As previously mentioned, one of the many highlights of our just-completed visit to New York CIty was spending time in the kitchen of restauranteur Charlie Palmer’s Aureole restaurant with Chef Tony Aiazzi.

We had wanted to arrange some sort of cooking class for The Traveling Richters while in New York, but had no idea how to find someone to spend time working with us.

That’s where Relais & Châteaux came in. Relais & Châteaux is an association representing fine hotels and restaurants all over the world, based in France, but with offices in London and New York City. Their affiliated lodging properties tend to be high quality inns and even castles, not traditional hotels. And on the dining side, their affiliate restaurants tend to represent some of the best restaurants in the world. In the last few months, the Relais & Châteaux restaurants we have dined at include The Fat Duck outside of London and Le Pre Catalan in Paris.

Linda and I are members of the Relais & Châteaux 5C Club, which provides VIP treatment at Relais & Châteaux properties, and more importantly, provides priority access for reservations at Relais & Châteaux restaurants. We even have a special concierge available to us to help arrange such reservations and other special events, which is how we got connected with Chef Tony at Aureole.

We were told to show up at Aureole at 10am on Tuesday wearing comfortable clothes that we would not mind getting dirty. We did as we were told, and found Chef Tony waiting outside the restaurant for us. He guided us in through the delivery entrance (the restaurant was only open for dinner that day), along the way showing us various aspects of how a professional kitchen is set up. Aureole’s is actually on two floors, with desserts prepped in the basement, and the hot and cold kitchen on the second floor behind the upstairs dining room. That’s Chef Tony in the photo at right.

We were also introduced to Sous Chef Marcus Glendow-Ware (he’s in the photo with the pasta below), who actually ended up joining us for our cooking class as well - a pleasant surprise, as we were not expecting two chefs to be working with us.

In the upper kitchen we found four spots set up for us, each with an apron and a menu, and were asked to select the menu items we wanted to work on. The menu actually had five courses:

1. Tuna Tartare with Ponzu Sauce
2. Chilled Golden Tomato Soup with Piquillo Pepper, Melon, Fennel
3. Market Sashimi with Fresh & Pickled Celery, Capicola, Black Lava Salt
4. Caramelized Scallops with Fresh Linguine with Crab and Lemongrass Emulsion
5. Sticky Toffee Banana Pudding with Figs

Bas picked the Chilled Golden Tomato Soup, Krystyana the Tuna Tartare, Linda chose the Ponzu Sauce, and I started on the Lemongrass emulsion. The first quarter hour was spent chopping, cutting, measuring and blending, all under the careful supervision of the duo of chefs.

We ultimately each ended up doing a variety of tasks, learning along the way about a great way to make fresh pasta (use a cryo-vac machine to firm up the dough first), how to make a foam (use soy lecithin granulate, but make sure it’s not flavored), how to make fresh tortellini, and a variety of other tips and tricks we are certainly going to be putting to use in the coming months when we are home for a spell.

Marcus and Tony also explained how a commercial kitchen actually operates, including staffing, order processing and delegation to make sure orders are accurate and complete, how and when supplies are procured, and much much more. Anyone contemplating starting a restaurant without real hands-on experience should think twice - it’s not easy work. But Tony and Marcus have it all well in hand, which was even more obvious the following evening.

A cooking class in a top restaurant can be very rewarding, as we discovered when we got to sample the fruits of our various labors, and were also treated to two bonus courses: self-made ravioli and tortellini with a wonderful fresh ricotta filling and a Kobe beef carpaccio which Tony made for us using as a drizzle the Ponzu sauce Linda had helped prepare for our tuna tartare.

And as a sort of kudo to Krystyana’s culinary efforts, the extra sticky toffee banana pudding that Krystyana help prepare was put aside to serve to the kitchen staff later as a special treat.

We spent just over two and a half hours in the kitchen prepping, cooking, learning, and eating, and could have not been happier with the way it all worked out. Tony and Marcus were both enthusiastic, helpful, knowledgeable and charming. We learned that they had actually never had a small (four person) cooking class in the kitchen before - only cooking presentations where they did the work with an audience looking on, so this was as much of a first for them as it was for us. And it was executed splendidly. 

