h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today, a good friend Alastair and I went to the Fat Duck restaurant on our internet poker winnings. Dinner for two was £170 including drinks, tea, coffee and petit fours.

We both started with a grain mustard ice cream with red cabbage gazpacho (a palate cleanser), followed by a quail jelly with pea puree and langoustine cream. After that, we moved on to our starters proper. We both had the 'crab biscuit'. This is a reduced essence of crab made into a biscuit, served with roast foie gras, crystallised seaweed, rhubarb and an oyster vinaigrette. It was quite probably the single most spectacular dish I have ever eaten.

After that, we moved on to main courses. Alastair had a slow cooked saddle of venison with sauce poivrade, which came with celeriac puree and marron glaces (little explosively flavoured balls of chestnut). I had best end of lamb, which came with a very rich mashed potato (40% butter), a mustard and green bean thing, an intensely flavoured jus with the lamb, and a bowl of jellied lamb consomme with a garnish of lambs tongue. Both were very, very fine indeed.

After that, another between course treat. We had little crystallised sheets of orange and carrot, basil bavarois (a mousse of distilled basil flavour) and sugar crusted beetroot cubes. In preparation for my pudding, I also got some douglar fir sherbet with a dried vanilla pod to scoop it up with.

Next came the puddings. Alastair went for the Delice of Chocolate, which consists of some dark chocolate sorbet, a moussey thing encased in chocolate and on a bed of popping candy, and a cumin caramel sauce. I had the douglar fir and mango puree, with a lychee and mango bavarois, cubes of jellied green pepper and blackcurrant, and a blackcurrant sorbet. Exquisite.

Finally, tea, coffee and petit fours. These were two types of chocolates, one was flavoured with oak, the other with mint (and I mean the fresh herb, not peppermint). A fine end to a spectacular meal.

So you see kids, gambling really does pay.

You can even see Alastair and I tucking in if you really want to, on my blog at http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/dangoodman/entry/the_fat_duck/ .