The Magician
Molecular Gastronomy is dead. Indeed, if Heston Blumenthal had his way it would never have been born in the first place. He accepts that, early on, the term let punters know something curious was going on at his restaurant, the Fat Duck, in Bray; that it gave people trying to make sense of a menu of grain-mustard ice cream, white chocolate with caviar or palate cleansers cooked in 'liquid nitrogen' an easy label. But he still thinks the term creates artificial barriers. 'Molecular makes it sound complicated,' he says. 'And gastronomy makes it sound elitist.' Blumenthal isn't keen on either. Plus it doesn't mean anything. 'It was dreamt up in 1992 by a physicist called Nicholas Kurti who needed a fancy name for the science of cooking so he could get a research institute to pay attention to his work,' he explains. Kitchen science didn't hack it. Hence: Molecular Gastronomy.
Blumenthal slips two tightly printed sheets of paper across the table towards me. It is, he says coyly, something he has been working on for nearly four years now, with a few of his pals. His co-authors are Ferran Adrià, chef of the uber-modernist El Bulli in Spain, Thomas Keller of Per Se and the French Laundry in the US, and Harold McGee, the writer whose book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen has provided these and so many other chefs with the technical understanding they needed to help them create their dishes. In short it's written by the very biggest names in the business. I ask Blumenthal if it's a manifesto. 'That sounds a bit grand and cocky doesn't it,' he says. 'Because we're definitely not trying to come up with a doctrine. It's just...' He hesitates. 'A statement.'
They want to emphasise what they have in common with other chefs, he says, not what separates them. They accept that a new approach to cooking has emerged recently but argue that parts of it have been 'overemphasized and sensationalised, while others ignored... Tradition is the base which all cooks who aspire to excellence must know and master. Our open approach builds upon the best that tradition has to offer.' As to the methods they use, it's all just cooking. 'We do not pursue novelty for its own sake,' it continues. 'We may use modern thickeners, sugar substitutes, enzymes, liquid nitrogen, sous vide, dehydration and other non-traditional means but these do not define our cooking. They are a few of the many tools that we are fortunate to have available as we strive to make delicious and stimulating dishes.'
Still, there's no doubting that it's his interest in science, and his ability to popularise it, which has turned him into a star - and in a relatively short period of time. It is only just over a decade since the self-trained Blumenthal, who turned 40 this year, opened his own restaurant - the only one he has ever worked in, apart from a few stages in a handful of other establishments. Back then the Fat Duck was a simple bistro, serving classic French dishes. His more unusual creations came later, winning him his first Michelin star in 1998, his second in 2001 and the all-coveted third in 2004. That year the Fat Duck also came top of the annual 50 Best Restaurants in the World list, voted for by his peers.
