"Dinner" as a premonition

The new culinary frenzy: food must be unrecognizable, unpredictable and frightening

I learned to notice the paradoxes of life in the first grade. We were asked all the time: “What is heavier - a kilogram of cotton wool or a kilogram of iron? Why is the name Rosa Lvovna normal, but Lilac Krokodilovna is not? Why do we eat green pears, but blue ...

I learned to notice the paradoxes of life in the first grade. We were asked all the time: “What is heavier - a kilogram of cotton wool or a kilogram of iron? Why is the name Rosa Lvovna normal, but Lilac Krokodilovna is not? Why do we eat green pears, but blue ones seem inedible? These paradoxes occupied me at the age of seven. And now it’s different: why, when almost the entire developed world is on a diet, cookbooks are published in huge circulations and almost all people think about food almost all the time?

I don’t have a clear answer to this paradox yet, but such an option is possible - basically, life’s joys and pleasures are unreliable. By buying tickets for Swan Lake in advance, I can wake up on the day of the performance in the mood for the opera, not the ballet. A book can turn out to be boring, a movie can be unexciting, but a cutlet will always be itself, and if you really want to please yourself with a cutlet, then it is easier to cook it than to buy tickets to Swan Lake. You can rely on food. The food is predictable.

And suddenly it turned out - not always. It was my birthday recently, and my husband invited my daughter and I for lunch at celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal's new and long-awaited restaurant called Dinner. Blumenthal belongs to the so-called school of "molecular gastronomy". He is the owner of three Michelin stars, the highest award in the culinary world. We sometimes eat at celebrity chefs with Michelin stars. This is my husband's secret passion. He is ready to eat bread for a month, then to go to an interesting restaurant.

My daughter and I do not share his passion. We want the restaurant to be delicious, not just interesting. It often doesn't match. Remembering our previous experience, our daughter Katya, on the day of going to Blumenthal's restaurant, asked gloomily: "Are we really going to have lunch before or after lunch at a restaurant?"

Before going to dinner at the Dinner (a series of paradoxes continues), I carefully read the menu - I wanted to know what test I was sent to on my birthday. In one of the restaurants of molecular gastronomy, right in the kitchen of the famous chef at home (a trendy concept), we ate one, brought right after the other, tiny muck. The ingredients in the process of culinary creativity are tortured to such an extent that it becomes unclear to the client what it was before. Therefore, in restaurants of molecular gastronomy, waiters often pester you with boring explanations of the secret of each dish. If food needs to be explained, it is no longer food, but a burden. It doesn’t matter to me at what temperature the dish was cooked, it is important for me that it is at least edible. Fifteen different cauliflower dishes (molecular gastronomy restaurants often offer similar options) are interesting for the chef to come up with and cook, but I'm not very interested in eating them in one sitting.

I decided to check the "Dinner" menu in advance. My fears were confirmed. Having become acquainted with such names as “Flesh and Rice” (rice and veal tails with red wine sauce), “Powdered duck” (“With ink and lipstick?” Katya asked) and “Unsweetened porridge” (cod cheeks with pickled beets and garlic), I began to think about how to discreetly bring at least a banana with me. “Don't worry, you,” Leon reassured us. “Heston is a genius and you will be pleasantly surprised.”

Of course, I knew myself that Heston was an extraordinarily talented chef. He is self-taught, which is surprising in a world of rigidly entrenched teaching traditions in the culinary arts. I watched several of his eccentric cooking programs and knew that he based all his tricks on deep and detailed study of old cookbooks. He is considered one of the most talented chefs of our century. His specially created Christmas cake for the Waitrose supermarket chain, with a whole orange baked inside, was sold out in a few moments long before Christmas itself. Some enterprising buyers then resold this cake over the Internet for crazy money. And yet there is a dessert offered in the restaurant - “Black Bread Ice Cream” (with salted butter and malt yeast syrup) was not desirable.

My tone increased a little when we entered the building of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, which houses a restaurant. Doormen in dark gold liveries opening the doors, crimson orchids so beautiful that at first they seemed artificial, furniture polished to a mirror shine created a festive mood.

We were taken to a restaurant. Upon entering, to the left is the open kitchen. In front of her, at the first table, Blumenthal himself dined. We were seated at a table overlooking Hyde Park. My husband booked this table three months ago, before the restaurant opened on January 31st. Now you can book a table only for June - if you're lucky (according to rumors, especially quick ones sell their already booked tables for 200-300 pounds).

I decided that I would trust the waiter and order on his advice. "Flesh and Rice" turned out to be the most delicious imitation of risotto I have ever tasted. Fortunately, there were no veal tails on the plate. The "meat fruit" Leon ordered turned out to be a fluffy liver pâté packaged in an edible form of a tangerine. The steak melted in your mouth (it languished for 72 hours in a steam vacuum), the “Powdered Duck” was not in makeup, but in delicate spices, and the brown bread ice cream was pleasantly refreshing without the unpleasant cloying inherent in ice cream.

Going to this restaurant turned out to be a good birthday present - I got the idea of ​​​​food as alchemy, capable of producing surprises of new flavors and combinations.

As we left the restaurant, I turned around to say goodbye to the lovely cloakroom attendant and noticed that a huge glass pear sculpture hung over the door to the hall. Of blue color.