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[Drygioni]

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=01262007

Wow, I ate somewhere like this in London. It was pretty sucky. Anyone else been to one of these places?

Also, the idea of a restaurant with the phrase "restaurant" on the front is actually way too pretentious to not have already happened.

[MattFish]

is this like "theater" where they serve you "food"

[DanSC]

This sounds like it would nicely follow a cilantro ape ceviche

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09152004

[coldfrog]

To be fair to the restaurant, at least "shrimp" was not in quotes on the menu.

[wombat]

I would have gone with "a marzipan DeLorean with a LoJack" since cars are an important recurring Achewood theme. Also not so nauseating-sounding.  But it's all good.

I have never eaten at such a place but from what I have read, the only thing here that sounds like an exaggeration is a course that the police bring to your house later.

[LCB]

On the positive side, a lot of gimmicky joints like that tend to fold after the novelty wears off. Others, unfortunately show the tenacity of a cockroach.

[dejavroom]

This "strip" was as funny as the "restaurants" it mocked. I'm happy today isn't my birthday or I would have to complain.

[Choop]

Hey, I've eaten at one of those places, and had a great meal. Also, I found this strip very very very accurate.

[melack]

This strip didn't cause me to laugh so much as it caused me to stare dumbly at my computer, questioning my education for failing to give me the ability to understand what the hell I just read.

[V-Adore]

Perhaps it was a revamp of p o u l t r y ;, always trying to stay right on the bleeding "ethnomedical" edge?

[pubdoggy]

Hmm, Heston Blumenthal's place "The Fat Duck" http://www.fatduck.co.uk/ in Bray (Berkshire, UK) gets consistenly rave reviews and is one of only 3 restaurants in the UK with 3 Michelin Stars (the other 2 being Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road and Alain Roux's Waterside Inn) I think I would definitely like to eat there. The concept and general wankiness (read pretentiousness), however, puts me right off.

[applebed]

Has Onstad been watching Heston Blumenthal's BBC show? These are some selected highlights of his recipe for black forest gateau - I would post it all but it is three pages long:

Special equipment 21.5cm x 31.5cm brownie tin(s), food mixer (optional), oven thermometer, 2.6-litre hard plastic container with lid (through which you have bored a small hole, using a corkscrew), microwave (if you have one), whipping-cream canister and charges (from www.creamsupplies.co.uk), vacuum-seal storage bag with one-way valve, vacuum cleaner, digital probe, 9cm x 19cm x 5cm-deep baking tin(s), piping bag, melon- baller, large cardboard box, paint gun.

AERATED CHOCOLATE LAYER

....

5 Shake the canister, then squirt the chocolate onto the base of the 2.6-litre plastic container. Put on the lid, then place the container in the vacuum storage bag. Position the storage bag’s valve over the hole in the container’s lid. Switch on the vacuum cleaner and place the hose on the valve to suck the air out of the bag. The chocolate should rise and be riddled with small bubbles. As soon as it does so, remove the vacuum and close the valve as quickly as possible. To set the chocolate, place the box — still in the vacuum bag — in the fridge until required.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE

...

8 Fill the base of the paint gun with the melted chocolate mixture and attach the nozzle. To avoid redecorating the kitchen in chocolate brown, set the large cardboard box on its side (which effectively provides a protective roof and walls to work in). Remove the gateau from the freezer. Carefully lift it out of the loaf tin and onto a plate. Remove the clingfilm and place the gateau in the cardboard box. Spray the gateau with the chocolate, turning carefully as you go. Return it to the freezer until 20 minutes before serving.

9 Use a skewer to bore a small hole 2–3in into the centre of the bottom of each indentation, down towards the cherry below. Agitate the skewer a little to increase the hole’s diameter. Pour in cherry syrup until it reaches the top of the bore-hole (but doesn’t spill out into the indentation itself). Place a sour cherry, stalk end up, in each indentation, and sit a dried vanilla pod in each cherry, to make a decorative stalk. For the full effect, fill an atomiser with kirsch and squirt it round the room just before serving the gateau — it will magically bring a little of the Black Forest to the dinner table.

I love how the food mixer is optional, but the vacuum cleaner is not

I think the concept of the Fat Duck restaurant is pretty cool, but for the fact that it clearly takes them three weeks to make any one dish. I would be lying if I said that I was enough of a gastronome that only food from said restaurant could satisfy my cravings - I could make an omelette in 30 seconds that would quell my hunger pangs right now. I'd feel guilty to a) spend so much money on and then b) eat such finely crafted food.

[littlefallsmets]

I can comfortably admit that Alton Brown explaining... lemon pie with... lego bricks... to me on my television is the extent of my food-science knowledge. I like to think that half the appeal of that sort of deal is that at the end of the day, he's still making normal food. He's just using rubber dinosaurs as molecules to explain how we GET from basic foodstuffs to normal food.

When you take the food-science stuff and apply it to making... octopus-ink quiche with bucky-ball waffle fries... for rich fucks who don't enjoy food OR science and are just going to this place to prove that they're rich, the whole thing goes out the window.

[Choop]

Can'd for buckyball fries Man I'd love to see those in action.

[AugustWest]

Yeah, you could buckyball fries with ketchup molecules already on the inside of the buckyball!

Who needs a flying car when you've got buckyfries?  I love 21st century life.