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Super chef Heston Blumenthal is set to shut Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, his fancy restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal opened in 2011, receiving its first Michelin star in 2012 and its second in 2014. The menu is inspired by historic British cuisine, with medieval-inspired dishes such as ‘meat fruit’, comprising chicken liver parfait shaped like a mandarin, as well as scallop frumenty with spelt, smoked seabroth and lovage, and Victorian-era ‘tipsy cake’ with spitroasted pineapple. You can also order a £195-a-head eight course tasting menu called ‘A Journey Through History’, featuring nettle soup with frog leg and powdered duck with buttered turnips and black truffle.
You’ve still got a while to sample his innovative cuisine, as Dinner by Heston Blumenthal won’t be closing until January 2027. Speaking to the Times, Blumenthal explained his reasons for closing the restaurant after 16 years. ‘There are some huge feelings there; sadness. It’s bittersweet, but it has run its natural course,’ he explained. ‘We are effectively tenants in a building and our tenancy is finished.’
He added: ‘In these times most restaurants are suffering in one way or another.
‘It’s exacerbated by the fact that food prices are rising. We chose to partner with the Mandarin because of their level of service. But they’ve got budgets, and budgets don’t always meet up. Sometimes they do. It’s one of the things that you are always going to be getting with a tenancy and a restaurant in the hotel.’
Blumenthal will still run the three-Michelin-star Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, which opened in 1995.
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