Dinner by Heston Blumenthal at Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

Second time as good as the first!

Attending Dinner after a 9-month gap (celebrating anniversaries each time) shows the food quality and presentation hasn't lapsed. We go to very few restaurants more than once in a year, but Dinner deserves this accolade (and it takes some months to forget the total cost!).
I don't need to repeat the glowing comments about particular items (meat fruit amazing again etc), and the main courses were of good size, hot, and were very well presented.
I do think a glass of sauvignon blanc at £12.50 was pushing it somewhat, and a South African pinotage at £49 as well. The waiters were uniformly well -informed and helpful.

It is no fat duck type molecular cuisine but rather “normal” but exceptionally well made food. Menu is static without much change but delivers in some cases brilliant food. For starters there is the much talked about meat fruit (both visually and taste-wise a delight) but others to also be recommended include rice and flesh (basically a risotto) and salamugundy (chicken oysters). Main course highlights include amongst others a lovely pork chop and lovely ribeye/fillet (you got to have the tripple fried fries). A highlight for desert is the tipsy cake. Good but pricey wine list.

Just back from lunch on a friday afternoon.
Had the rice and flesh (risotto milanese?), pigeon (pigeon/onion/artichokes/thin juice..nothing more) and the tipsy cake (30m waiting as i was reminded thru the lunch but appeared 5 mins after we ordered it). My partner had the nettle porridge and halibut. Please save me from the disney style originations of the dishes and when they were re-discovered by Heston.

Dont go with the hype, or the vivid descriptions on the menu, its just very good hotel brasserie food- no better.

Its nothing like what you might expect from those Heston laboratory efforts of distilling the essence of the food and its flavours- its just a very good hotel quality menu and cooking. Service was rushed- they brought dessert, petit 4's and coffee together. Just an example of how the service is not of a standard of a starred michelin restaurant. Its a shame really…this is Heston's chance to shine in London, and let us all experience the brilliance of his cooking, and he decides instead to go down the easy route of letting the reputation do the talking rather than the brilliance of the food and overall experience. The menu hardly changes with the seasons- you get the feeling its living off a concept.

Maybe we expected more from one of the top rated chefs in the world, and maybe we misunderstood his ambition, but either way its not really what we hoped for and what you might come to expect. It doesnt get into my top 10 of London restaurants. Seriously, i think some of his waitrose meals are more impressive. Loved his Xmas pudding though. You know- the one with the carmalised orange inside.

I'm afraid Ashley must have had the night off tonight. My birthday treat from my gorgeous wife was dinner at Dinner and it inspired me not. I had the bone marrow which was delish but the snails were cold. I mentioned it to the waiter but heard nothing more of it. Then had the rib for two which on paper looked amazing. It took ages to arrive and was tasty but was not hot. Assuming it had just been extracted from the wood chip fire oven I was unimpressed. The mushroom ketchup was delicious. So much so we asked for more. The second delivery was cold (the first was hot and tasted amazing). We were told it should be served at room temperature. We asked for a replacement and again it was cold. By this time I had lost patience. A 1 star Michelin restaurant this was not. Heston take heed; the gallows await for ye olde style eating establishment if you can't get a meal like this right. Wine was excellent but you need some more reasonably priced bottles. Soda bread was fantastic but not made in house, so no points there my bald headed friend (I'm bald as well so that's not an insult me thinks). Finally had all the spiel from Jonno (the assistant restaurant manager) bless him about how it's not good enough blah blah blah. I'm sick of hearing this stuff from London restaurants that have all the awards under the sun; and 1 star – not tonight Heston old boy.

OMG. Exclamation marks!!! Emoticons :-) ;-) and CAPS LOCK! Because that's how dinner at Dinner made me feel. The best gastronomic experience of my life. So far (I live in hope). I loved the old-English-dishes-revived menu with all its Heston twists. The “meat fruit” chicken parfait does really look like a mandarin! (nice nod to the location on that one) and it is the creamiest pate ever! The spiced pigeon has a tenderness my future mother-in-law's version can only dream of :-))), and my fiance's pork chop was the juiciest ever tasted. The tipsy cake, a light lemony spongey thing with sweet caramel and crunchy sugared top, is simply HEAVEN. I wanted to cry tears of joy. I just sighed instead. I was so full I couldn't eat the final complimentary chocolate garnache. My fiance did and he left rather green about the gills: it turns out you can have too much of a good thing. It's not just about the meal though (although last night 80% of our chat was about the food, it was just too good not to give it due attention). The whole experience was wonderful. We loved seeing the ordered busyness of the chefs in the glass-walled kitchen which is exposed on 3 sides to diners (so much more genuine and effective than the theatrical showpiece at Joel Roubouchon or the corner afterthought at Pollen Street). We loved the service, incredibly enthusiastic and knowledgeable thanks it seems to a real gastro-education which includes trips out to suppliers (where our waiter learnt not to stress wood pigeons before slaughter to preserve taste!) and doing turns in the kitchen. We loved the relaxed, unpretentious atmosphere. We loved the wine (rather than getting an expensive bottle we got a glass each per course so they were well-matched by the sommelier). Gladly someone else was picking up the bill which just shy of £300 for 2 for cocktails, 3 courses, 6 wines, water, tea and service. That is a lot of money for a meal. But we went all out (yes please to an £18 G&T, the expensive sweet Hungarian Tokaji etc) and actually each dish is not that much more expensive than you find in many good (and some not so good) London restaurants and the meal does really fill you up. Now I just have to persuade the fiance that we should go to Bray next…

The food was everything I expected it to be. The fruit meat was one of the most beautiful plates I have been served.
The duck breast was excellent, nice and pink, the pineapple dessert delicious. My companion decided that ordering champagne was better than wine for lunch. Each glass was £14, so that was a bit pricey. Service was excellent. Our only regret was that we didn't have room for the icecream made at the table. Next time…

I must admit to being something of a Heston fanboy. I have travelled to Bray countless times to dine at The Crown, Hinds Head & Fat Duck and have never been anything less than completely impressed. Even the Little Chef in Popham was terrific.

