http://www.thefatduckgroup.com/

The Heston Blumenthal Team, HIgh Street, Windsor (2026)

07/07/2026

The crack of a cricket bat striking a ball. The smell of wicket-keeping gloves. The cold sweetness of strawberries eaten in the pavilion. These sporting memories became entangled with others in my mind — the Italian habit of adding black pepper to strawberries, and a scientific experiment in which subjects were given strawberries with varying levels of sugar, altering the way they perceived their flavour.

Together, these seemingly unrelated memories sparked the beginning of a new dish.

The peppery note that worked so beautifully with strawberries led me to experiment with a peppery olive oil. From there, I tried pairing them with olives themselves. That combination introduced a faint leathery aroma, which immediately transported me back to the scent of my wicket-keeping gloves. To capture that memory, I added a few drops of leather essence.

A recipe was beginning to take shape, but it still needed balance. The answer came from another classic strawberry accompaniment: pistachios. Of course, I wasn't interested in using them in a conventional way.

By then, I'd already created a pistachio scrambled egg during a separate series of experiments and realised it would be the perfect addition to this Macerated Strawberry dish. Suddenly, the pieces fell into place — memories, ingredients and flavours combining to create something entirely new.

01/07/2026

When I bought The Bell and renamed it The Fat Duck, I received a complaint from the local council about the “inappropriate” name.

It really would have been inappropriate if my father’s suggestion — The Far Quenelle — had been chosen. (Give the “Qu” a K sound and say the latter two words as one, and you’ll hear what I mean.)

Nobody can now remember who came up with the name that became so intimately intertwined with the restaurant’s identity, perfectly capturing its combination of classicism with a touch of surrealism. My dad, Marco Pierre White, and others bandied ideas around until we were word-blind.

In the end, I laid down some ground rules: the name had to allude to the nearby river, refer to food, and have the feel of a traditional pub sign. Someone (Marco claims it was him) suggested the corpulent waterbird — and so a legend was born.

Illustration: Dave McKean

29/06/2026

I've been exploring mindful eating for a long time – years before I realised it, and long before I had a name for it. Questions about our relationship with food have shaped the way I think, cook, and eat for as long as I can recall.

Why does this smell trigger that memory? Why does the crunch of something – the snap of a biscuit or of pork crackling – feel so deeply satisfying? Why does eating a dish outside taste different from eating it in a windowless room?

We spend an enormous amount of our lives eating, and most of the time we're barely there for it. Scrolling. Talking about something else. Eating out of habit, boredom, distraction. The food disappears and we couldn't tell you what it tasted like.

Some of the greatest meals I’ve ever had weren't the most technically complex, they were ones where I was completely present, with every sense engaged, and nothing else competing for my attention.

That's what I think of as mindful eating.

It's not about eating less, though that might well be a side effect. It’s more about eating to feel fulfilled. It might not be possible to do it at every meal, but it can be a very rewarding experience. Nourishing in all senses.

Photo by Andrew Quinn

22/06/2026

Ice cream has always represented reward for me. As a child, after being dragged around Church Street Market by my grandmother, my sister and I were allowed an ice cream from the Regent Snack Bar on Edgware Road. That sense of anticipation and reward made the experience unforgettable, and it later shaped the way I think about food at The Fat Duck.

My fascination with ice cream eventually became an obsession with understanding how it works. Why do some ice creams taste richer, smoother or more intense than others? The answer lies in the balance of science and sensation.

At its simplest, ice cream is a mixture of ice crystals, fat, sugar and air. But the magic comes from controlling those elements precisely. Tiny ice crystals create smoothness, fat affects flavour release and texture, sugar controls sweetness and softness, while air gives ice cream its lightness and creaminess.

The freezing process is equally important. Ice cream only becomes truly smooth when it is churned as it freezes, preventing large ice crystals from forming. At The Fat Duck, we explored this process in extraordinary depth, experimenting with liquid nitrogen, rapid freezing and specialised equipment to create textures and flavours that conventional methods couldn’t achieve.

Because our ice creams are made fresh for service, we can prioritise flavour and texture over long-term storage.

You can learn more about the science of ice cream in one of our Kitchen Chemistry episodes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WbVXb3_ZjU

15/06/2026

Ice cream is an excellent platform for culinary creativity. Firstly, it can be a vehicle for almost any flavour imaginable (as you can tell from my list). It’s also visually nostalgic and has the ability to play with expectations and preconceptions, which makes it a powerful tool for surprise.
Over the years, I’ve explored ice cream in many different forms and flavours, including:

• Sardine on Toast
• Scrambled Egg & Bacon
• Pommery Grain Mustard
• Jerusalem Artichoke
• Kirsch
• Crab
• Waldorf Salad Rocket
• Salmon Twister
• Chicken Liver ‘Feast’ (technically not ice cream, but shaped as one)
• Cheese Ice Cream
• Pillow, a double milk ice cream encased inside a malt meringue dome.

