Heston Takes On Access At The Fat Duck – A Furturistic New Approach?

We have complained for a long time about the absence of a disabled toilet at the world famous Fat Duck restaurant, home to the eccentric culinary musings of one Mr Heston Blumethal. Why, we asked, is the famous home of molecular gastronomy – where science meets delicious – so appalling behind the times on disabled facilities? In our opinion, despite Heston’s undeniable brilliance, The Fat Duck shouldn’t have been given the title of best restaurant in the UK (which is has won consecutively since 2008) if it can’t truly cater for the near 20% of the population who are disabled.

We are therefore delighted to be able to report that all this is about to change with Heston planning to provide The Fat Duck with a futuristic, fully equipped toilet for the less physically able. It turns out that whenever he’s not squirreled away behind a book, in the lab, fulfilling TV commitments, gossiping with Delia, planning how he can top bacon and egg ice cream or playing with the chemistry set Gary Rhodes got him for his birthday, Blumenthal focuses all his energy on how to make his restaurants more inclusive.  But of course, with Heston being Heston, he won’t be planning any bog standard ways of doing this. Not for him the boring ramps, lifts or ground floor toilet.

No, this geeky food-bot has far loftier plans for his Fat Duck. Believe it or not, lately he’s been working on groundbreaking new ways of teleporting less able customers to the disabled toilets in the nearby Hinds Head pub! “If I can do something as wacky and difficult as making meat look like fruit,” he told reporters, “then I think I should be able to figure out a way teleport customers to a disabled toilet”.

Heston then took us through a long winded description of his plans for an Aperture Science Portal Device which can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. By setting up an ‘in’ portal at ‘point A’ and an ‘out’ portal at ‘point B’, people should be able to transfer across great distances almost instantaneously. So instead of using the loophole of being in listed building, the restaurant will start using wormholes to transport less able guests to accessible toilets. A novel idea of the sort you could only imagine coming from the man that Jonathan Ross once called “squarer than Spongebob – the biggest boffin in all of cooking” (as well as some other things which we can’t repeat here).

There is of course a question of when this can actually happen. Even once designed the ASPD could take lot of time and energy to create the portals. It’s a subject on which Heston is feeling confident: “We’re pretty sure here at The Fat Duck that we’ll soon be able to use portal technology to solve our problem. I was convinced of this when I heard about the Large Hadron Collider. If we can get our hands on one of them it should be a doddle. In my opinion, if you don’t think this will work you’re basically disrespecting one of our finest scientists – nobel laureate, Professor Higgs – for his work on the Hadron Collider. In fact, two of our finest scientists if you include me.”  We don’t.

Sadly, only once the technology catches up with the mind of the genius behind The Fat Duck can they become pioneers again, this time in the age of accessibility. Until then will they be getting a disabled toilet downstairs? “Nope… but you can always wheel yourself through the rain, round to the Hinds Head.” With that, our favourite egg-headed nerd had to rush off to design his new range of glasses for Vision Express.

*This is, of course, not true. As far as we know Heston still has not planned to install a DT at The Fat Duck. They say that you can go next door to The Hinds Head which he also owns and has two disabled toilets. But that’s not really up to scratch; especially if it’s raining!!