Benjamin and I made a trip to London recently; a holiday unlike any other, dedicated to food, glorious food! Ben has already posted his blog about our 3-day dining extravaganza on his website. For his version, click here. And for all the photos, click here.
This is my side of the story – a somewhat mak nenek, unprofessional version of the binge fest that took place.
Let’s get the facts right first. I’ll accept that the holiday was a birthday ‘gift’ for me, although it didn’t start out so… but I’ll just leave it as that. The focus of the trip was to makan at The Fat Duck, but I’m not the sort who knows her kappa from her carrageenan. So the whole dining portion of the holiday is what I’ll call Ben’s “search for (dining) perfection”.
Getting a table at The Fat Duck was the tricky part. Bookings are not accepted earlier than 2 months before a reservation date, and the phone lines are busy the minute the clock strikes 9 every morning in Britain.
On a day exactly 2 months before our preferred date, I made more than a dozen calls to TFD – one call every 10-15 mins till I finally got through about 3 hours later. At the same time, I had to have the British Airways online ticket booking webpage at the ready, so I could have a few dates to play around with. At least 5 of the dates I asked for were already fully booked by the time I got through to the restaurant. But I finally got a date for dinner that was ok, and we were good to go!
Imagine that – booking dinner at a restaurant almost 3,500 miles away even before booking our flight there. Growing up in Petaling Jaya, the furthest my family and I have travelled just for good food was probably the 50-min drive to Klang for bakuteh or a little further for seafood. So anyway, with our table at TFD set, I could finally book our flight, accommodation, and plan the itinerary. Now this is where that one fat duck multiplied into one grossly obese animal! Sebab nila se-itik…
There's a Malay saying that goes, "Sebab nila setitik, rosak susu sebelanga"
which is like the English "One bad apple spoils the bunch"
Like, since we’re gonna be in Bray, we might as well have lunch at another 3-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Waterside Inn. And since we’ll be in London first, let’s pick just one really good restaurant too. So we decided on Gordon Ramsay’s at Royal Hospital Road.
Our first 3-star dining experience was at the latter. And it was bloody amazing! After dining here, I don’t think I’d ever need to “search for perfection” anywhere else. Perhaps I’m just a ‘sua koo’, like a beggar who can’t choose. But nah… this is it! Absolute perfection!
I usually dread the idea of dining at a fine and expensive establishment. Firstly, kena pakai cantik-cantik, and then, kena act all proper and posh-nosh. Then be surrounded by uppity diners and served by snotty wait staff with put-on accents and plastic smiles. Ugh!
But NO, not here! I’m not saying the service staff here were like all lepak and bo chap lah. They were extremely professional, carried themselves very well, were confident, eloquent and just oozed charm like a diabetic with a nose bleed. They didn’t allow this confidence to seem anything like arrogance, or to be exaggeratedly charming that it made you feel awkward. As Ben puts it, they were genuine. I did not spot even one tiny ‘jeling’ (cynical/derogative glance) from anyone.
We only managed to get this dinner booked for 10.15pm. When we arrived, we weren’t treated as though we were late, or as if we were the losers who couldn’t get an earlier booking. Instead, we were welcomed with such warmth and grace, with the maitre d’ leading us into the dining room like VIPs, saying “Ahh, yes, we ‘ave a special table ‘ere just for you”. I’m sure he says this to all diners who come through the door lah, but for me, it was like, Dude, you had me at hello…
The amuse bouche, especially the cornet, was so darn good, it was like, Dude, seriously?!! You had me at hello again!
Each course a foreplay to the next, it just got better and better. A soothing, sensual build up to the main course, which was ‘blow-your-effing-brains-out’ out of this world! To make things even more enjoyable, there Ben was, making little mmmms and ohhhhs and ahhhhs as he almost licked his plate clean of the main course, plus the dreamy, half-stoned look on his face during the cheese course.
We were so full by the time the dessert came, but the Tarte Tatin was so freaking awesome that we just couldn’t help but stuff our faces till we got cross-eyed. I told Ben that if I drool in my sleep from now on, it’ll be because I was dreaming of that remaining portion of the tart that I couldn’t finish.
And yes, Jean-Claude the maitre d’ presented me with this little ball of mango sorbet with a candle in it, and very softly sang (like it was our little secret), ‘appy birthday to you… ‘appy birthday to ze lady who’s birthday eez next week… ‘appy birthday to you…
I truly have never had a dining experience this perfect. From now on, every fine dining establishment I visit will be compared to this one. I admit I’m not some globe-trotting foodie or gourmand, but I dare say it will take many more years and many more meals to beat, or even come close to this. Sweet, savoury, sensual dreams, are made of this.
It was with this feeling that I’d never eat the same again, that The Fat Duck and Waterside Inn had to welcome me and try to live up to that ultimate makan experience.
