Heston Blumenthal
Heston Marc Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. His restaurants include the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three-Michelin-star restaurant that was named the world's best by the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2005.
Blumenthal is regarded as a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food pairing and flavour encapsulation. He came to public attention with unusual recipes such as bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge. His recipes for triple-cooked chips and soft-centred Scotch eggs have been widely imitated. He has advocated a scientific approach to cooking, for which he has been awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Reading, Bristol and London and made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Blumenthal's public profile was boosted by a number of television series, most notably for Channel 4, as well as a product range for the Waitrose supermarket chain introduced in 2010. Blumenthal also owns Dinner, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in London, and a one-Michelin-star pub in Bray, the Hind's Head.
Blumenthal has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a condition he believes made him hyper-focused on his work, and bipolar disorder. He is an ambassador for the charity Bipolar UK.
Early life
Heston Marc Blumenthal was born in Shepherd's Bush, a suburb of West London, on 27 May 1966, to a Jewish businessman born in Southern Rhodesia and an English mother, a secretary, who converted to Judaism. His surname comes from a great-grandfather from Latvia and means "flowered valley", in German. His mother was often angry and unloving, calling him "useless" and "stupid", and never acknowledged his later achievements. Blumenthal was raised in Paddington, and attended Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith; St John's Church of England School in Lacey Green, Buckinghamshire; and John Hampden Grammar School, High Wycombe.Blumenthal's interest in cooking began at the age of sixteen on a family holiday to Provence, France, when he was taken to the three-Michelin-starred restaurant L'Oustau de Baumanière. He was inspired by the quality of the food and "the whole multi-sensory experience: the sound of fountains and cicadas, the heady smell of lavender, the sight of the waiters carving lamb at the table". When he learned to cook, he was influenced by the cookbook series Les recettes originales, with French chefs such as Alain Chapel.
When he left school at eighteen, Blumenthal began an apprenticeship at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons but left after a week's probation. Over the next ten years he worked as a credit controller and repo man while teaching himself the French classical reportoire. A pivotal moment came when reading On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee in the mid-1980s. This challenged kitchen practices such as searing meat to seal in the juices, and encouraged Blumenthal to "adopt a totally different attitude towards cuisine that at its most basic boiled down to: question everything".
Career
In 1995, Blumenthal bought a run-down pub in Bray, Berkshire, the Ringers, and re-opened it as the Fat Duck. It was initially staffed only by Blumenthal and a dishwasher. It served meals in the style of a French bistro, such as lemon tarts and steak and chips. Blumenthal later said that science had begun to influence the cooking at this stage, as already on the menu were his triple-cooked chips, which were developed to stop the potato from going soft. The Fat Duck came close to going bankrupt, and Blumenthal sold his house, his car and many of his possessions to keep it open.After four years, the Fat Duck was awarded its first Michelin star in 1999. In 2001, it was awarded a second Michelin star and was named restaurant of the year by the Automobile Association. In 2002, Blumenthal opened a second, short-lived restaurant in Bray, the Riverside Brasserie, selling many of the Fat Duck's earlier dishes at reduced prices. The Guardian critic Jay Rayner gave it a positive review, describing it as "truly stunning value".
In 2004, the Fat Duck became the third restaurant in the UK to receive three Michelin stars, after the Waterside Inn, also in Bray, and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London. At the time he received his third star, Blumenthal said it was the closest he had been to bankruptcy, with enough money only to cover the following week's staff wages. Blumenthal acquired the Hind's Head, also in Bray, in 2004. The building was a 15th-century tavern; it now serves traditional seasonal cuisine and historic British dishes. In 2011, it was named the Michelin Pub Guide's Pub of the Year.
In January 2011, Blumenthal opened his first restaurant outside Bray, Dinner, at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London. Historians helped to develop the restaurant's dishes from historic British recipes. Dinner was awarded its first Michelin star in 2012, and was voted the seventh-best restaurant in the world in 2013. It received a second Michelin star in 2014.