Despite never having never visited Dinner, I immediately recoignised the dishes on the menu – ‘Meat Fruit’, ‘Rice and Flesh’, ‘Tipsy Cake’. I was excited about sampling modern interpretations of these long forgotten British recipes and finally completing the circle.

Rarely do I pay much attention to the decor and ambience of a restaurant – if the company is good and the food is exciting my eyes don't leave the table. This time I noticed – the restaurant was an awkward shape and the view of the rest of the room obscured by several large pillars which I expect are obviously structural neccesities but divided the room. Bare wood tables and banquette sharing was also a little bit of a surprise. It reminded me of a Thursday night at Relais De Venise on Threadneedle, it missed a sense of occasion and the primarily male diners with their primarily male clients and the ludicrously priced Wine list added to an overall feeling of dissapointment.

The food itself was overall good and the the service absolutely faultless. Enough has been written already about the victuals so I won't elaborate here other than to warn that the sous vide ‘Beef Supreme’ did indeed taste as if it had been boiled in the bag for 50 hours as promised. Desserts were good but in terms of the overall meal and experience I left underwhelmed.

I passed on the offer of a cup of tea after dinner, despite the very competitive price of £14.95 a cup – which I hope was made holy water imported from Fiji and not from the the kitchen tap.

After a long time of failed attempts to book the fat duck (really why does he make it so difficult?!) we though we’d try Dinner, so with the gravitas of the Heston’s name appended to the restaurant it brought with it great expectations of a wonderful meal and dining experience.

Salamugundy (Chicken Oysters, Salsify, Marrow Bone & Horseradish cream) was my starter, succulent pieces of chicken, with a delicately spiced horseradish source. Which was quite delicious.

Spiced Pigeon with Ale and Artichokes was my main, again a very good dish.

The Pièce de résistance however was the desert, brown bread ice cream, nothing like or taste brown bread but a delicious unctuous texture that almost had a hint of taste of fois.

As I mentioned at the start there were high expectations due to the Heston association and whilst the dinner was excellent, it didn’t really excite in the way that it might. It certainly is good food done well, but for someone that dines out a lot it wasn’t extra ordinary.

The bill for the two of us came in at £324, getting on for half though was the drinks bill. For me, whilst a good dinner wasn’t interesting enough to warrant the price tag.

My wife and I went for lunch on 19 November; the restaurant was full. We found the largely Eastern European/Asian staff to be incompetent, and had to ask several times for many things, including the cheapest available wine at £49.00 for a Chablis. The starters were bland – the smoked mackerel dish was disappointing, and the scallops (all two of them) were dressed in a tasteless green goo. For the mains, the cider cooked cod was also disappointing, although I had an excellent rib-eye steak. We would not go back again. This restaurant does not compare in any way to Marcus Waring at the Berkeley or Gordon Ramsey at Royal Hospital Road.

I'm new to this gig – i.e. restaurant reviews, so perhaps my 8 out of 10 is unjustly harsh because the reality is that I really enjoyed the food, but hear me out…

I do often find that when I do 3 courses I find that I would have been happier had I just gone for a starter and a main, and the truth is that I felt the same way after my experience at Dinner. It's not that the main (powdered duck) wasn't extremely well executed and flavoursome, but it just didn't have the wow factor I was execting (despite me knowing that I would probably never be able to create this dish at home…I mean, what on earth are umbles???). When discussed with my pal at dinner she speculated that this might be due to hotel restaurants having to play it somewhat safe on the mains if you're catering to hotel guests, as guests quite often just pop in for dinner and don't want anything amazing..just something nice. I thought that this was probably true after giving it some thought.

The starter (meat fruit) and dessert (tipsy cake) on the other hand were, for me two of the most memorable and delicious dishes that I have tried this year. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed them both, and actually wished by the time I had dessert that I really hadn't gone for the main at all as indigestion had kicked in! (not that that stopped me devouring the entire tispy cake). If I enjoyed dessert so much when I was probably too full for it, you can imagine how it would have gone down if I had more room for it! I blame the meat fruit – do not underestimate just how filling this starter is – there's a serious amount of liver parfait and mandarin jelly going on there, and its oh, so wonderfully rich and delicious!

At just over £100 for 3 courses, a glass of Ruinart rose, glass of rioja and rose tea I thought the pricing was not too bad – the glass of Ruinart alone cost an eye watering £19…but I have not regrets on that front to be honest, as it was a special occasion anyway – birthday (well that was the excuse for booking a table). And when the first thing asked of you when you're seated at your table is ‘Would you care for a glass of champagne?’ and a table laden with the stuff is wheeled over to you, you'd be a fool not to think…'well go on then'..just one glass.

The ambience was pretty good by 7pm (pretty empty when we arrived at 6.30pm as was to be expected on a Monday evening). By the time we left at around 10pm Dinner was still in full swing, and Rupert Everett hadn't left his table by then so I assume he was having a wonderful time. I did think the restaurant area was very smart, but personally I would rather something a little less formal looking, and a bit more welcoming (I'm not really into ‘smart’ dining..I just LOVE good food). The ceiling to floor glass which defined the kitchen area was however, a superb idea. I loved the fact I could look into the kitchen from my chair and see the pineapple for my divine tipsy cake cooking on the spit, and all the chefs preparing wonderful food.

I, like so many others can certainly recommend Dinner for dinner…but I'd stick with the starters and desserts if you want to try some truly wonderful food.