It is never easy naming a restaurant and on this occasion I wanted something that represented our menu that is inspired by historic British gastronomy, so I searched for a name that had a bit of history, but was also fun. 'Dinner' fit the bill perfectly. In the past, the main meal -dinner-was eaten at midday, before it got too dark. But affordable candles and, later, gaslight saw dinner shift. By the mid-1800s people were dining later. People working in the cities were taking a 'lunch' to work and having their main meal at 5.00pm when they got home, while in rural areas the main meal was still taken at midday. Even today, depending where you are in the British Isles, 'dinner' might be served at lunchtime, suppertime or, indeed, dinnertime! This made 'Dinner' the natural choice for its typically British quirky history and linguistic playfulness. If nothing else, I hope it's easy to remember.
If you haven’t heard about Dinner, where have you been? Heston Blumenthal’s Michelin star winning outpost at the Mandarin Oriental is something other worldly (we wouldn’t have settled for anything less)! Blumenthal’s knowledge of 15th and 16th century cuisine is coupled with a crafted yet contemporary restaurant to recreate some of the forgotten favourites from the Royal Court. Lose your inhibitions and forget what you know about food, as Dinner will take you on a journey through time with dishes such as powdered duck breast dating from 1670, right up to cod in cider from wartime 1940s. Where else will you get such an education?