Before leaving Aureole after our cooking session, we ended up making reservations for a chef’s tasting dinner the following night.

And when we showed up Wednesday evening we got the full red carpet treatment, including some special courses - sashimi four ways, three cheese ravioli, butter roasted Maine lobster, country ham crusted pork tenderloin, and a phenomenal grilled lamb with charred eggplant (and is an appraisal from a person who does not generally enjoy lamb). Great wine pairings made the meal even more special.

We also had personal visits to our table by both Tony and Marcus, and were provided a grand dessert tasting featuring six different plates of sweet delectables (including the best trio of creme brulee we have ever had - see photo at right, center of table). Capping off the evening was a present to Linda of a bottle of verjus (which was an ingredient used in making the ponzu sauce) and then to top that, we received a personal tour by Marcus of the fully operational kitchen at night.

While the cost of the cooking class or the subsequent dinner were not insubstantial, we felt it to be a very worthwhile investment as this truly was a remarkable and educational experience we would have otherwise not had, nor likely have ever been able to experience if it hadn’t been for Relais & Châteaux.

So, in summary, if you’re looking for an excellent fine dining experience in New York City, definitely visit Aureole - they are presently on the lower upper East Side (61st Street near Madison Avenue) but moving to Times Square later this year. And tell them The Traveling Richters sent you. I can’t promise that you can get cooking classes though. But if you can, jump at the opportunity. You won’t regret it.

Click on the above photos to see larger versions in our photo gallery. You can also see all of our photos from our experience at Aureole on Flickr.

When we first decided back in July that we wanted to spend a couple of weeks in New York City last month, we knew we wanted to do things we had not done before during prior visits. That meant we didn’t need to go to the top of the Empire State Building, see the permanent exhibits at the Natural History Museum or Metropolitan Museum of Art, or gawking in Times Square.

However, finding out-of-the-ordinary things to do in New York City was a bit of a challenge. Our American Express Concierge service could only come up with a helicopter tour of New York City. And posts on various travel sites also didn’t elicit anything particularly stellar, except for one thing - a suggestion to get in touch with Context Travel.

Context Travel specializes in scholar-led walks of a number of “great” cities, including Rome, Paris, and New York. If only we had known about them when we were in Paris a couple of months ago… We had first heard of Context Travel in a magazine from American Express just recently, and thought they only covered European cities. They were highlighted as having helped director Ron Howard get a private tour of the Vatican and Sistine Chapel in preparation for the forthcoming movie “Angels & Demons”. So when the folks at Indagare suggested we check out their New York City offerings, we jumped at the idea.

Ultimately, we arranged four tours with Context Travel - I will go into those in another blog entry. But I will say all were very informative and educational, and we’re very glad we partook of the tours.

Another uncommon thing we managed to arrange through our contacts at Relais & Châteaux (where we are members of something called Club 5C), was a private cooking lesson with Chef Tony Aiazzi of the famed Aureole restaurant in New York City. And we also attended a presentation on cooking with liquid nitrogen at Astor Center. More on both of those later too.

We also managed to have dinner in the La Cave cheese cave at Artisanal Bistro, found a last minute table at Per Se (well, actually about two weeks in advance of our dinner), enjoyed dim sum and Peking duck in Chinatown, afternoon tea at The Peninsula’s Gotham Lounge and at The London NYC, Korean BBQ in K-town, and a few other culinary delights.

While we were looking for the more unusual experiences, we also did partake of the more ordinary delights of New York, including visiting various museums to see special exhibits, and a personal first for me - visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That was an especially emotional and moving day for me because of my roots as a first-generation American. We also caught an off-off Broadway performance, saw a couple of movies, and walked and walked and walked.

There also was business to take care of - we spent our first couple of days in New York at the New York International Gift Fair searching for new products to off in our on-line store at www.BonaireStuff.com. And I had a client meeting for my patent-related consulting business too.

