Restaurant Review: Dinner By Heston

The week before Christmas we headed to Dinner by Heston for Lunch. My expectations didn't really know what to expect. Knowing the food would be good I hadn't really had time to think about the rest of it.

Lunch is only a short sitting, so we arrived for our 12pm seating and were one of the first people there. The view out of the back window is really nice - over looking the park.

Dinner By Heston - Dining Room

We perused both the regular and set menu's and opted for a bit of both. As you can imagine most of the dishes are pretty scary and out there in some way. I like most foods but some of it was making me skip right on down to the next dish. The theme is 'historic British Gastronomy'.

One of the most famous dishes is 'meat fruit' which again sounds scary. In reality it is a meat pate in an orange casing made to look like an orange. It was quite nice, but worth the fuss? Perhaps not.

Dinner by Heston Meat Fruit; Photo from here (my effort wasn't as good)

Here are some of the other delights on offer;

Starter of Dressed snails (c. 1884) lots of beetroot...

Perhaps too much

Mains: Meat Pie

and Powdered duck breast c.1670

Not us but fun, live ice cream making

Orange buttered loaf

Chocolate cup - an added treat but was a bit too green tea flavoured

With starters priced from £15 and mains starting around £30 it isn't cheap. Personally I didn't think it was overwhelming. An experience? Yes. The best food I've ever eaten? Not even close. 

Atmosphere: 2/5 - very formal and the limited dinner seating makes it feel very empty if you stay for the two hours

Food: 3/5

Drink: 3/5 we drank red and white wine - both were pretty standard

Overall: 2.5/5 - definitely not getting anything extra for the Heston Blumenthal name or the price tag.