So here’s the no holds barred version of what I really thought of dinner at TFD as compared to how much Ben enjoyed it. I don’t know if I try to give excuses just cos I try to be nice. But by the next night when it was time to have dinner at Heston’s, I wasn’t feeling too good from lack of sleep (the sleepless flight over plus too much activity crammed into the first day and not enough rest throughout). Ben had a luxurious nap before dinner, whereas I, being as usually anal about planning and preparing, went through checklists and itineraries, did some packing/unpacking and spent some time chatting with the owner of the guest house while doing some ironing.
I won’t go into the details of the meal itself, as Ben has already done that. Some new tastes/sensations here and there of course, and overall, the food was really good. Perhaps I could say out of this world only because of how you look at it – snails on bright green porridge, ice cream that tastes like bacon n eggs… weird, but good.
However, I’d just like to pick at the “Sound of the Sea” and why I didn’t enjoy it at all. Heston Blumenthal’s cuisine is about involving all the senses – sight, smell, taste, sound, touch… and emotion, or memory. I suppose most people would really feel like they could almost be by the sea when ‘experiencing’ this course, recalling fond memories of happy days at the beach.
I love the sea, the beach, reef flats and the likes. But maybe I’ve seen, smelled, tasted, touched, heard and felt too much. Perhaps the “Sound of the Sea” jogged something in my brain, flashing an image/memory bank of worms, slugs, back-breaking pre-dawn Wildfilms trips, trudging through knee-deep mud, getting sand in all sorts of ‘cavities’ including all over my camera… And believe it or not, I love it! But the “Sound of the Sea” just didn’t work for me. Dunno why. I guess it proves that everything tastes different to everybody.
Now the gloves come off. I was terribly disappointed with the service. When we entered, we heard one staff tell the other who was showing us into the dining room, “just any table”. It felt as though we were tucked away into the corner of the dining room. It was actually a nice n cosy spot, and because it was by the window, we had a lot of natural lighting that proved useful for taking photos (non-flash photography is allowed at most of these restaurants).
In fact, when were in Bray the next afternoon, we noticed that another Asian couple were sitting at the same table. Maybe they just push all the Chinese dudes to this corner cos they know we'd be flipping out our cameras and snapping away at everything. And I mean, everything.
Anyway, only when I had almost reached the table, someone else came up to ask if I wanted my coat taken. He then took it from me as though my coat was a piece of snot-filled tissue to match his snotty attitude. You had me at hel-… No, you didn’t.
I suppose with all the smoke and mirrors that comes with this sort of menu, the service staff may start to sound quite robotic, repeating the same ‘script’ and jokes over and over and over again, at every table, every afternoon and every night.
To make things worse, two tables away, there sat the most annoying boy in all of England. At that age of adolescence when he sounded like a diseased duck being strangled each time he spoke, plus with a puffed-up know-it-all attitude, he annoyed Ben to bits! He kept giving the plot away!
Like when they were served the orange & beetroot jelly, even before his parents or sister could pick up their spoons, he bellowed out loud, "THE ORANGE ONE IS THE BEETROOT AND THE RED ONE IS THE ORANGE! I've read about this before."
Now, orange we glad we arrived early and are at least two courses safely ahead of Mister Smarty Pants.
There was only one wait staff whom I wish attended to our table more often. He was funny and seemed genuinely friendly. He probably would have made all the difference to how I felt about dinner.
Unfortunately, the young lady who served most of our courses was really fake. Although she didn’t have her head up her a** like the guy who took my coat, her smile was really plastic and she had this sort of haughty and critical glint in her eyes. She couldn't really hide that look of impatience each time we tried to take a picture of something.
By the end of the meal (about 4 hours later), I rushed Ben to leave. I was tired, and just wanted to shake off that feeling of being unwanted and unwelcome. You had me at… No, you never got me. Or perhaps I just didn’t get it.
I feel kinda bad cos I know Ben was trying to linger and just sit there, soaking in the whole experience and the very fact that he had just dined at THE Fat Duck.
The next day, we had lunch at The Waterside Inn. By this afternoon, I was already suffering from the early effects of the flu, having a slight sore throat, runny nose and just that overall annoying droopy-eyes feeling. The restaurant here is sort of open air, looking out onto the terrace and the River Thames. It was a refreshing change to the usual dimly lit dining room that makes everything around you look sepia or jaundiced.
The service staff were more reserved (bordering on being aloof and detached actually), but at least not arrogant. Overall, the food was enjoyable but somewhat evanescent. Nothing really stood out except for the fact that ingredients were really fresh, but that was the same at the other restaurants too. Oooh, the desserts were yummy though!
I guess, like how the meal at Ramsay’s built itself up to such an apex, it would have been so much better if we reversed the order of where we dined first and last. ‘Cos now, everything post-Gordon Ramsay seems like one anti-climax after another. He'll always be 'the one that got away' (till I find another).
