Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant is serving a braised celery main course for nearly £50 – and diners are divided

Heston Blumenthal’s braised celery dish at Dinner in London costs nearly £50
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Heston Blumenthal is serving a main course of braised celery for almost £50 – and it’s attracting mixed reactions.

The dish at his Michelin-starred Dinner by Heston Blumenthal restaurant in London also features a medley of Gruyere cheese, girolle mushrooms, truffle, cider apple and smoked walnuts, costing a whopping £48.

Customers appear divided, as while one TripAdvisor reviewer raved about the ‘excellent’ meal, another felt it didn’t live up to its price.

‘It was good but I didn’t expect it to be almost as expensive as the meat dishes,’ they said.

Another diner who had the dish at Heston’s now closed Australian Dinner added: ‘The main, our course four, was Braised Celery.

‘Normally we’d scoff at a restaurant trying to pass off celery as a main, but we trust Heston and he worked his magic presenting a texture-rich, flavor-punch of a dish.

‘Parmesan, walnuts, roasted radishes and cider apple.

‘Tartness that kept the fork flowing freely from the plate to the palate, assembling mega bites as we explored ingredient combinations.

‘We loved it. We were pleased.’

The COO of the brand, Chef Deiniol Pritchard, has defended the cost, claiming that not only are the vegetables braised for over an hour (90 minutes), but the dish also contains pricey ingredients.

‘The main cost is black truffle,’ he explained.

‘There are a couple of celeriac purees and crumbled over that is black truffle. We get frozen Austrialian or Spanish truffle and the cheapest we’ll ever get it is £650 – it goes from 65p to £1 a gram.’

He also stressed that Dinner is ‘intellectually driven’, rather than being a ‘farm to fork restaurant’.

Heston Blumenthal is serving a main course of braised celery for almost £50 – and it’s attracting mixed reactions

The dish dates to 1730 and according to the UK Association of Dieticians, celery is in season from September until January in the UK

The celery is from France and is braised in a traditional barigoule stock with drinking quality white wine and herbs, before it is filled with vegetarian cheese

‘With wastage it costs almost that much just to put the dish on the plate without any labour, that’s just food cost,’ Chef Pritchard added.

‘It takes a lot of work before we can start to even develop the dish to understand the historic recipe and the times it’s come from and then adapt it to a fine dining restaurant.’

The celery is from France and is braised in a traditional barigoule stock with drinking quality white wine and herbs, before it is filled with vegetarian cheese.

Chef Pritchard said the dish also currently included baby artichokes cooked in the same liquid, and wild mushrooms which were foraged in Scotland and can cost up to £50 a kilo depending on the season.

Dinner opened in early 2011, replacing the Michelin-starred restaurant Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

The dish dates to 1730 and according to the UK Association of Dieticians, celery is in season from September until January in the UK.

Meat and fish dishes at the restaurant are not much more expensive, with Roast Cod and Cockle Ketchup, dating from 1830, priced at £56 and Spiced Squab Pigeon for £62.

Dinner opened in early 2011, replacing the Michelin-starred restaurant Foliage at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.

It has been listed as fifth on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in Restaurant magazine and its menu is inspired by culinary history.

A five-course tasting menu costs guests £155 per person with dishes like Hay Smoked Salmon, dating from 1730, Meat Fruit, a mix of Mandarin, chicken liver parfait and grilled bread from 1500 and Frumenty from 1390 – a dish of octopus, spelt, smoked sea broth with dulse and lovage.

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