All in all we had an excellent time in New York City. The weather was perfect just about all the time, we had a child sitter service available to us at our great hotel (we had two adjacent rooms at the all-suite The London NYC), and we ate very very well. The only downside to our trip was the markedly higher number our bathroom scales showed us upon our return.

I finally had a chance to sort through the thousand or so photos I took during our trip to New York City, which ended last Saturday.

You can view them locally on our site at this Gallery link.

Or you can go to Yahoo!’s Flickr service to see the photos.

I hope to get some stories posted tomorrow about our various adventures. For now, however, read the captions for each image.

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that we could not last until October before traveling again, so today we find ourselves getting to The Big Apple - New York City.

We’re planning on about two weeks of vacation, Traveling Richters style. That means lots of eating out and exploring.

On the exploration agenda, we’re taking the kids to their first trade show - the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) in order to give them an idea how gift shop retailers find things to sell, as well as how wholesalers and distributors market their wares. We have a business reason in going too as we run our own on-line gift shop at www.BonaireStuff.com - we’re hoping to find some more interesting Bonaire and Caribbean oriented merchandise to carry in our on-line store.

We also have walking tours scheduled through Context Travel (www.ContextTravel.com) to learn about the Cloisters, the history of tea, ethnic cooking in New York City, and making chocolate. There’s also an off-Broadway show (Around the World in Eighty Days) booked. We’re also hoping to catch the Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney Museum, plus more regular forays to places like the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim.

And then there’s the dining! We have dinner reservations for almost every night we’re in town at restaurants including Tabla, Le Bernardin, Per Se, L’Atelier des Joel Robuchon, Asiate, WD-50 (molecular gastronomy), a table in the cheese cave at Artisanal Bistro, and a few more goodies. We’re also trying to coordinate a cooking class at another top restaurant, and perhaps a demonstration of cooking with liquid nitrogen (see the post on The Fat Duck in England from a couple of months ago about what this is all about) one evening if we get the timing to work out.

I will try and post pictures and reviews here as best I can.

We arrived back on Bonaire, safe and sound, yesterday morning around 3am. The trip home was uneventful, although we had concerns about being able to leave Paris due to a strike which was to have affected Air France as well as lots of other things, but that proved to be a non-issue for us.

My postings to the blog have been, well, missing, since the one below about The Fat Duck, and that’s because once we had control of our own schedule in London and Paris, we abused the schedule, pretty much getting up, going about, getting back to the hotel and going to sleep.

So a very quick summary of what we did (with only a couple of photos because we’ve not had time to process more)

May 14, Wednesday - London
We visited the British Museum, and there visited exhibits about Celts, Romans, Mesopotamia, Assyrian culture, Greek Parthenon, and the Rosetta Stone.

The great courtyard of the British Museum in London

Bas holds some ancient Chinese money, over 3000 years old, at the British Museum

Bas poses, reluctantly, next to a replica of the famed Rosetta Stone at the British Museum

This was followed by excellent dinner at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s. Excellent service, great wine pairings, and a tour of the kitchen included.

May 15, Thursday - London to Paris
We had a late start, enjoyed conveyor belt sushi at Yo! Sushi at St. Pancras station, and took the Eurostar train to Paris’ Gard Nord. Dinner was at an excellent small Auberge recommended by the hotel concierge at the Marriott Rive Gauche.

May 16, Friday - Paris
We took a privately guided tour - just the four of us in a mini-van with our driver/guide Rupert - to Versailles to see the palace there and then Giverny to visit Monet’s home and lily pond. Lunch was at a very scenic restaurant located in a water-wheel driven mill along the way, but sadly we ended up in the “tour” dining room with a fixed menu, so we didn’t get to enjoy the breadth of the restaurant’s real culinary offerings. Dinner was at a nice bistro near our hotel.

May 17, Saturday - Paris
Our Dutch friends Martin & Angela drove down to Paris from Rotterdam in The Netherlands, and we went back to Versailles with them, this time by Metro and train, to see the amazing gardens at Versailles as well as some outbuildings, including Marie Antoinette’s “modest” home.

