Fantastical Feasts & Where to Find Them
by Qian Leung
@ 16 Mar 2018
While most diners would probably gawk at the clockwork mechanics climbing up one side of the wall in the dining room of
Dinner by Heston, set within Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London, my favourite corner would be the semi-private booth tucked away next to the kitchen. The space is enclosed on three sides by a tapestry-like mural, filled with symbols and drawings which seem to be trying to convey a message of some sort. “Mrs Marshall here,” says Chef Ashley Palmer Watts, pointing to a spot high up, “she was the first British cook like modern-day Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson.” Aside from commercialising recipe books, she also sold sieves, whisks, and utensils – over a hundred years ago. Then he points to another spot. “In the olden days, clockmakers in England built a mechanism to rotate the rotisserie.”
As a ball of minced pork and veal cooked on the spit roast, a custard of cream, eggs, and parsley juice would be dribbled over, turning it green and brown. “You stick a twig on top, and this pomme (French for ‘apple’) would have been the central decoration of a table.” The 39-year-old Dorsett native has been in the kitchen since twelve. For his twentieth birthday, he treated himself to a meal at The Fat Duck. “It was magical. I was like, ‘I have to go and work here.’” He wrote to Chef Heston Blumenthal, explaining that it’s the only restaurant he wants to work at. As fate would have it, a position was becoming available, though not immediately. Unwilling to lose the opportunity to anyone else, Chef Watts called in three times a week. “After about eight weeks, on my way home after a stage at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir, I called at The Fat Duck for lunch. Heston came out into the dining room (this was Wednesday), and he said, ‘Could you start on Saturday,’ and I said, ‘Yep.’”
The menu at Dinner by Heston sends one hurtling back to medieval times, with recipes such as sambocade (goat’s milk cheesecake with elderflower, apple, perry poached pear, and smoked candied walnuts) resurrected from 1390, savoury porridge (frog’s legs with girolles, garlic, parsley, and fennel) from 1660, and meat fruit (chicken liver parfait in mandarin jelly) from the 1500s.
On younger chefs impatient to become head chefs, Chef Watts shares, “To be honest, I was head chef of a three-Michelin-starred restaurant at 25. But I’d done my time training. Obviously cooking is the main thing, but there’s so much more to running a restaurant that you can’t learn in three years. You need ten years to become a chef who is also a good leader, a teacher who can inspire and mentor others.” Prior to joining The Fat Duck, he’d done a stage at Gordon Ramsay’s Aubergine and got offered a job there, but he didn’t want to take it. “Before you start your first job, go and work for a week, just so you can get a feel for how it is. You’ll know if it’s right for you, or not.” He encourages young chefs to spend a minimum of two years in each place, for their first two or three jobs. “You need to learn how to cook, and how to be as a chef. If you race, race, and race, you end up with no knowledge.” A meal here has me gasping in surprise, giggling out loud, and silent with disbelief at different points. The sense of wonder stays for days after. It’s like coming to the end of a Harry Potter novel. Magical.
Dinner by Heston
66 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7LA, United Kingdom
Tel: (44) 20 7201 3833
Adapted from the
Mar Apr 18 issue of Cuisine & Wine Asia.
