''Heston's Fantastical Food'' is a television cookery program starring chef

Heston Blumenthal Heston Marc Blumenthal (; born 27 May 1966) is a British celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. Blumenthal is regarded as a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food pairing and flavour encapsulation. He came to public attention with u ...

which broadcast on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

in the UK during late 2012. The programme follows Blumenthal as he supersizes a variety of food for presentation to members of the public.

Description

The premise of the show was for

, chef-patron of the Michelin starred restaurants

The Fat Duck The Fat Duck is a fine dining restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, England. It is run by celebrity chef proprietor Heston Blumenthal. Housed in a 16th-century building that had previously been the site of the Bell pub, the Fat Duck opened on 16 Aug ...

, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and The Hinds Head, to supersize a variety of food on themed episodes in order to excite the public. These challenges included creating a pub out of pies which included an arch made from

pastry Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water and shortening (solid fats, including butter or lard) that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as '' bakers' confectionery''. The word "pastries" sugges ...

, and a cone which would hold one tonne of ice cream. A variety of research was conducted by the research team behind the programme, which included proving that biscuits tasted better after they had been dunked in

tea Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by pouring hot or boiling water over cured or fresh leaves of ''Camellia sinensis'', an evergreen shrub native to East Asia which probably originated in the borderlands of southwestern China and north ...

. The show was produced by production company Betty TV for

, with the titles and bumpers designed by Pete&Tom, and theme music by Ben Parsons. Channel 4 were sold on the premise of a world record attempt in each episode.

Reception

The first episode of ''Heston's Fantastical Food'' had two million viewers on

, beating ''

Dara Ó Briain's Science Club ''Dara Ó Briain's Science Club'' is a British science television series presented by Dara Ó Briain which first aired on BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It cove ...

'', the first episode of which was broadcast at the same time on BBC Two. John Crace of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' thought that ''Heston's Fantastical Food'' was too similar to his previous Channel 4 outings, describing him as a "flatscreen one-trick wonder". He felt that the show had been padded out from twenty minutes to an hour and found it conceited that Blumenthal was doing something useful. Tim Dowling reviewed the second episode, also for ''The Guardian'' saying that "Heston's mission suffered from a woolliness of intent that made it hard to justify the grandeur of the project". Benji Wilson of ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' gave the show 2/5 stars, and said that the "show is messy and mildly repellent because it asks us to take food, both the cooking and the eating of it, seriously, yet it does so with a series of glib stunts". The ''

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urb ...

'' was equally critical in its review, saying that it "came across as a self-indulgent game", and that it "was more of a bizarre bid to get in the Guinness World Records book than anything you might call cooking". However it described the Christmas episode as something which "promises to be fun".

Episodes

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Official website
Episode list using the default LineColor Channel 4 original programming 2012 British television series debuts British cooking television shows