After a mediocre lunch at a cafe at Versailles’ grand canal, we walked around to visit the musical fountain “performances” near the palace. We discovered this was nothing like the fountain show at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Instead, they had merely turned on the fountains for the show (they are normally off except for a few fixed times on the weekends) and piped in music into the area around the fountain. Kind of a let down - an example of where expectations and reality did not intersect.

We then returned back to Paris, visited Notre Dame, and walked around the nearby parts of Paris for a bit before taking shelter from the rain at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. Not bad, but not great.

May 18, Sunday - Paris
We met up with Martin and Angela again that morning, and headed out to visit the Arc de Triomphe. Krystyana and I were the only ones of our group who braved a tour of the innards of the Arc, which included a large number of stairs to a small museum section upstairs, as well as more stairs to access the open top of the Arc. There we found a great view of Paris, but it started to drizzle, so we headed back down.

We then walked in the drizzle to the Eiffel Tower, where we had a very nice (and very expensive) lunch at Alain Ducasse’s Jules Verne restaurant, half-way up the Eiffel Tower. We learned later that this was the place that Tom Cruise rented out to propose to Katie Holmes (although the restaurant was not under the management of Alain Ducasse at the time).

Great view, and perhaps the best asparagus and best sea bass we have ever had (two separate courses). There was a mashed pea course which could have used a bit more of a salty counter-point (more caviar perhpas) as far as we were all concerned, but the food, and especially the desserts, were great.

Linda also enjoyed (I think) a belated Mother’s Day, as the kids gave her small froggy presents. The only real negative at our meal was that we had to frequently and repeatedly request to get our water glasses refilled, something that should never happen at as fine a restaurant as Jules Verne (it should be done automatically without us needing to ask). And I couldn’t quite tell if the sommelier was being condescending to me or just trying to be funny and not really pulling it off well, although the wines we ended up with were quite nice. We did miss having pairings by the glass for our meal, however - again something different from other high end restaurants we’ve enjoyed. An 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

Martin and Angela then made their way north to Schipol airport in Amsterdam, to eventually arrive back at our house here on Bonaire (where they still are, with us, at this moment).

We proceeded from the Eiffel Tower to Les Invalides, which houses the Musée de l’Armée, a military museum which Bas greatly enjoyed as it contained a panoply of armor, swords, guns, and other battle gear. This was followed by a visit to Napoleon’s Tomb under the great golden dome one can see from any high spot in Paris (also at Les Invalides).

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, and then took a taxi back to the area of the Eiffel Tower, where we boarded a dinner cruise on the river Seine, which took us through sunset and into the night. Very nice views, but very poor food (Linda and I had never had mealy, mushy duck breast before).

May 19, Monday - Paris
We had another late start, but then finally ended up at the Louvre, where we viewed exhibits about various artists and schools of art, include the Dutch Masters. Part of the exhibit in the Dutch Masters section also included modern works by Dutch artist Jan Fabre - some very odd stuff, such as people made out of thumb tacks, sculptures made out of scarab beetle wings, others made out of slices of bone (crosswise), and yet more made out of other bugs, beetles, and even feathers. We also got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo first hand.

We walked around a bit and ended up at Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées, where we saw a large police presence, apparently in response to a possible strike.

Dinner was at Les Foundus de la Raclette, a restaurant serving, of course, fondues and raclette cooking (where you get small pans and cook your own meal, with liberal contributions of Raclette cheese). Very enjoyable meal, although our cheese fondue could have used a bit more flavor. A 7.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

May 20, Tuesday - Paris
We met up with Diane, the friend we had made aboard the National Geographic Endeavour. Diane was also in Paris for the week. Together we went to Montmatre and visited Sacré Coeur, a large cathedral atop the hill that is Montmatre. We planned to go on a tour of the crypts there, and paid admission to something similar to an ATM machine (except it takes money instead of giving it) to get to the “dome & crypt”, not realizing that “dome” meant the top of Sacré Coeur. The stairs up (the only way to go) nearly killed Diane, but the view, once we got there, was phenomenal. I believe it was the highest point in Paris mere mortals could visit, taller than the top of the Eiffel Tower. Going back down, we found the crypts closed for renovation. Sigh.