This is my side of the story – a somewhat mak nenek, unprofessional version of the binge fest that took place.
Let’s get the facts right first. I’ll accept that the holiday was a birthday ‘gift’ for me, although it didn’t start out so… but I’ll just leave it as that. The focus of the trip was to makan at The Fat Duck, but I’m not the sort who knows her kappa from her carrageenan. So the whole dining portion of the holiday is what I’ll call Ben’s “search for (dining) perfection”.
Getting a table at The Fat Duck was the tricky part. Bookings are not accepted earlier than 2 months before a reservation date, and the phone lines are busy the minute the clock strikes 9 every morning in Britain.
On a day exactly 2 months before our preferred date, I made more than a dozen calls to TFD – one call every 10-15 mins till I finally got through about 3 hours later. At the same time, I had to have the British Airways online ticket booking webpage at the ready, so I could have a few dates to play around with. At least 5 of the dates I asked for were already fully booked by the time I got through to the restaurant. But I finally got a date for dinner that was ok, and we were good to go!
Imagine that – booking dinner at a restaurant almost 3,500 miles away even before booking our flight there. Growing up in Petaling Jaya, the furthest my family and I have travelled just for good food was probably the 50-min drive to Klang for bakuteh or a little further for seafood. So anyway, with our table at TFD set, I could finally book our flight, accommodation, and plan the itinerary. Now this is where that one fat duck multiplied into one grossly obese animal! Sebab nila se-itik…
There's a Malay saying that goes, "Sebab nila setitik, rosak susu sebelanga"which is like the English "One bad apple spoils the bunch"
Like, since we’re gonna be in Bray, we might as well have lunch at another 3-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Waterside Inn. And since we’ll be in London first, let’s pick just one really good restaurant too. So we decided on Gordon Ramsay’s at Royal Hospital Road.
Our first 3-star dining experience was at the latter. And it was bloody amazing! After dining here, I don’t think I’d ever need to “search for perfection” anywhere else. Perhaps I’m just a ‘sua koo’, like a beggar who can’t choose. But nah… this is it! Absolute perfection!
I usually dread the idea of dining at a fine and expensive establishment. Firstly, kena pakai cantik-cantik, and then, kena act all proper and posh-nosh. Then be surrounded by uppity diners and served by snotty wait staff with put-on accents and plastic smiles. Ugh!
But NO, not here! I’m not saying the service staff here were like all lepak and bo chap lah. They were extremely professional, carried themselves very well, were confident, eloquent and just oozed charm like a diabetic with a nose bleed. They didn’t allow this confidence to seem anything like arrogance, or to be exaggeratedly charming that it made you feel awkward. As Ben puts it, they were genuine. I did not spot even one tiny ‘jeling’ (cynical/derogative glance) from anyone.
We only managed to get this dinner booked for 10.15pm. When we arrived, we weren’t treated as though we were late, or as if we were the losers who couldn’t get an earlier booking. Instead, we were welcomed with such warmth and grace, with the maitre d’ leading us into the dining room like VIPs, saying “Ahh, yes, we ‘ave a special table ‘ere just for you”. I’m sure he says this to all diners who come through the door lah, but for me, it was like, Dude, you had me at hello…
The amuse bouche, especially the cornet, was so darn good, it was like, Dude, seriously?!! You had me at hello again!
Each course a foreplay to the next, it just got better and better. A soothing, sensual build up to the main course, which was ‘blow-your-effing-brains-out’ out of this world! To make things even more enjoyable, there Ben was, making little mmmms and ohhhhs and ahhhhs as he almost licked his plate clean of the main course, plus the dreamy, half-stoned look on his face during the cheese course.
We were so full by the time the dessert came, but the Tarte Tatin was so freaking awesome that we just couldn’t help but stuff our faces till we got cross-eyed. I told Ben that if I drool in my sleep from now on, it’ll be because I was dreaming of that remaining portion of the tart that I couldn’t finish.
And yes, Jean-Claude the maitre d’ presented me with this little ball of mango sorbet with a candle in it, and very softly sang (like it was our little secret), ‘appy birthday to you… ‘appy birthday to ze lady who’s birthday eez next week… ‘appy birthday to you…
I truly have never had a dining experience this perfect. From now on, every fine dining establishment I visit will be compared to this one. I admit I’m not some globe-trotting foodie or gourmand, but I dare say it will take many more years and many more meals to beat, or even come close to this. Sweet, savoury, sensual dreams, are made of this.
It was with this feeling that I’d never eat the same again, that The Fat Duck and Waterside Inn had to welcome me and try to live up to that ultimate makan experience.
