The Fat Duck — Restaurant in Great Britain

It physically pains me to write this after years of looking forward to dining at the fat duck but I have to say it: DO NOT GO. Save your money.

Let's get a few things out of the way - the service is exceptional. More than exceptional. Everyone from the waiters to the sommeliers to generally everyone that had something to do with our experience was professional, had a smile on their face, seemed super enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

Let's also give a shout out to the fanciest toilet I have ever had the pleasure to use with pre heated seat, self cleaning and all of the bells and whistles.

The atmosphere itself is a bit dingy. The room is tiny and has no decorations at all which is supposed to add to your imagination but just feels a bit cold and grey.

All of this is nice, and let's face it if you're paying £1300 for two people you expect the service to be exceptional and the toilets to be instagram worthy, however, the food just did not live up to expectations.

Worse, apart from not living up to expectations most of it was outright bad. It's a shame because some of the gimmicks really got me and I enjoyed them. For example the take on a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich in the morning - Heston takes this and transforms it into cereal. Yes, you receive your own little cereal box with a game and a little trinket and it is absolutely adorable and made me smile. However, eating the actual dish was absolutely underwhelming and needed salt, pepper, and allll the seasonings. There were dishes that were not just in need of a heavier hand at the seasoning but that were inedible. The worst one was a take on prawn cocktails which ended up being more like a langustine lasagne which we had to send back after one bite.

It is unfortunate that the best things we ate were the two bread courses, one with bought in butter which was delicious, the other one with a magically made little apple that turns into a flavourful pate. The only other outstanding things to mention were a perfectly cooked venison, which, you know, you can get in a lot of places for a lot less money, and a spelt risotto which, again, is one of the cheapest ingredients but was at least warming and delicious.

The rest of the courses were simply not good. Not just not good enough for the price but not good, you would not eat them if you'd got them served in a Wetherspoons. I also felt that the story of "a day at christmas" got quite lost after the first 3 courses. Yes, the cocktail that reminds you of a cold winter morning going for a walk worked (the accompanying jerusalem artichoke dish was not terrible as a pallet cleanser) and then the salmon turned cereal course made sense as that's how christmas mornings go. Then we loose ourselves in two fish courses, the inedible prawn cocktail and a decent enough scallop dish, which don't really fit in the description of a christmas day. The venison sort of ties it back with christmas dinner but then the desserts are in the wrong order with the mince pies coming before the sweet things.

Let me talk about the sweet things for a minute. There is a dish that takes 30 people to make which is a shame because I'm sure these people are very skilled but the dish itself tastes of almost nothing, just a random bit of sweet and sour and some popping candy. It is not worth the effort it takes to make.

The fat duck also falls into some traps of fine dining that I just hate. Why are you charging me £14 for a hawkstone beer? Or £24 for a negroni? I already spend so much money on the food, just have normal prices for these things. No one wants to pay £8 for a can of red bull. Another fine dining staple was the gold leaf. It came in the shape of a golden carrot which was shaken up in water and turned into bovril with gold flakes in it. It was annoying and probably quite expensive and labour intense and tasted awful.

The whole thing was just not for me. And I feel terrible about that. But the food just...