We wandered about Montmatre for a bit, had a reasonable lunch in the open square where all the artists paint under the open sky, then wandered downhill to the Pigalle area, where we saw the famed Moulin Rouge. From there it was another cafe stop, and then a walkabout which led us to covered shopping galleries featuring unique and interesting shops - antiques, collectible toys, philatelists, galleries, etc.

We had an excellent dinner at a small restaurant we stumbled across, part of which had a retail specialty foods section, although the name eludes me at the moment.

Diane then parted ways with us to go back to her hotel while we made our way to the Eiffel Tower for the last elevator up to the second level (the top level - the third level - was already closed, alas) for a nice night-time view of Paris. Got back to the hotel around midnight.

May 21, Wednesday - Paris
We attempted to visit the Musée Rodin, home to Rodin’s famed Thinker sculpture as well as dozens of his other works, but found instead a massive police barricade around the museum. People were walking past the barricade, so we joined the small flow to discover the museum had been closed for the day. The police presence was there to corral a hundred or so protesting and striking fishermen who were protesting that the combination of high fuel prices and EU restrictions on the types of fish they could catch were hurting their livelihoods.

When we asked one of the policemen in riot gear about this strike, thinking it was the civil servants getting an early start for their announced strike on Thursday, he explained that that strike was scheduled for the following day, and that the fishermen were “today’s strike”. When we asked if there was another strike on Friday, he responded “probably”. Pretty funny and sad at the same time that strikes and protests are so much a part of the Parisian (and perhaps French) culture.

We ended up going to the Picasso Museum instead, where we saw hundreds of his works as well as a film showing him exercising his creative processes.

Dinner was at the Michelin three star restaurant Le Pre Catalan, which had a mind-boggling wine list. We all tried the chef’s menu, which provided a decent sampling of many of the dishes on the menu, but while the food was quite good, nothing really stood out to us. Again, the lack of pre-researched wine pairings was something of a disappointment, and we again had to ask to have our water refilled regularly, although at least here, in contrast to Jules Verne, the refilling was done as soon as we asked instead of having to repeat the request several times. Service otherwise was quite good, but for what the restaurant cost, it could have been better. An 8.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

May 22, Thursday - Paris
We spent the morning packing, checked out, and then ended up going to the catacombs at Place Denfert-Rochereau. The catacombs are the resting place for the bones of countless people (records indicate it might have been as many as seven million bodies) who ended up there from cemeteries on the Right Bank which had begun to seep into people’s homes in the 1760s. The bones we saw were mostly neatly stacked and organized, a macabre tribute to mostly unknown people, however plaques on the walls in the catacombs indicated that a fair number of those executed by guillotine in the late 1700s during the French Revolution and its bloody aftermath also found their way there. The catacomb tour was self-guided, and one way. After going in at Place Denfert-Rochereau, we came out about a mile south in a small neighborhood.

Lunch was at a very good and busy bistro on a side street, and we then made our way back to the Rodin Museum, which was now once again open (the day’s strikers and protesters were in a different part of town), but the top floor of the main museum building was closed due to a lack of personnel (due to the strike du jour). A number of Rodin’s sculptures were in a large garden, and more inside the ground level of the main building. We finally got to see The Thinker first hand as well. There was also an exhibit of the works of Camille Claudel, one of Rodin’s protégés. Amazing what these artists could do with marble and bronze.

We made our way back to the hotel to hang out in the executive lounge for a while, and then were off to the airport for a smooth check-in and flight to Amsterdam, and then from there back to Bonaire.

And that’s it for The Traveling Richters’ Moroccan and European adventure.