Which one would you be curious the most to taste?

09/06/2026

What I love about ice cream is that there’s so much around it to enjoy. It’s nostalgic, playful, and it teaches you about science and history all at once.

There are countless ways to approach it, and it offers an wonderful patform for creativity. That’s why ice cream has appeared in so many forms across my restaurant menus and television shows over the years.

One of those shows was Heston's Fantastical Food, which included the Sky High 99 episode, where I revisited the wonder and excitement of childhood food memories and flavours by supersizing all kinds of treats on a monumental scale.

Ice cream also starred in Heston's Feasts and Kitchen Chemistry, which explored the science behind cooking and the fascinating processes that shape flavour, texture, and our experience of food.

Kitchen Chemistry, Ice Cream episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WbVXb3_ZjU&t=2s
Heston's Fantastical Feast, The Sky 99 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeWsoZSEIfg

05/06/2026

I was crazy about ice cream as a kid. It has a powerful hold on my memory because every Sunday my sister and I would be dragged to Church Street Market near Marylebone by our grandmother. Although it was only the early 1970s, it now feels like another age. Among the stalls of bric-à-brac there were even rag-and-bone men selling things from horse and carts.

In return for trudging around the market, we were allowed to choose an ice cream from the Regent Snack Bar on Edgware Road.

It was run by a Sicilian family and had a wonderfully 1950s feel to it, with a gigantic plastic cone hanging above the front door and a little serving hatch opening onto the street. A man in a white coat, with the deadpan demeanour of a Mafia capo, would scoop and smooth the ice cream into cones using a traditional trowel-like metal spoon.

It tasted fantastic — partly because of the anticipation, the delayed gratification. Those factors are such an important part of our enjoyment of food. I saw the ice cream as a reward for the punishment of being dragged around the market, and that sense of reward gave it a special place in my memory. In fact, the whole idea of food and reward has underpinned many of the ways the restaurant has evolved over the years.

That ice-cream experience stayed with me and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it was one of the first things I wanted to perfect and serve at The Fat Duck. Ice cream was the first food I investigated in the kind of depth that later became second nature at the restaurant, which is one reason it has remained such a focus of creativity on the menu.

30/05/2026

Of all the senses, hearing may be the one to which we pay least attention when we eat. But it can completely change what we experience as we eat.

I first realised this when I was asked to chew a piece of chewing gum while listening to the sound of something crunchy through headphones. Even though I knew the gum was soft, my brain was convinced I was eating something brittle.

Later, working with the scientists, I discovered that changing the sounds around food can, for example make crisps seem crisper, carrots seem crunchier or even make identical dishes taste different.

For this, we fed people two slices of the same oyster. The first while listening to the sound of the sea, the second while listening to the sounds of a farmyard. The oyster eaten accompanied by sea-sounds was found to be fresher, saltier and more delicious.

That experiment was one of the catalysts for The Fat Duck’s first multisensory dish, Sound of the Sea.

27/05/2026

I have some incredible news to share. 'Heston: My Life with Bipolar' has been longlisted for a National Television Award in the Best Authored Documentary category.

Making this film was about honesty, hope, and starting a conversation and I'm so proud of this film and of the conversations it has helped open up. I couldn't have done it without the support of the wonderful people at , whose work to support those living with bipolar disorder is truly life-changing.

The response from so many of you has already moved me beyond words. And if the film meant something to you, please take a moment to vote and share the link. The NTAs are decided entirely by public vote and every vote counts.

https://bit.ly/3umnX6N

And if you haven't seen the documentary yet, it's available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.

https://bbc.in/4fbGpKv

25/05/2026

I’ve spent years thinking about the relationship between sound and food. One of the things that fascinates me is how much what we hear can influence what we experience as we eat. The sound of the sea can make an oyster seem fresher. Crunching noises can make food feel crisper. Music can even make something taste sweeter or more bitter.

That is part of the inspiration for Sound of the Sea. By taking a multisensory approach that includes sound, I created a dish that goes beyond flavour to create a memory, a feeling and a sense of place. Because food that engages all of the senses can have an exceptionally powerful emotional effect.

The Heston Blumenthal Team

07/07/2026

01/07/2026

29/06/2026

22/06/2026

15/06/2026

09/06/2026

05/06/2026

30/05/2026

27/05/2026

25/05/2026

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