Zoticus

If there is a 'wow' factor, I would have thought it would be present in the eating rather than in photos.

Quite. Although, the fact that Brits now associate expensive and prestigious meals with 'fun', toy food, makes it all the more difficult for anyone cooking grown up French cuisine in the UK. The criticism regarding the plating is sad, and, frankly, worrying. Are we really mocking Ducasse for not serving things in Perspex polygons accompanied by some wireless gadget?

Londoner's can now look forward to a new Blumenthal venture.

"Assiette gourmande" is the term for a selection of small portions (usually dessert) on one plate.

Texture?

I say, "Ban hyperbole!".

The flavour of an egg will, obviously, depend on what a chicken has been eating. In the supermarket, free-range eggs in spring and summer are probably going to have the best flavour, since this is when the chickens' diet is most varied.

... there remains at its core the admirable idea that anything not proven objectively could well be wrong. ... this view ignores the subjectivity of taste (another key Heston conceit). From a scientific standpoint, you will never find out if some fundamental process works if your findings are being altered, informed and distorted by everything from memory to misinformation. Hence the MRI. ← I don't disagree, but I think HB's method is in itself an a priori distortion of the taste experience. It seems designed to soften up the punters. I mean, if one buys HB's approach prior to sampling his food, then one believes that what one is about to sample is going to be 'perfect'. It's something like the placebo effect. I don't think this matters very much in itself. He's certainly not the only chef to big up his proffer. But it does undermine his scientific aim since by being explicit about his method, his method distorts the subjective experience. If he was really serious about being objective, he would keep his methodology to himself. The fact that everyone knows about it is simply not very scientific in this particular context. In order to make claims regarding the success of his method, the end results should be subjected to extensive double-blind testing. It's not enough, at least scientifically, to assert success. As a marketing tool, molecular gastronomy was a stroke of genius, but HB hasn't come anywhere near to providing objective evidence that his method works.

I find the whole monomania thing to be an annoying ruse. I mean why the MRI? Surely, if there is any improvement, one can distinguish it by simply eating the stuff, and if one can't, then it's hard to see how it can be an improvement. It seems that HB's approach to cooking doesn't justify the end, but is an end in itself. It's as if eating the end product is irrelevant if you can sufficiently convolute the process. In series 1, he spends days trying to create a sausage that tastes like it's been cooked on a bonfire, which raises the question, "Why not cook it on a bonfire?". I mean, FFS!

I felt that half-way through the first series the whole thing had already descended into self-parody. Series II is just yet more of the same, "Just how pointlessly difficult can I make this?" schtick.

I see. So it's the inspectors' task to ensure that the ratings are similar to other guides.

If the GFG were listening to punters, I suspect their Top 40 would look radically different. For Example, the Fat Duck at No. 1. Acknowledging HB's genius is now a food-writers' trope, but as far as the punters go, the FD seems to provoke delight and disgust in approximately equal measure. If WHICH Guides have knocked public opinion on the head; or even if they have significantly downgraded its relative importance, it would be nice to know. After all, do we really need yet another inspector-driven guide?

Looking forward to the TV show already. I mean how many punned titles can one get from someone named 'Outlaw' (pun possibility seems to be a major factor in commissioning food TV)? Food Bandit ...

Thanks for your concern. The point I was trying to make is that in my experience when food has a theory behind it, the theory is often vastly superior to the food. Once bitten, and so on ... Some of the participants on these boards generously believe these theories; good people, no doubt, but to my mind this is about as reliable as believing the blurb on a DVD.

Not sure how Fish Custard could have been 'forgotten'. Intentionally not cooked because it sounds so revolting, perhaps, but not forgotten.

blimey, best give this place a miss then. ← Not sure about that. It's just the term 'fun; what's it supposed to mean? Either it's a synonym for 'enjoyable', as in: we believe dining should be enjoyable, which hardly needs saying. Or it means something to do with clowns; i.e. not 'funny' exactly, but 'fun'. Think Patch Adams, but with chefs and waiters. Or it means vice; It was just a bit fun your honour (having been arrested for dogging). It could even be an antonym to 'serious'; you know, the kind of restaurant where everyone; is frowning like, er ... like um, well, somewhere very serious.

Yes Dunc, I realize that the menu differs in the details , but the approach strikes me as being similar. Having said that, I don't think there's anything wrong with the approach either, provided that that the chef doesn't (a.) use it to pretend he is somehow transcending cookery, and that (b.) the food he produces is accessible; i.e. tastes nice. For example, HB's beetroot obsession: I don't care if beetroot is sweet, earthy and a wonderful colour; it's still beetroot. To my mind, forcing beetroot on your customers just because it fits in with a visual trick is the height of pointlessness. Likewise, the iPod, the liquid nitrogen, the fish ice-cream and so on. There can be no doubt that thanks to to technology, what can be done with food is potentially greater. However, being Roger Irrelevant is not the way to do this. Prima facie, SB's approach seems similar to HB's, but what I want to know is whether SB's proffer is similarly embarrassing, or whether he uses his knowledge to produce food that is pleasant to eat, or whether he uses it to justify pretentious vulgarity.

Sort of piqued on going, but I really do not want a sub-standard Fat Duck experience (FD is sufficiently sub-standard as it is). Also the website is a bit FD; chefs now seem to have philosophies, and SB's is distressingly similar to HB's: we believe dining is about fun etc. Can anyone who has experience of both assure me that I won't be subjected to a theoretical browbeating as to why I should be fawning over something that tastes like an accident in the Body Shop.

Although perhaps counter-intuitive, Yes Chef magazine conclusively demonstrates that in the UK the relationship between chefs and the enjoyment of food is an irrelevant happenstance.

That would be 'debone', surely?

Could be worse. Things started going wrong post-MPW, with the patently false dichotomy drawn between Ramsay and Blumenthal (I am better than MPW/I am not MPW). Food can be good without either being mired in a static past, or being wantonly progressive. Perhaps we in the U.K. should backtrack a little and take up some of the less obvious threads; i.e. not those that lead to fame, fortune and extensive media coverage, but those that lead to decent food.

This is the irony; stock cubes are mainly hydrolyzed protein, which is essentially MSG, which is what gives the 'umami hit in the mouth' -- (grins impishly, much like a child in sweetshop). Now if you say you use Knorr, modern foodies will turn on you quicker than Actaeon's hounds, but if you say umami, they will queue around the block in order to get their chests autographed.

Perhaps if he'd said that he wants to play in 'sweetshop', and said it with an 'impish grin', we could take him a bit more seriously.

He's obviously got the k-now how...... ← Of course, if he'd said 'umami hit', then he'd have had modern foodies eating out of his ring-piece.