Our next trip is to Texas in about a month to see one of the showings of the True Colors tour (and we’re scheduled to briefly meet Cyndi Lauper as part of our ticket package too). And, as we’ll already be in Texas, we will be visiting The Alamo as part of the children’s American history school work. Best to see history first hand than merely read about it in a book - or at least so we think.

On Tuesday, May 13th, we moved from the Hilton Hyde Park to the more posh Marriott Park Lane, where we were to stay two more nights courtesy of my many thousands of Marriott Rewards points (cheaper by far than paying London hotel rates out of pocket, considering it is the most expensive city in the world to visit according to recent surveys).

After dropping our bags off, we made our way on the Tube to Paddington Station, and from there caught a train out to Maidenhead, some 40 minutes west/southwest of London to partake of a remarkably unusual lunch at a restaurant called The Fat Duck, operated by famed chef Heston Blumenthal.

Reservations at The Fat Duck, which is a Michelin Three Star rated restaurant, are very difficult to obtain, even a couple of months out, so we were elated when we received a call while in Porto the prior week telling us we had cleared the waiting list for one of the three different meal times we had requested.

The Fat Duck is one of few restaurants world wide which specializes in something called Molecular Cuisine, a cuisine in which science is blended with gastronomy to produce taste sensations based on scientific food research. It had been suggested that we explore Molecular Cuisine by Patrice, the owner of Bistro de Paris, back home on Bonaire, and we thank him profusely for that suggestion.

We arrived in Maidenhead early, so instead of a five minute taxi ride, we decided to use our GPS and walk the two miles to The Fat Duck. Half the way was drab and noisy, filled with cars, traffic, and asphalt, but the remaining half put us on a green country path which led us into the tiny little heart of the village of Bray. We actually walked past the house in which The Fat Duck was located, before realizing such a plain façade housed this fabled culinary destination.

What waited beyond the plain façade was a quaint room with perhaps a dozen tables, each seating no more than four people, necessary because a meal at The Fat Duck includes an element of theatre that is ill-suited for larger groups.

After being seated we ordered our beverages as we normally would, and all opted for the Chef’s Tasting Menu, but from there things changed.

Our first introduction to Blumenthal’s novel approach to cuisine was a vodka, egg white, and lime mousse which was “cooked” in liquid nitrogen right at our table. After it was removed from the liquid nitrogen the outside of the mousse was crisp. The server dusted it with matcha (powdered green tea), and we were instructed to immediately pick up the mousse “ball” and pop it in our mouths, where it almost literally exploded (gently, though – no carnage) on our tongues. We had a moment where we felt the frozen shell of the mousse ball before the whole thing came apart in a burst of flavor.

At the same time that the first mousse ball was served, the server also spritzed a bit of lime scent above the table using an atomizer, as part of the dining experience is to affect multiple senses. The spritz of aroma was for our noses, the nitrogen steam creeping over the edge of the copper vessel in which the mousse was being “cooked” was the visual component, and of course, the eating of the mousse ball filled our taste sensation.

And that was just our palette cleanser.

I went with wine pairings (excellent, incidentally) with my lunch, but Linda’s ear was still bothering her, so she stuck to water.

Dry ice and water creates ambiance for one of our courses at The Fat Duck

Other courses included oyster in passion fruit jelly with a sprinkle of lavender (Bas’ least favorite dish as he doesn’t like passion fruit); a pommery grain mustard ice cream in a red cabbage gazpacho (the ice cream was unexciting by itself, but when combined with the red cabbage gazpacho it was exquisite); and a duo dish of jelly of quail, langoustine cream, parfait of foie gras, and oak moss and truffle toast. Preceding this latter dish, a bed of moss was put before us, and water poured over it, creating an aromatic fog of sorts when the water thawed the dry ice below the moss, and we were also given a piece of foie gras “tape” which came in the type of dispenser used to deliver Listerine mint strips. After we put the “tape” on our tongues and let it melt there, we were treated to the rest of the course.

This was followed by snail porridge (green) with shaved fennel and hair-like wisps of jabugo ham; roast foie gras with almond fluid gel cubes, cherry, and chamomile foam.

