When snail porridge and bacon-and-egg-flavour ice cream no longer seem novel, and when poaching pears in a washing machine or glazing strawberries in a sandwich toaster becomes mundane, what must a celebrity chef do to maintain his reputation for confounding expectations?
The answer, for Heston Blumenthal, is attempt to read his customers’ minds. The chef, who once referred to his science-aided cooking as “molecular gastronomy”, wants to do covert research on visitors to his Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, so that he can surprise them with dishes tailored to their nostalgic feelings about food.
He said that he had sought advice from Derren Brown, the illusionist who specialises in playing mind games with audience members. “I called up Derren Brown and talked to him about how we could find out things about people without them being too aware,” Blumenthal said.
The intention was to discover biographical details about customers, initially by asking questions of the person making the booking but also by conducting online research and compiling dossiers about returning diners.
Blumenthal said that he was interested in serving food in the manner of a story, taking inspiration first from his own memories of food on holidays in Cornwall between the ages of five and seven, and then from diners’ own childhoods. The Fat Duck, which is due to reopen next month after refurbishment, has been researching its guests for years on Google, the chef said.
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Jason Atherton, a chef who has won Michelin stars at three restaurants including the City Social in London, was wary of prying into his diners’ privacy. “We certainly don’t go Googling into people’s private affairs,” he said. “What we try and do is if people have already dined with us — if they tell us that their favourite wine is something not on the menu — we will get it for them.
“Heston is famed for being innovative, but it wouldn’t fit in with what I do. There are going to be people who absolutely love it and there are going to be people saying, ‘Don’t go snooping into my affairs’.”
Giles Coren, the Times food critic, said that restaurants were increasingly researching their customers, either to give a personal service or to reject people they do not like.
“I was at the opening of Soho Farmhouse, an offshoot of Soho House in Oxfordshire, and they said, ‘Oh, when people phone to book we Google them. If they’re not interesting then we don’t give them a table.’
“This is terrible, but also brilliant. It’s either the great dream or the worst nightmare that comes with all internet-related things.”
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He said that Blumenthal believed in compiling a nostalgia database that would allow him to play with diners’ expectations. “Heston is a great lover of mind games, much like Derren Brown. He doesn’t sit there whisking eggs and wondering why table four is late for lunch. He wants people to believe that he’s capable of things that other chefs are not. I think it’s fantastically progressive, although I can imagine people being infuriated by it. What next? Are you going to walk into McDonald’s and they’ll know to serve you a Findus Crispy Pancake burger?”
Blumenthal’s previous mind tricks have included serving two squares of jelly that confound customers because the red one tastes of orange and the yellow one tastes of beetroot. Coren suggested The Fat Duck had lost its status of being a restaurant that everyone talked about. “If you’re going to keep up in the world’s 50 best restaurants, you have to bring something new. Science developments now are digital and he is bringing something new into the digital age.”