Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1 - Reviews, Food & Drink - The Independent

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge, London SW1 - Reviews, Food & Drink - The Independent: "There's a slim chance that a couple of people reading this may have missed the hoo-ha surrounding the opening of Heston Blumenthal's new restaurant, Dinner, at the beginning of last week. Booking lines were swamped, tables booked up until some time in the next millennium, journalists stole in for sneak previews before the official launch, and overnight reviews were splashed by several newspapers– including this one.

So, like a weary battlefield messenger staggering back to base from the front line, only to find that someone has already phoned ahead with all the news, I will assume you already know the basics. That Heston Blumenthal, Britain's most brilliant and experimental chef, held out for years against opening in London, before agreeing to take over the prime space formerly occupied by Foliage in Knightsbridge's Mandarin Oriental Hotel. And that Dinner, only Blumenthal's second restaurant proper, is very much not The Fat Duck 2.0. The cutting-edge scientific techniques and madcap playfulness which characterise both his cooking style and his TV work have been set aside, in favour of a scholarly drilling down into British food tradition."