Another dish in which a blend of senses was used to heighten the experience follow, namely the “Sound of the Sea” course. This started with each of us getting conch shells from which iPod ear buds dangled out. As we were served the course, we were instructed to listen to conch shells (each of which had small original sized iPod Nanos in them).What we heard was a sea scape, with waves gently crashing upon the shore and seagulls crying out. The dish before us looked like a small beach, with a strip of what looked like sand (but was actually artfully prepared baby eel crumble) and sea foam (which hid three types of shellfish and multiple types of seaweed). It was an interesting presentation and blend of flavors and textures, made more “realistic” by virtue of the beach sounds we were listening to.

Next was salmon poached in liquorice gel with artichokes and very tasty vanilla mayonnaise – a dish which even Krystyana and Linda, neither of whom are big fans of salmon, found quite tasty. A ballotine of Anjou Pigeon with black pudding followed. The pigeon was served rare, and Bas was convinced it was beef until told otherwise. He now insists that while he does not eat pigeon as a rule (an issue we had with him in Morocco with an excellent pigeon pastille), he will make an exception for the Anjou Pigeon at The Fat Duck.

As a palette cleanser we then received a cup of hot and iced tea – in one cup. Incredible sensation, as the tea came in hot on one side of the mouth and chilly on the other. It was an Earl Grey tea, incidentally.

We thought we might be winding down at this point, but there was more to come. We got a small pamphlet about Mrs. Marshall, who is believed by some to be the actual originator of ice cream cones, and then received a small ice cream cone in her honor. Then there was mango and Douglas Fir puree (yum!), followed by a breakfast with parsnip flake cereal (in a cereal box with The Fat Duck logo on it) with parsnip milk (also delicious), and finally the final course – nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream.

Our server prepares Nitro Egg & Bacon ice cream at The Fat Duck using liquid nitrogen

For this last course, the server came out with eggs stamped with The Fat Duck logo, which she explained were special. And they were. She broke them open and as she poured the contents into the pan she had waiting table-side, it was obvious the contents were not just regular eggs. They looked like scrambled eggs with something more added. The server then poured liquid nitrogen into the pan, and started “cooking” the egg mixture, which was then served to us over a “pain perdu” (akin to French Toast) and a paper thin slice of bacon. The egg mixture turned out to be egg and bacon flavored ice cream, and it was extraordinary. Both kids now insist we need to find a way to make liquid nitrogen of our own so we can replicate this particular dish at home. I think that will be one of our science projects for their next school year.

We finished the meal with tea, coffer, and petit fours, including carrot and orange lollipops, mandarin aerated chocolates, violet tartlets, and apple pie caramels with edible wrappers.

The entire meal took over three hours, and was simply brilliant, with incredibly attentive service, great wine pairings, and, of course, intriguingly odd but delicious food with great presentation. The only thing that was a bit of a challenge was the final tab, which was nearly twice our monthly utility bill on Bonaire (and we pay more for utilities than most people we know pay for their mortgages). But it was definitely a worthwhile experience, and well worth the investment.

The Fat Duck is not a place one would eat at regularly, but it’s certainly worth a visit whenever the Chef’s menu changes appreciably (and one’s finances permit, of course).

I give The Fat Duck a rare 10.0 out of 10.0 on The Richter Scale.

The rest of our day was spent getting Linda back to the hotel in London so she could rest (her ear was still really bothering her), with the rest of us heading back out, this time to Epsom for a BonaireTalk mini-meet at the home of Sarah and Hugh Frame, old friends of ours whom we met through the BonaireTalk web site community that Linda and I started back in 1999. Also joining us were Roy from Germany (another BT’er who happened to be at a conference in Manchester), and Bob & Yvette Raikes, friends of mine who live in Surrey, the same county where Epsom is located. Bob is one of the world’s leading experts in the electronic display marketplace, incidentally. Photos from this evening can be found here. We had a delightful evening with everyone, albeit without Linda present, heading back, tired and weary, to the hotel by hired car, around 11:30pm.