This is the fifth Michelin star we’ve now been to and to be honest left most disappointed which kills us to say Firstly the menu First course - flavoured iced Buck’s Fizz ( I wasn’t a massive fan felt like 5 times colder than ice acream but was a nice cleanser ) Second course - a macaroon filled with cream horseradish ( nice but nothing special nice other one biter to get you ready for the mains) Third course - like a edible floured cold soup type thing topped with crème fresh was very nice but literally a spoonful Forth course - bread and marmalade ( absolutly lush but literally two tiny pieces of bread each ) Fifth course - cereals and milk ( now this is the only course we both couldn’t eat and also a table next to us struggled there was a twist to the dish and just wasn’t for us ) Sixth course - caviar ( this I was unsure of it was just a dollop of caviar on a tiny disk of white chocolate again a nice one bite and refreshing but this point it was our sixth course and was a hour and half in and literally have had nothing but a one bite or stuff that dissolves in your mouth ) Seventh - scallop dish ( the best dish so far as actually feels like some proper food but was gone in one bite again but this lovely ) Eighth - pretty sure this was a iced tea nice Ninth - venison star of the show was amazing melted in mouth but at this point this dish seemed to make us just starving as felt like this and the scallop was the only bits of proper food we’ve had at this point we asked for extra bread several times Tenth - minced pies and carrots ( was nice the pie it also has a twist but I’d of prefered to actually of eaten the carrot than have it dissolve in a drink for me to shot ) 11th - flaming Christmas pudding ( very let down with this one it was described as it might have been a Christmas pudding or Christmas bomb cake with flames but was sort of like a. Raw apple crumble the apples were like ice on my first one just my personal preference Last course - kids in sweet shop The machine and sweets were brilliant

The team - your staff are brilliant they made the event very special they were warming letting us in and they even let us come in the kitchen to meet the staff which we loved, soon as you take a last sip of a drink they was there on the ball 10/10 for all your staff and eveything that was cooked was amazingly done you have a very special team there.

However after all of that we felt very underwhelmed from lack of food it’s not our first experience in this type of place and we’ve never left hungry before the menu was scattered to look big but didn’t feel like we went for a four hour sit down dinner when left and for £800 for two people it left a sour taste in our mouths, felt like it’s just a gimmick majority of the time we was hoping this would of opened the door for us to coming every quarterly just to try the new menus but I don’t think we will be sadly now for the extra bulked price than any usual Michelin star we expected a lot more .

The team I couldn’t fault tho and no food was bad or cooked incorrectly couldn’t fault them at all hats off...

After wanting to go there for years, my eldest son took me yesterday for my birthday, and I have mixed opinions.

At first, I was very pleased with the food experience. I've been to a few fine dining establishments, and it's fair to say that this place topped most of them with its theatrics. In saying this, as there were tables close by being served before us, the element of surprise was lost, so they did not impress and at times were distracted with a crying baby and another table which was minutes in front of us by way of serving.

As this was a surprise (an amazing one at that) I later learnt how much my son paid for three of us to eat with wine pairings, mine's being the alcohol-free selection, I am now extremely disappointed.

The reason for my disappointment is that they set the standards of expectation with their well-above-typical fine dining cost, and I personally felt the overall experience fell well short of what should be expected.

My son always takes me to different fine dining establishments for my birthday, and this is the first time I've not received some small sweet treat. To be fair, when I arrived, I was handed a birthday card which had been signed by a number of staff. Nonetheless, I left the restaurant still hungry, and now knowing what it cost, I think I would've appreciated a sweet treat instead.

Speaking of sweet treat, I have a sweet tooth, and to only be served 1 dessert, on taster menu was a let down. The dessert, part of which was served on a levitating cushion, is without doubt what is meant when one says Style of Substance(SoS), as it was very, very average in taste.

Part of the meal served a meal worm, again SoS, as it did nothing for the overall meal by way of taste.

I have a lot more things I could say about its comparisons to other experiences that fell short, but the staff were extremely nice and friendly, so I do not want to complain too much on this platform. However, it should be noted, that the cost of this experience should come with a certain level of service.

All I will say is that it was disappointing for me after wanting to experience this place, and the cost does not allow me to give it a second chance, so I cannot recommend this place to anyone, knowing what other restaurants serve at a substantially lesser amount.

As theatrical as it was, ultimately you are there to eat food and hopefully leave satisfied. In this case I left slightly hungry, which resulted in me eating a flapjack and a packet of popcorn when we returned to the hotel. And yes, it was definitely a dining experience, but dry ice and liquid nitrogen shows are no longer revolutionary in the fine dining world, neither are worms. And in my opinion, at least two extra courses should be added to that taster menu, to justify its cost compared to other restaurants serving food of equal quality and nicer tasting...