the waiters and the portions – they describe how to eat (“pick it up and eat the whole thing, quickly!” for a nitro-poached G&T mousse whilst they spritz above your head with essence of lemon) – and I am worried I am missing something important, because each dish comprises only a few mouthfuls of something marvellous before it is gone. Did I get it? Did I understand what the chef intended? If it seemed…. A bit boring, or a bit naff…. Was I missing the point and not quite scraping a puddle of special sauce onto my fork at the same time as I was balancing a molecule of grapefruit?
A key dish is “The Sound of the Sea”, a selection of cleverly cooked or not-cooked fishy ingredients arranged to look like the seashore, on a glass plate balanced above a tray of sand, with artificial and edible sand down one side, fish and seaweed in the middle, and fishy foam representing the sea down the other. The key item being a massive seashell placed alongside which contains an iPod on which has been placed a recording of waves breaking on the shore; as you listen and eat, so you are transported to the seaside and flavours are enhanced.
This struck me as where Heston had gone wrong; whilst it worked, if hitting all your senses enhances your experience of the food, why then design your restaurant to focus *only* on the food and imbue it with such a cramped, unluxurious and unappetising ambience? Where I was transported into near ecstasy as a child with both magnificent food and a terrific ambience, here I was merely impressed but left wanting.
Similarly, each course was a minor triumph of technique and capability which left me wanting more, but never achieving that climax of pleasure, either as an individual dish or as an overall experience. It could be argued that this is a flaw in any tasting menu, but somehow I was hoping for more from what was once voted the best restaurant in the world, and is now #2. I was not sated, nor did I want more.
Let’s take the audiophile analogy. I have heard a full Mark Levinson/Revel system, Krell/Wilson, ARC/ Martin Logan, dCS/Nagra and many others. In my own system I’ve owned equipment like dCS Elgar, Jeff Rowland, BAT, ARC, Wilson WATT. Most of these have been technically competent, in some cases practically unsurpassed in their respective ears, and yet…. I sold them and moved on.
Heston did not touch my heart and neither did all that stuff. It seems increasingly hard these days to find manufacturers who are capable of delivering equipment that really gets your emotions rising and your feet tapping and that overall “wow” factor that endures rather than fades with familiarity. It might be a simple gnocci in squid ink at Il Corte Sconta in Venice, or even a salami sandwich with fresh butter in fresh baguette by the side of the ski slope in the French Alps, but something about the gustatory experience has a more enduring and satisfying effect on me than the minuscule millefeullie that was dessert #1.
It’s the science of auditory pleasure that makes us realise an original Koetsu is worth its’ weight in gold. There may well be a reason why the technical competence of those cartridges don’t match modern cartridges capabilities, but that it stirs your heart, and if someone can clone that and sell it I’d be first in the line to buy. It reiterates to me: don’t follow the herd but listen, observe, and follow your heart even if it seems at odds with what the herd are saying. Buy a £200 DacMagic instead of a £5000 Weiss, because it is better at delivering the music. It’s a salami sandwich amongst truffle-infused toasts. I suspect, though, that the Tron DAC is that block of Foie Gras I snuffled all those years ago…..
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