London: Raclette for breakfast, St. John for lunch ...and a brush with a Fat Duck

I'm going to take a cue from the blog of my friend Jason and make this post into a "phog". I hope you don't mind the lack of my usual excessive commentary (ha!); I just took too many tasty pictures in London that demand to be shared. So here goes:

On Saturday morning I met my friend Marc at the Borough Market.

I would be smiling too if I had this much cheese.

A quizzical squash.

Loads of tasty sausages.

Cheese on display at Neal's Yard.

Okay, I'm weird, but I think this is the most beautiful cheese I've ever seen.

Our breakfast: potatoes, gherkins and a generous scraping of toasty raclette cheese on top.

Yum, RACLETTE!

Afterwards we walked over to Brick Lane and went to a Bangladeshi supermarket.

Then we had lunch at St. John Bread & Wine. This is a cress salad with ox hearts. Delicious!

My appetizer: smoked mackerel with horseradish cream.

Marc's main dish was disappointing: just a pretty basic duck leg, looking a little wan for my tastes.

My main dish, on the other hand, was perfect. Salt beef with homemade pickled veggies.

And for dessert...an orange/plum crumble with creme anglaise.

Marc's dessert was a pear sorbet with pear vodka.

Afterwards we collapsed in a park and met this guy at a little farm nearby.

Fast-forward two days. (On Saturday night we cooked a giant dinner with Marc's friends near Brixton and two people threw up. But not from the dinner; probably from the enormous quantities of red wine that we imbibed while cooking the dinner. Sunday morning I had a nice greasy English breakfast at my hotel, and later we had a big lunch at Iran: The Restaurant (I LOVE that name!) on Edgware Road. That night I ate a huge steak and potato Cornish pasty, which gave me indigestion all night.) For Monday lunch, I went to visit Marc in Bray, where he is staging at the Fat Duck. You may have heard of it. I had a nice meal at the Hind's Head down the street, which is owned by the same person. But here there are no gels, oddly flavored lollipops or bacon ice cream; just pleasant, well-executed traditional English food. This is my Scotch egg.

They used duck eggs inside.

Salmon, cream cheese and cuke sandwich.

Triple cooked chips. These were wonderful.

Marc looking uber-professional outside the Fat Duck.

He gave me a quick tour. The restaurant is tiny and the ceilings are quite low because the building (like the pub) is about 400 years old. The kitchen was amazingly tiny; I don't know how they do it. We chatted with the friendly Scottish pastry chef, who was busy making beet tuiles and carrot/orange lollipops. It's fascinating to see how they are cranking out the most cutting-edge food in such antique buildings.

So, I left London yesterday with a new knowledge of meat glue and sous-vide cooking thanks to Marc, a bulging gut, and a backpack full of digestive biscuits and Maynard's Winegums. Back to school tomorrow...