Since going to The Fat Duck we've had so many people ask for the full story, thought it'd be a good idea to actually document it in proper fashion with pics and all! Might take a while to do it justice, don't want to leave out any details / courses !
This one I'll just give the back-story. First of all the plan was to try and go around Valentine's weekend, as Becky's parents were possibly going to make the trip up to mind the babas, all it would take is about 2 months forward planning! I knew the whole deal with the restaurant was there was about a 2 month waiting list .. and you could only book a maximum of 2 months in advance .. so there wasn't going to be much of a window. When that window arrived: Fail. Booked up within milliseconds. All seemed lost. Tried again on some other random tuesday which had some semi useful date two months later, also failed. But that time they asked what kind of booking I was interested in making, what day of the week etc, and they must write these things down. Because a few weeks later, completely out of the blue comes a phone call: "Would you like a table at The Fat Duck next friday?" (a week hence. errr.. probably!?) "We need to know very soon so we can check with somebody else if you don't want it" - agh! Mild panic, and fevered texting - my brother Stephen's arriving the next wednesday, what are the odds?? Incredibly, that's the one night of his week long trip that hasn't already been booked up with cultural debauchery. Wahey!
So that was that .. I call back, and it's all confirmed. 8pm, table for two, tasting menu (checked the website, they've got an example up there, is that what we're getting?), friday the 26th February. YAY!!
