Telephone: 01628 7805 530
Address: Bray Marina, Bray
Lunch for two, including wine and service, £60
It probably does not need saying but, just so you know where this review is coming from, let me place on the record my huge admiration for Heston Blumenthal, chef proprietor of the Fat Duck at Bray. No. Huge admiration doesn't really do my feelings justice. I am a massive, panting fan; if it were appropriate to take your knickers off and throw them at your chef-idol while they were performing, as if at a Tom Jones gig, I would probably do it, were it not for the fact that a pair of my cavernous underpants flying through a kitchen during service would hardly be hygienic. I think his brand of modernist, inventive cooking is truly remarkable, not merely because it is cutting edge, but because it tastes nice.
It is precisely because I admire him so much that I found myself fretting over the news that he had launched a brasserie in Bray, a kind of baby-brother Fat Duckling to his Fat Duck. What troubled me was the notion of the brasserie, which is a form with its own peculiar traditions and heritage. Blumenthal has proven himself to be a top-flight gastronomic chef playing the big-ticket game for the select few who might both appreciate and be able to afford it. A brasserie, on the other hand, should be democratic, an eating house designed to service hunger. Richard Neat, whose combined gastronomic restaurant and brasserie experiment closed last month after less than a year, has already come a cropper on this. He could not find a way to reinterpret his luxury product that suited the brasserie ideal.
For all his talents, I feared Blumenthal might do the same. I needn't have worried. The first sign that this is a different type of operation is the location. The Fat Duck occupies a pretty pub on a manicured village high street. The Riverside Brasserie is in Bray Marina, off the A308 to Windsor (take a map). To reach it you must drive first through alleyways of landed boats, propped up on giant chocks. The brasserie itself is housed in a building resembling nothing more than a boat house. Once inside the small, clean, wood-veneer-panelled space, the quasi-industrial feel of the boat yard is banished. All you can see through the French windows is the terrace, which in summer will seat up to 80, and beyond that the adolescent River Thames rushing by. It is an exceptionally light and calming place to be.
Our mood was further enhanced by the menu. When the Fat Duck first opened about seven years ago, the molecular-gastronomic experiments it now specialises in - white chocolate and caviar buttons, slow-cooked lamb - were in the future. In those days its thing was precise, classically French cooking with Mediterranean influences. Much of the menu at the brasserie features those dishes, brought back but at seriously bargain prices; it is, if you like, Heston Blumenthal's greatest hits. The nutty bread and the stunning butter, made from unpasteurised goat's milk is, however, the same as at the Fat Duck now.
For my starter I chose a braised boudin blanc on braised lentils. The dense, salty, porkiness of the lentil brew played perfectly with an exquisite, rich and creamy boudin. My companion, Robert, chose the escabeche of red mullet, a gloriously fresh fillet that had barely been introduced to heat, which came with a mound of crisp, sweet, saffron-infused pickled vegetables. My main course was pretty much my ideal dish: a slow-braised hunk of belly pork, then lacquered with honey, mustard and spices and roasted off until it tasted of Christmas. It was served with a dense broth and chorizo sausage. I dream of it still.
Robert had two perfectly dainty duck's legs, which had been through the same sort of braising before roasting - Blumenthal adores multi-layered processes - and it came with a fat pillow of the most outrageous pommes purée either of us had ever tasted. According to Jerome, the maître d' - indeed the entire front of house staff - the reason it tastes so good is that it is 50 per cent butter. This is dense, exquisitely flavourful food, the kind of thing we could never do at home. It is the reason we go to restaurants.
There's a moderately lengthy wine list with at least a dozen bottles under £20. However, Jerome offered to make some choices by the glass for us. The Australian Cabernet Sauvignon he chose for me was thick and complex and served at the perfect temperature. We hadn't asked about price, but I would willingly have paid up to £6 for it. It appeared on the bill at £3. We didn't have room for a pudding each. We were offered small portions of lemon tart and apple crumble for the price of one - £3.75 - and we accepted. The lemon tart was quite simply the best I have ever tasted. The crème was extraordinarily light. Likewise the crumble, a tian of tart apples with a mound of sweet, spiced crumble on top, was a model of its kind.
If there is any criticism it is that, with just one person out front and two of Blumenthal's chefs in the open kitchen, service on a busy weekday lunchtime was sometimes a little slow. They will need a few more bodies to deal with the demand that will definitely come their way. And the bill, including food, service and wine: £62.98. In a restaurant sector too often choked by pure greed, it is, I think, truly stunning value. Frankly, it took enormous restraint on my part for me not to slip off my underwear there and then and start flinging it about. Wow!
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
