Dinner Is Served

It took Chef De Cuisine Tom Allen only a matter of months to scoop Dinner by Heston Blumenthal its first Michelin star. AIR heads to Dinner to find out why

WORDS: JOHN THATCHER

Speak to any chef who has scaled the heights of their profession and you’ll invariably learn that the driving force behind their ascent was a childhood ambition to become a professional cook. “I actually wanted to become a Formula One driver,” says Tom Allen, Chef de Cuisine at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, bucking the trend. And yet he has indulged his love of speed by driving the Atlantis The Royal-based restaurant to one of the quickest Michelin stars ever awarded — barely three months from opening. Formula One’s loss was certainly gastronomy’s gain, and the swiftness with which Tom and his team earned their first star was fully deserved — high level cooking that is as technically excellent and exciting as it downright tasty. In their pursuit of the former, chefs can sometimes overlook the latter, but the need to make things tasty is ingrained in Tom. “My Mum and Dad weren't particularly well off financially, and Dad used to grow our vegetables and we’d buy the cheaper cuts of meat. But the food my Mum cooked with it all was, above all else, tasty, and that instilled its importance in me, along with an appreciation of where things come from.”

What Tom’s family were rich in was a feeling of togetherness. “We’re a very close family, and mealtimes always brought us together,” he remembers fondly. Not that those mealtimes were strictly harmonious, thanks to Tom’s rapidly maturing palate. “I had a very good palate from a young age, which my parents didn't really pick up on. But I could tell if my Mum cut corners somewhere. I’d be like, ‘Mum, this is different?’ I remember one time, bless her, she burned the gravy. And she must have burnt it badly, because when we sat down for dinner, I was like, ‘What's that smell?’ And she was like, ‘What smell?’ I was like, ‘It smells of carbon,’ and I left the table in search of the source. The rest of my family were oblivious to it and carried on eating as normal, but this carbonised gravy was poured over everything on the plate and I just couldn’t eat it. I was only about ten at the time, and I was told off by my Dad for not eating the meal my Mum had stood and cooked. My punishment was the washing up, and when I picked up the gravy pan I was like, ‘Aha! That’s what it was!’”

Tom shares those heightened senses with his mentor, Heston Blumenthal, who changed the entire landscape for British cuisine through ventures like The Fat Duck, his eccentric, world famous restaurant just west of London.

“If I was to smell a certain smell, I'm transported back to being a fouryear-old on the beach in Torquay with my parents, going to buy popcorn,” says Tom. “So working with Heston and his whole thing for nostalgia, this emotional connection with food and how it brings people together, is something I could really relate to and have built on over the years.”

Eighteen years to be precise, dating to 2005 when Tom left the comfort of his 30-seat, hometown restaurant Lumiere in Cheltenham to join Heston at The Fat Duck, the same year it was voted to the world’s best restaurant and secured global fame for outlandish creations like snail porridge and bacon and egg ice cream. No pressure, then. “It was a real shock,” concedes Tom. “There was a fine line between whether I was going to sink or swim. Luckily, I swam. It was hard, it was pretty tough, fast-paced, not a great deal of sleep; all the things that go with working at a high level, but to be part of it was an incredible experience.”

After three years at The Fat Duck, Tom moved on within the group to Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in central London, working closely with Heston to indulge their shared passion for inquisitiveness. “I remember as a child asking ‘why?’ all the time and naturally being asked to stop by my parents after a while. But it shows wonderment, it shows creativity, and to question why is how it all started for Heston.” (By way of acknowledging the fact, Heston created a coat of arms, on which is a duck with a magnifying glass). “A lot of people say pastry is an exact science, you need to weigh everything. But why shouldn't you weigh everything for a sauce or a puree? Or why, when you're making mashed potatoes, shouldn’t you use the same amount of butter, the same amount of salt, the same amount of milk?”

Such insatiable curiosity feeds into Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, born from Heston’s fascination with the history of British food, and in particular a recipe that was served to a monarch 300 years ago. He recreated it for one of his TV shows, and after researching the wider topic discovered that Britain actually boasts a huge food culture, the history of which had been largely forgotten.

On the menu at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal you’ll therefore find dishes that honour this lost heritage (dishes date to as far back as the 14th. century), each infused with a dash of Heston’s celebrated playfulness. Chief among them is the now iconic Meat Fruit, inspired by a traditional medieval dish of pork mince worked into a ball and covered with green herbs to resemble an apple. At Dinner, this is translated into a smooth-as-silk pâté disguised as a mandarin, a process that requires three cooks working five hours.

The rest of the fascinating menu is the result of meticulous research undertaken at places like museums, the British Library, Hampton Court Palace, and via cookbooks such as those used by the royal chefs of

England’s King Richard II. A plate of powdered duck breast with pickled cherries stems from The Modern Cook , an influential Victorian-era cookbook which contained elaborate recipes cooked for Queen Victoria. A starter of smoked trout is inspired by a recipe of Charles Carter’s from c1730, who cooked for dukes and lords (the higher the social standing of the diner, the more prestigious the chef). Safe to say, you won’t have eaten anywhere else quite like it in Dubai.

The creativity extends to adapting such recipes to make them alcohol free, a task more complicated than it sounds to maintain the same exacting flavours. “We spent last summer working with high-quality grape juices and vinegars, and went through the menu to remove as much alcohol as we could. Hand on heart, and speaking as a chef, in a blind tasting you wouldn’t know the difference due to the quality of ingredients we're using.” A brilliant example is a vegan truffle, for which the grape juice has been infused with smoked woodchips and tea has been added to increase the tanning level that you get from alcohol.

That’s the sort of detail Tom and his team (the talent of whom he highlights throughout our chat) delve into to ensure that the authentic Dinner experience can be enjoyed by all. And enjoy it they most certainly will.