Dinner by Heston Blumenthal: Brilliant Historic British Gastronomy

Next up on my UK Restaurant Hit List is Dinner by Heston Blumenthal.

Heston is the legend behind The Fat Duck, which was crowned the #1 restaurant in the world in 2005. Dinner by Heston is part of his growing empire and is based in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, just down the road from the famous Harrods luxury department store.

The concept behind Dinner is one that Heston came up with because of the notorious reputation of English cuisine. He decided that it was an undue reputation and went back into old English recipe books set to prove that British gastronomy could compete with the best of them.

Opened in 2011, Dinner gained its first Michelin star within a year, with the second star in 2014. The restaurant is now headed by the former head chef of The Fat Duck, Ashley Palmer-Watts. Heston was the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

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LDS Hook-Up: Spring Wonderland FREE Tickets!

Tumble Down the Rabbit Hole into an Underground Museum Party

Organized by NB Noise and Peng, Spring Wonderland is a twist on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” tale that will transport you to an unexpected party zone – in the Chinese Businessmen Museum.

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Go Through the Looking Glass

Even as a kid, Alice in Wonderland gave me the heebie-jeebies. I thought the original movie was already very strange and the disappearing cat always scared me. So when I heard Tim Burton was creating a “twisted and psychedelic” sequel of Alice in Wonderland, taking place 10 years later with Alice returning as a 19 year old girl, I could only imagine how creepy and disturbing it could be. (I admit, I got a little scared when I saw Tim Burton’s Coraline just a few months ago).

But rather than scare the wits out of me, the 3D film was another fantasy adventure. Like Avatar’s Pandora world, Tim Burton creates a magical gothic world version of Alice’s original Wonderland beyond your imagination, where some of the strangest looking characters who could easily have been very creepy, were actually quite endearing (Tweedledee & Tweedledum). I left the theater laughing and feeling light-hearted, mimicking lines throughout the movie like the hilarious Red Queen’s  favorite line, “Off with his head!“ (brilliantly played by HELENA BONHAM CARTER), Alice as “Um from Umbridge”, and acting out the way Anne Hathaway portrayed the White Queen as a drunk fairy.

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