When we first arrived in the UK, I half-heartedly tried to get us reservations at The Fat Duck, which is Heston Blumenthal‘s 3-Michelin star restaurant in Bray, UK. I say half-heartedly because I tried to get reservations maybe twice, and then just gave up and forgot about it. We found ourselves down in his neck of the woods a few weeks ago, and while we didn’t get to dine at The Fat Duck, we did get to check out his two pubs in Bray – The Hinds Head Bray and The Crown at Bray.
We started out with beer and cocktails in the bar area. I had a gin and tonic (they have lots of different gins to choose from) and Minh went with a Triple Rum Old Fashioned, that served with a “rum cloud”. For starters, we went with hash of snails (sounds gross, but was delicious) and a Scotch egg. We went full carnivorous on the mains, with Minh getting veal sirloin, and I went for the ribeye steak, both with bone marrow sauce, which was a little rich for Minh but perfect for me. Topped off the evening with a chocolate tart, and were sufficiently stuffed after that.
The Crown is a bit more “chill”, being more of a family pub environment and not as fancy as the Hinds Head. That’s not to say the food quality goes down at all, though.. everything was still delicious. We started with Crispy Cauliflower, Cheese Sauce & Henderson’s Relish – it tastes exactly as it sounds, which is to say that if you like cauliflower, you’ll like this dish. For mains, I went with the fish (hake, I think, but I can’t remember and the menu has changed online). Minh went with the fish’n’chips, which was probably one of the better ones that we’ve had here. He also ordered a burger and chips to take away for later (It was delicious!). For dessert, we had ‘Cranachan’ Chocolate Custard, Raspberry, Honeycomb.
Think Tran 