In June 2014, Blumenthal announced a new restaurant, the Perfectionists' Cafe, in Heathrow Airport. In 2015, the Fat Duck was temporarily relocated to Melbourne, Australia, while the Bray restaurant was refurbished. Upon reaching the end of its temporary opening, the restaurant became a permanent Melbourne branch of Dinner, although not owned by Blumenthal.
Television
In 2002, Blumenthal made a series of six half-hour television programmes, Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal, which was transmitted on Discovery Science along with a book Kitchen Chemistry, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry During 200407, he presented two BBC series called Heston Blumenthal: In Search of Perfection and Heston Blumenthal: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection.Blumenthal moved from the BBC to Channel 4 in March 2008, joining the celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Gordon Ramsay. In January 2009, a three-part series of television programmes on Channel 4 covered his efforts to revamp the struggling Little Chef roadside restaurant chain, using a trial location on the A303 road at Popham. Little Chef extended Blumenthal's menu to 12 branches, but removed them in 2013.
In March 2009, Blumenthal presented a television series, Heston's Feasts, showing themed dinner banquets. A second series began in 2010. From 22 February 2011, Channel 4 began airing Heston's Mission Impossible, in which he attempts to improve lacklustre food served in various industries. In January 2012, How To Cook Like Heston aired on Channel 4. It was aimed at home cooks and featured some of the more approachable techniques employed by Blumenthal.
In November 2012, Blumenthal presented the Channel 4 programm Heston's Fantastical Food. He presented a new 2014 series, Heston's Great British Food, again commissioned by Channel 4. In 2020, Blumenthal appeared as a judge in the Channel 4 series Crazy Delicious hosted by Jayde Adams, alongside chefs Niklas Ekstedt and Carla Hall. In 2021, he was a judge in the French version of Top Chef, proposing a food pairing test. In July 2022, he was a guest judge on the final episode of the Australian Masterchef.
Waitrose
In 2010, Blumenthal entered a partnership to create products for the supermarket chain Waitrose. Blumenthal's initial products were unsuccessful, but his Christmas pudding with an embedded orange, released in 2010, sold out quickly and were sold on eBay for hundreds of pounds. His other products included a bloody Mary prawn cocktail, sherry-and-balsamic vinegar Christmas pudding, and puff pastry mince pies with pine sugar dusting. The range inspired unusual products from other supermarkets, such as a Christmas pudding with popping candy and chilli chocolate sauce from Aldi. In 2023, Waitrose ended the contract with Blumenthal, seeking to focus on its in-house range. A source from Waitrose described Blumenthal as "unpredictable".Cooking methods
He has experimented with foodpairing, in which recipes are created by identifying molecular similarities between different ingredients and bringing these together in a dish. One of the first such was Blumenthal's white chocolate with caviar. He created unusual combinations, including Roast Foie Gras "Benzaldehyde" and salmon poached in a liquorice gel accompanied by asparagus. While many of these unexpected combinations have been critically well received, Blumenthal himself has pointed out the limitations of such an approach, insisting that although foodpairing is a good tool for creativity, it is still no substitute for the chef's culinary intuition. ‘The molecular profile of a single ingredient is so complex that even if it has several compounds in common with another, there are still as many reasons why they won't work together as reasons why they will.’Statement on the "new cookery"
From the late 1990s, scientific understanding, precision and technology became characteristic of modern cuisine, in so-called "molecular gastronomy". On 10 December 2006 Blumenthal and Harold McGee published a "Statement on the 'New Cookery'" in the Observer to summarise the tenets of this cuisine. In it they emphasise that openness to novel techniques and ingredients can be used as a means to achieve excellent dishes, but they value tradition. Novel techniques and ingredients should only be used when they contribute to a dish. For example, liquid nitrogen should not be used for the sake of novelty. And that progress can come from collaboration, for example with chemists and psychologists.Multi-sensory cooking