So here’s the no holds barred version of what I really thought of dinner at TFD as compared to how much Ben enjoyed it. I don’t know if I try to give excuses just cos I try to be nice. But by the next night when it was time to have dinner at Heston’s, I wasn’t feeling too good from lack of sleep (the sleepless flight over plus too much activity crammed into the first day and not enough rest throughout). Ben had a luxurious nap before dinner, whereas I, being as usually anal about planning and preparing, went through checklists and itineraries, did some packing/unpacking and spent some time chatting with the owner of the guest house while doing some ironing.
I won’t go into the details of the meal itself, as Ben has already done that. Some new tastes/sensations here and there of course, and overall, the food was really good. Perhaps I could say out of this world only because of how you look at it – snails on bright green porridge, ice cream that tastes like bacon n eggs… weird, but good.
However, I’d just like to pick at the “Sound of the Sea” and why I didn’t enjoy it at all. Heston Blumenthal’s cuisine is about involving all the senses – sight, smell, taste, sound, touch… and emotion, or memory. I suppose most people would really feel like they could almost be by the sea when ‘experiencing’ this course, recalling fond memories of happy days at the beach.
I love the sea, the beach, reef flats and the likes. But maybe I’ve seen, smelled, tasted, touched, heard and felt too much. Perhaps the “Sound of the Sea” jogged something in my brain, flashing an image/memory bank of worms, slugs, back-breaking pre-dawn Wildfilms trips, trudging through knee-deep mud, getting sand in all sorts of ‘cavities’ including all over my camera… And believe it or not, I love it! But the “Sound of the Sea” just didn’t work for me. Dunno why. I guess it proves that everything tastes different to everybody.
Now the gloves come off. I was terribly disappointed with the service. When we entered, we heard one staff tell the other who was showing us into the dining room, “just any table”. It felt as though we were tucked away into the corner of the dining room. It was actually a nice n cosy spot, and because it was by the window, we had a lot of natural lighting that proved useful for taking photos (non-flash photography is allowed at most of these restaurants).
In fact, when were in Bray the next afternoon, we noticed that another Asian couple were sitting at the same table. Maybe they just push all the Chinese dudes to this corner cos they know we'd be flipping out our cameras and snapping away at everything. And I mean, everything.
Anyway, only when I had almost reached the table, someone else came up to ask if I wanted my coat taken. He then took it from me as though my coat was a piece of snot-filled tissue to match his snotty attitude. You had me at hel-… No, you didn’t.
I suppose with all the smoke and mirrors that comes with this sort of menu, the service staff may start to sound quite robotic, repeating the same ‘script’ and jokes over and over and over again, at every table, every afternoon and every night.
To make things worse, two tables away, there sat the most annoying boy in all of England. At that age of adolescence when he sounded like a diseased duck being strangled each time he spoke, plus with a puffed-up know-it-all attitude, he annoyed Ben to bits! He kept giving the plot away!
Like when they were served the orange & beetroot jelly, even before his parents or sister could pick up their spoons, he bellowed out loud, "THE ORANGE ONE IS THE BEETROOT AND THE RED ONE IS THE ORANGE! I've read about this before."
Now, orange we glad we arrived early and are at least two courses safely ahead of Mister Smarty Pants.
There was only one wait staff whom I wish attended to our table more often. He was funny and seemed genuinely friendly. He probably would have made all the difference to how I felt about dinner.
Unfortunately, the young lady who served most of our courses was really fake. Although she didn’t have her head up her a** like the guy who took my coat, her smile was really plastic and she had this sort of haughty and critical glint in her eyes. She couldn't really hide that look of impatience each time we tried to take a picture of something.
By the end of the meal (about 4 hours later), I rushed Ben to leave. I was tired, and just wanted to shake off that feeling of being unwanted and unwelcome. You had me at… No, you never got me. Or perhaps I just didn’t get it.
I feel kinda bad cos I know Ben was trying to linger and just sit there, soaking in the whole experience and the very fact that he had just dined at THE Fat Duck.
The next day, we had lunch at The Waterside Inn. By this afternoon, I was already suffering from the early effects of the flu, having a slight sore throat, runny nose and just that overall annoying droopy-eyes feeling. The restaurant here is sort of open air, looking out onto the terrace and the River Thames. It was a refreshing change to the usual dimly lit dining room that makes everything around you look sepia or jaundiced.
The service staff were more reserved (bordering on being aloof and detached actually), but at least not arrogant. Overall, the food was enjoyable but somewhat evanescent. Nothing really stood out except for the fact that ingredients were really fresh, but that was the same at the other restaurants too. Oooh, the desserts were yummy though!
I guess, like how the meal at Ramsay’s built itself up to such an apex, it would have been so much better if we reversed the order of where we dined first and last. ‘Cos now, everything post-Gordon Ramsay seems like one anti-climax after another. He'll always be 'the one that got away' (till I find another).
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