You’ve heard of Michelin stars and rock-star international chefs who charge squillions of dollars a meal?
Well the famous Michelin star British chef Heston Blumenthal- yes from TV series Heston’s Feasts (SBS) – is going to be relocating to none other than the Crown Casino complex in Melbourne for six months in 2015! Yup, the entire 50 person staff of his three-star Michelin restaurant “The Fat Duck” in Bray, Berkshire, will move down-under whilst the 1640’s building undergoes renovations.
It’s Blumenthal’s first restaurant outside the UK, and the Crown site will be transformed into a space serving British period cooking dating back to the 1300s. Once the team goes back to Britain it won’t end there but continue on as “Dinner by Heston Blumenthal” with executive head chef Ashley Palmer-Watts.
To give you an idea of what a big deal this is for Australian tourism, Bumenthal’s London original of this concept “Mandarin Oriental” is one of the world’s top 10 restaurants. The groundbreaking restaurant, the 20-year-old Fat Duck, was previously listed as the best in the world, and attracts about 30,000 phone inquiries a day and a more than 3-month waiting list.
The Fat Duck is famous for unusual cuisine concepts and comes with a hefty price tag, up at around $360 at the original Bray location. What do you get for that? How about a ‘Sounds of the Sea’ seafood dish which comes with an iPod inside a shell to serenade you whilst eating; egg-and-bacon ice cream made at the table with the waiter cracking an egg into liquid nitrogen, and you get the picture!
So why Oz? Blumenthal says he fell in love the first time he visited Australia in 2003.
“The restaurant scene is fantastic, the diversity exciting, and the produce incredible, but better than all of that, the people are just great fun. I love how Australian people celebrate good food; there is such a love of everything from coffee shops to gourmet restaurants and everything in between,” he said.
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