Restaurant Review: Heston Blumenthal's The Perfectionists' Cafe

Since starting to post restaurant reviews on my blog I’ve made a real effort not to visit the same place twice – unless it was somewhere I really loved. The same applies to airports – when I was in my 20s I would take a sandwich to eat before a flight but these days having a meal at the airport is part of the holiday. It’s just a shame that food there is so expensive and in some cases not that good.

  

When we went to Vienna a few months ago we wanted to get breakfast at the airport, and since for a change we were flying from Heathrow’s Terminal 2, there was only one place I wanted to go: Heston Blumenthal’s Perfectionists’ Café. I’ve never eaten in any of Heston’s establishments – while the idea of the Fat Duck is appealing, I’ve checked the menu and there is almost nothing on it I would eat and considering how much it costs, that means I won’t be going there! But his Perfectionists’ Café at Heathrow doesn’t have a fancy tasting menu and instead serves fish and chips, burgers, full English breakfasts – and ice cream made with liquid nitrogen.

  

The restaurant stands out as looking quite upmarket, with nicely upholstered seats and an extensive modern bar; the waiting staff also wouldn’t be out of place in one of his more expensive restaurants.

The menu gives a lot of information about the provenance of the food and an explanation of the ‘three finger rule’ – you can’t fit more than three fingers into your mouth at once which means a burger needs to be squashable down to this thickness so you can taste all the layers at once! I bet you’re seeing how many fingers you can fit into your mouth now, right?

Much as I would have liked to have tried some of the main courses – and indeed the ice cream – I didn’t want any of them for breakfast. I decided to go for my standard airport breakfast, a sausage sandwich; priced at £5.75 it wasn’t really any more than I would have expected to pay elsewhere. The sausages are good quality – free range pigs from the Blythburgh estate, according to the menu – and I was half-hoping Heston’s culinary genius would be demonstrated in some way (perhaps an ipod to listen to the sound of the pigs squealing?!) but really there isn’t much anyone – even Heston – can do to jazz up a sausage sandwich (if I’m wrong and you have a great recipe, please let me know in the comments!). It was a good sandwich but I think I would break my habit and return to this restaurant if I was at the airport again so I could try their lunch menu.