An Ultra-Exclusive Dinner - Served With An iPod
02.16.07 - 11:55am
Wow! We have the iPod building, the iPod toilet paper holder, iPod socks to put the iPod to bed (nice and cozy), but the one thing we hadn’t had, until now, is the iPod as part of the dinner.
Not only a dinner, but an exclusive - ultra expensive dinner - after all where else would the iPod be?
The premium dinner is to be served at the Fat Duck Restaurant, in the U.K., winner of 2005 “Best Restaurant in World” by Restaurant magazine and second for the honor in 2006. At the fat duck one can expect to pay $223 (115 pounds), for simply the tasting menu. They will be served the likes of snail porridge, (a bright green concoction of oats and barley with snails) Jabugo ham and shaved fennel, Pommery grain-mustard ice cream and red cabbage gazpacho (yummy!)- and now dinner served with the iPod.
The meal is not to eat the iPod but rather to add the “Sounds of the Sea” to the meal as the guest is engaging in the culinary experience. The guest will enjoy a meal that features “edible sand down one side of the plate and wave-like foam on the other” As the guest eats lapping waves and the sounds of seagulls will entertain the hearing senses and stimulate the taste buds. The guest will also be drinking a martini glass filled with “sea water” (at least with the look of it).
The meal was designed after experiments were done at Oxford University by Charles Spence finding that when people heard sounds of the sea while eating oysters the taste buds were stimulated and the oysters tasted saltier and were “more intense”. (is that why the clam chowder on the wharf is always so dang good?)
In The “Sounds of the Sea” meal the sand is tapioca and Japanese breadcrumbs fried crisp, braised seaweed is scattered over the sand, along with a mixture of shellfish, a sauce from the juices of the seafood is frothed and made to look like the waves lapping the beach. The “sea water” in the martini glass is extractions of seaweed and miso. (my favorite!)
The final meal may add the other pleasures of essential oils being blown through an electric fan to replicate sea breezes, and cultery that looks like rusty handles (as if found on the sea shore). To finish it it may be served on a sheet of glass above real sand.
No word as of yet what this sumptuous (yes that is said with a bit of a “oh my wouldn’t that be lovely” brow raised all in fun moment) meal may cost, but you can bet it will be more than the iPod that is served with it.
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