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On his 18th birthday, Oli Williamson had a gastronomic day out to rival any. He started with lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s flagship three-Michelin-star restaurant on Hospital Road in London. Then, while still digesting it, he hopped on over to Bray, the quaint Berkshire village to the west of the capital for dinner at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck. Williamson describes that day, somewhat understatedly, as “a bit of blowout”.
Now 31, Williamson finds himself back at The Fat Duck as head chef, working alongside executive head chef Edward Cooke, having started there as pastry sous at the end of 2020. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” says Williamson. “I remember the experience [of eating at The Fat Duck] well. Eating the egg and bacon ice cream they make at the table with liquid nitrogen, being like, ‘I’ve no idea how to do that’.”
Now he has the keys to the cookbook. Williamson came to Bray via The Clove Club in London, where he was head chef, and has stints at Midsummer House in Cambridge, and Benu in San Francisco on his CV. As the latest recipient of the Roux Scholarship, he will be moonlighting as a stagiaire at another three-star, most likely in Asia, very soon.
He brings with him to The Fat Duck all the new generational concerns that make some battled old kitchen veterans scoff, but which are vital to the survival of the industry and the big spinning ball we call home.
“We’ve started a sustainability committee looking at how we can be better with people and for the environment,” he says. “We’ve made huge, huge progress with plastic reduction... but also, what do people need more of [in terms of] support? Is it more days out together, team bonding, or is it more one-on-one time with senior chefs?”
The ultimate goal, he says, is to provide a better work-life balance, with chefs working five single shifts rather than doubles, so they have mornings or evenings off to do other things. He concedes, however, how hard this can be to implement, as “from a financial standpoint that is very difficult for a lot of restaurants”.
Williamson is also keen to encourage healthier eating amongst the team, who sit down twice a day together to eat in their own staff canteen, which they’re “fortunate” to have, he says.
And in the drive towards greater sustainability and healthier cooking, diners could soon be chowing down on alternative proteins and milks, which Blumenthal is apparently “very keen” on. “The development team is making a dashi with crickets. We use hemp milk, a kind of seeded milk, which is better for digestion. That’s come from Heston. He’s very invested in that,” Williamson says.
Anyone who’s seen Blumenthal’s recent proclamations about quantum gastronomy will be in no doubt that he and the restaurant will always strive to innovate. But this has to be balanced with the fact that The Fat Duck is in essence now a heritage restaurant too, a grand old dame (in a manner of speaking, the dining room is tiny), that attracts food tourists from all over the globe - at least it did before Covid.
So, what role will The Fat Duck play in the future of gastronomy exactly? We know that Blumenthal is keen on alternative proteins. Perhaps they will go a step further and go plant-based, following the likes of Eleven Madison Park? The truth is, no-one's quite sure what The Fat Duck 3.0 will look like yet, probably not even Blumenthal.
“There’s a lot of people involved in what it will be, but there’s no definitive answer. How the restaurant will operate, the menus delivered and guest experience is still in progress,” says Williamson.
They have time though. 2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the restaurant and they have been celebrating, due to multiple pandemic interruptions, with a series of greatest hits menus ever since. These have included all the classics: the egg and bacon ice cream that so wowed the 18-year-old Williamson, and triple-cooked chips of course.
Then there’s possibly Blumenthal’s most headline-baiting dish, snail porridge, the recipe for which can be found as part of our Definitive and Doable series. “It all works: parsley, snails, garlic is the theme of the base, It’s just one of those things that’s super sideways but so delicious,” says Williamson.
Another hit is a simple (well, simple-looking) beetroot macaron. “I often speak to people if they come for a kitchen tour, and you say ‘Any highlights?’ and people always pick out the beetroot, this little two-ingredient macaron,” says Williamson.
“I’m a bit deflated because all that work has gone into the other stuff, but it’s the concentration of flavour; beetroot and horseradish. That first little mouthful, well just one bite, we often say stimulates the trigeminal nerve which gets you salivating.”
What could be more Fat Duck than talk of physiological responses to snacks?
