Restaurants.

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we had a lovely meal at Raymond Blanc's BrasserieBlanc in winchester on wednesday. lovely goats cheese souffle, pear and walnut salad, followed by an 8oz blue aberdeneshire fillet, follwed by a baked alaska. the starter and main where delicious, we where all disappointed with our puddings. my wife has just told me that she has us booked in at the fat duck for my birthday, so what would you eat from the menu? it all looks and sounds really lovely.

http://www.fatduck.co.uk/menu_alacarte.htm

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http://www.fatduck.co.uk/menu_degustation.htm

have just been looking at the wine list and lol is all i can say the most expensive is over £6000 for a bottle! i think we will be a bit more modest.
so any of you into good food, nice restaurants? any eating experiences you wish to tell us about?
 
we had a lovely meal at Raymond Blanc's BrasserieBlanc in winchester on wednesday. lovely goats cheese souffle, pear and walnut salad, followed by an 8oz blue aberdeneshire fillet, follwed by a baked alaska. the starter and main where delicious, we where all disappointed with our puddings. my wife has just told me that she has us booked in at the fat duck for my birthday, so what would you eat from the menu? it all looks and sounds really lovely.

http://www.fatduck.co.uk/menu_alacarte.htm

empty.gif

http://www.fatduck.co.uk/menu_degustation.htm

have just been looking at the wine list and lol is all i can say the most expensive is over £6000 for a bottle! i think we will be a bit more modest.
so any of you into good food, nice restaurants? any eating experiences you wish to tell us about?

I wouldn't let the current food scare put you off :)

Go for the tasting menu if it's your first time, seriously. It's a 4hr+ marathon of eating but anything less isn't worth it. The matched wines at £65 is actually quite reasonable if you like your wine, especially since they will refill your glass :)

The Fat Duck will be quite different from Raymond Blanc - I've eaten at a fair few 2/3 michelin star restaurants and nothing came close to the fat duck for me.
 
not worried about the current scare, he's fanatical about cleanliness and perfection. the matched wine sounds ok then thanks.
 
Maybe it is just me, i dont know.

I love trying new things, i like nearly everything. Love good food. BUT...

That menu, really does sound rather rank.


BEST END OF LAMB

Ice-filtered lamb jelly, braised tongue and cucumber

Hot pot of lamb neck, sweetbread and oyster

Only thing that sounds nice is the Venison, and the Scallops
 
Went to The Hinds Head the other day (Heston's other restaurant in Bray) which is a lot more affordable. Excellent food priced about right.

I also had an excellent meal in a little place called "Maison Bleue" in Bury St Edmunds. Fantastic seafood. :)
 
Well you asked for some experiences are a couple....

I have been lucky to eat at a number of great places over the years both for through business and for pleasure and I have eaten at the Fat Duck a couple of times as well as The Hinds Head, his pub in Bray with its famous 'Triple Cooked Chips'. Heston is a fascinating bloke and his food is very very clever and most importantly full of delicate layers and flavours which are the norm for Michelin Star restaurants. As a place to go for a Birthday it is great.

Talking about Blanc I would suggest Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons if you want the full experience as his other places lack the majesty of his main restaurant. Personally I think Sunday lunch and the taster menu at Le Manoir is a great way to blow 4 hours, getting there early, taking coffee and going for a stroll around the garden. To be honest the food is not the best I have eaten but its location and environment makes for a good afternoon of chilling and eating. I have eaten at 24 (Gary Rhodes) quite a few times as I worked in Tower 42 for a number of years and only found it average and he only got his star in the last couple of years I think.

Last weekend I took my wife to The Grosvenor Hotel in Chester and booked a table at the Simon Radley and had a lovely meal. Started with Cannelloni of sweetbread and pigeon and main of Coc au Van followed by cheese and had a lovely meal. He is only 1 star but still exceptional food like any starred restaurant in my experience.

In terms of gastronomic trips I would say the best was a couple of years ago when I took a drive down to Monte Carlo the real aim was so I could get my car into the Alps and across some great driving roads but we stayed at some exceptional places on the way down and back. Chateau Les Crayeres in Reims was an experience with some amazing food and without question the most expensive meal I have ever had for 2 people. When you park in the car park in a 911 GT3 and feel poor you get the idea of the type of place it is and was, dripping with real money and Russian blokes with 22 year old beauty queen wives. Managed to get a suite for little more than a London 3 star and I think they took it out on my come food time. Another was Château de Bagnols in the Rhone alps just outside Lyon which was another fantastic experience being both an idyllic location and environment with a fantastic restaurant which has a gastronomy school as part of it breeding Michelin Star chefs! Hotel de Paris for a night was nice but food was only average as was a Château just outside Dijon (I forget the name) which only had average food and not as good as we were lead to believe, though the outhouse we stayed in, a 3 story affair with a moat was quite exceptional with its own 12 foot cast iron gates and big gravel driveway!

Eaten at loads more but good restaurants are quite easy to find and I think the thing that makes them special is the whole 'event' of eating which is as much about the location and environment as much as the food, which in any Michelin star will be exceptional but variable based on what you like and what you choose.
 
In terms of gastronomic trips I would say the best was a couple of years ago when I took a drive down to Monte Carlo the real aim was so I could get my car into the Alps and across some great driving roads but we stayed at some exceptional places on the way down and back. Chateau Les Crayeres in Reims was an experience with some amazing food and without question the most expensive meal I have ever had for 2 people. When you park in the car park in a 911 GT3 and feel poor you get the idea of the type of place it is and was, dripping with real money and Russian blokes with 22 year old beauty queen wives. Managed to get a suite for little more than a London 3 star and I think they took it out on my come food time. Another was Château de Bagnols in the Rhone alps just outside Lyon which was another fantastic experience being both an idyllic location and environment with a fantastic restaurant which has a gastronomy school as part of it breeding Michelin Star chefs! Hotel de Paris for a night was nice but food was only average as was a Château just outside Dijon (I forget the name) which only had average food and not as good as we were lead to believe, though the outhouse we stayed in, a 3 story affair with a moat was quite exceptional with its own 12 foot cast iron gates and big gravel driveway!

Eaten at loads more but good restaurants are quite easy to find and I think the thing that makes them special is the whole 'event' of eating which is as much about the location and environment as much as the food, which in any Michelin star will be exceptional but variable based on what you like and what you choose.

I went on a similar trip earlier in the year, I stopped at Reims but never planned to go to Chateau Les Crayeres but I did walk past it when i was going around some of the champagne houses, it did look nice!

France is an amazing place to go for food - but with the Euro now it's stupidly expensive, especially in Paris. Whilst there's a lot of very good 1 * kind of places you can go to for reasonable money, the 3 *'s are so expensive it makes it rather difficult to justify! I looked at stopping at Mark Veyrat on my way from Grenoble to Monaco until I saw the price of the menu - €375 for the tasting menu with wine extra. Ouch. And there weren't any other menu options either! Paris was similar as well, and it actually makes the fat duck look a bargain now! (food poisoning aside)
 
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