Blumenthal calls his scientific approach to cuisine "multi-sensory cooking", arguing that eating is "one of the few activities we do that involves all of the senses simultaneously". One of the catalysts for this culinary approach was a visit at 16 to the restaurant L'Oustau de Baumanière in Provence, which at the time had three Michelin stars. The trip prompted a passion for cooking, above all because of "the whole multisensory experience: the sound of fountains and cicadas, the heady smell of lavender, the sight of the waiters carving lamb at the table". One of the other main inspirations for a multi-sensory style of cooking was the lack of space and opulence at the Fat Duck. "Places like the Baumaniere had a view and a history and architecture that took its diners to a world of beauty and indulgence. The Fat Duck didn't have any of that, so it had had to capture the diners’ imagination in a different way – taking them to the mysteries of flavour perception and multi sensory delight."The event that cemented Heston's interest in this area was his creation of a crab ice cream to accompany a crab risotto. "People had difficulty accepting crab ice cream, yet if it was renamed 'frozen crab bisque', people found it more acceptable and less sweet." The phenomenon was subsequently researched by Martin Yeomans and Lucy Chambers of the University of Sussex, who served test subjects a version of Blumenthal's ice cream flavoured with smoked salmon, but told one group they would be tasting ice cream and the other that they would be tasting a frozen savoury mousse. Although all consumed identical food, those eating what they thought was savoury mousse found the flavour acceptable while those eating what they thought was ice cream found the taste salty and generally disgusting. For Blumenthal, this confirmed his ideas. "If something as simple as a name could make a dish appear more or less salty... what effect might other cues have on flavours and our appreciation of them?"
Since that point, exploring the sensory potential of food – via both research and the creation of new dishes – has been an ongoing and characteristic strand of Heston's cooking. In 2004, working on a commission for the photographer Nick Knight, he created a Delice of Chocolate containing popping candy and took the imaginative step of arranging for diners to listen on headphones to the little explosions it made as they ate – the first time such a thing had been done. With Professor Charles Spence, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University he has conducted several experiments into how our sense of sound can affect perception of flavour. In one experiment, test subjects consumed an oyster in two-halves: the first half was accompanied by maritime sounds, the second by farmyard sounds, and they were then asked to rate pleasantness and intensity of flavour. It was found that oysters eaten while listening to seaside sounds were considered significantly more pleasant. In another, similar experiment, test subjects tasted bacon-and-egg ice cream while listening to sounds of bacon sizzling, followed by tasting it while listening to the sound of chickens clucking. The sizzling bacon sound made the bacon flavour appear more intense.
In Blumenthal's view, experiments such as these show that our appreciation of food is subjective, determined by information sent by the senses to the brain: "the ways in which we make sense of what we are eating and decide whether we like it or not depend to a large extent on memory and contrast. Memory provides us with a range of references – flavours, tastes, smells, sights, sounds, emotions – that we draw on continually as we eat." His dishes, therefore, tend to be designed to appeal to the senses in concert, and through this to trigger memories, associations and emotions. Thus the Nitro-poached Green Tea and Lime Mousse on the Fat Duck menu is served with spritz of ‘lime grove’ scent from an atomiser; and the Jelly of Quail dish includes among its tableware a bed of oak moss, as well as being accompanied by a specially created scent of oak moss that is dispersed at the table by means of dry ice.
The most complete expression to date of his multisensory philosophy, however, is probably the dish ‘Sound of the Sea’, which first appeared on the Fat Duck menu in 2007. In this, ingredients with a distinctly oceanic character and flavour – dried kelp, hijiki seaweed, baby eels, razor clams, cockles, mussels, sea urchins – are fashioned into a course that has the appearance of the shore's edge, complete with sea ‘spume’ and edible sand. It is served on a glass-topped box containing real sand, and accompanied by headphones relaying the sounds of seagulls and the sea by means of a small iPod and earphones. The idea, according to Blumenthal, was one ‘of creating a world, of transporting the diner – through sound, through food, through an integrated appeal to the senses – to another place’.