I’ve been meaning to post on The Fat Duck, the Michelin three-star British (!) restaurant recently named “Best in the World” by Restaurant magazine.

What’s unique about The Fat Duck is that chef Heston Blumenthal gets downright molecular in his preparation. He’s part of a new school of chefs who study “molecular gastronomy,” a way of putting science to food that turns the kitchen into a high-tech research lab. Blumenthal likes to study flavor and texture, and so has tweaked the make-up of foodstuffs to come up with tobacco and leather-flavored chocolate, sardine custard, and smoke salmon and scrambled egg ice cream.

If London’s too far to trek for breakfast ice cream, New York City’s Wylie Dufresne, who cooks at New York’s WD-50 (clever name, eh?), dabbles in kitchen sciene too. His specialties: edamame ice cream and deep-fried mayonaisse (cover your ears Michael Jacobson!).

Anyway, as I was punching around Google to find links about Blumenthal’s place, I found several articles about how the best restaurant in the world apparently failed its last health inspection.

That either bodes ill for Restaurant magazine and its rankings, or for Britain’s public health inspectors. I’m not sure which.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2005 at 6:13 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.