Phat Duck

She is phat, she is more delicious than chocolate sprinkles, she has country charm, she will pour liquid nitrogen all over you and then bombard you with quacking seagulls on foamy beaches. She will leave you tasting with all your senses. She is what you should do with your time just in case you found one month's rent in a long abandoned jeans pocket.

No more speaking in mysterious ways. Fat duck and heston blumenthal are my officious London fling with fine dining. Staying true to my latest desire of living life like an armed and dangerous tourist, let me tell the tales of the fat duck like a wide eyed wanderer.

One is greeted by a beautiful cart made of beautiful wood loaded high with beautiful big bottles of beautiful vintages of beautiful champagnes. If one is me or anyone me associates with, one will desire a serving of such a beautiful offering. One will at this point shut off one's brain and go for the tasting menu which will descend upon one in rapid successions of appetizers. Each group of appetizers one will notice has its own attending scientist. The lady serving the egg white, lemon and vodka doused in liquid nitrogen will not return until dumping a large plate of moss onto your table over which she will pour more liquid nitrogen, which will roll in even waves over the table and immerse you and your champagne drinking pals in a forest feel as you gently place your oak moss and truffle toast with overstuffed liver of a sad chicken (fois gras) bits into your mouth. This comes after mustard ice cream and oysters with passion fruit jelly and represents the first highlight of the evening.

Things then become a bit hazy because you probably chose to do a wine pairing while you were at it. You probably contemplated this a few days back and decided that it was decadent and completely unnecessary, but there you are, in the here and now, sipping some awesome whites and reds and the faster you sip, the faster they refill. So then there comes more fois gras this time in a miniature chair fitting for Elvis house after some snail porridge. Dude, the snail porridge is so where it's at. It's probably the best thing since the sad chicken liver, God, it's so good I might start plucking the suckers off our basement flat walls. But onwards you go and it's already time for the next main attraction: Sound of the Sea, read: mini ipods plugged into a shell, emitting quacking seagull voices and ocean waves and a mish mash on your plate that tastes like you just fell on your face on the beach straight into childhood memories of summer outings and scraped knees. It's so good and so salty and your knees don't really hurt and you are allowed to eat as much ice cream as your mother never let you have in real life.

This puts us not even half way through the evening, and the pigeon steak and more nitro scrambled things keep up the steady excitation of the taste buds, but things simmer down now. You are simmered down. The whites have given way to the reds and you have developed an entitlement to the little darling things that continue being plopped down in front of you. That is until the violet tartlets at which point you may just wish that they get rid of these ridiculously manicured mini servings and dish out the damn pie. Fuck the tartlets, you want the violet pie. I want the violet pie.

And that is why usually I go to places where they give you big servings of one thing: pasta say, or curry. It's not that I don't appreciate the amazingness of what ended up on my place, but I just simply always want more. As soon as one amazing thing is given to me my brain stops being able to understand that other amazing things will come, all it wants is moooore. I want more violet pie. Before the violet tartlets I wanted more pigeon, before the pigeon I wanted more snails or sad chicken livers. I think with hindsight, most of all I want more snails with violets. They make me feel so good.