The Fat Duck restaurant chef Heston Blumenthal is on a lightning visit to the country. Hilary Biller spoke to him

I WAS watching Heston Blumenthal on a local television show on television the night before our interview. As he conjured his culinary magic I was struck, not by his avant-garde creations, but by his irrepressible excitement watching the reaction of young South African presenter ’s reaction when on tasting he tasted them.

The presenter whooped in delight, his brain furiously decoding the sensory experience. Blumenthal had done this trick over and over again, yet his reaction was still a eureka moment.

“The joy of discovering is matched by the joy of sharing,” them,” said Blumenthal when I asked him about it. “I’m very pleased you said that. People are being far more adventurous now.

“I love what I do. I’m a big kid really. It’s a bit like if you see a wonderful sunset or drink a great bottle of wine, it is more enjoyable sharing it with somebody else.” He pauses. “That’s what makes me get out of bed in the morning.”

Yesterday he was due to perform the same kind of magic to audiences at the Good Food and Wine Show in Cape Town. It is his first official visit to the country although he has been here many times before. “My father was born in Zimbabwe and educated in the Cape so my first trip was to visit relatives.”

The man who runs The Fat Duck restaurant explains how close he came was to “within an hour” of buying a landmark property in Franschhoek years back. “I’m talking 20 years ago. I think now from a business point view at the time it was the best move (not to buy) then. I was planning to open my restaurants. Things have changed so much now, but then you couldn’t buy gelatine sheets (in South Africa). I think having access to that stuff (in the UK) has made it all the better for me.”

But he still thinks Cape Town is the most beautiful city in the world. “I want to keep South Africa as a holiday destination.”

For Blumenthal, it all started in 1992 with his triple cooked chips, a quest for the crispiest chips possible.

“My first really challenging dish was making a crab ice cream to go with a crab risotto. I found it fascinating that the taste barriers came up if you told people it was crab ice cream. Yet if you gave them the same ice cream as a frozen crab stick, the barriers came down and so it went from there.”

He has gone on to receive honorary degrees in recognition of his scientific approach and his restaurant The Fat Duck has been awarded three Michelin stars. Was one more significant than the other?

“It is amazing to get degrees and get to be technically called a doctor,” he says, laughing. “But I consider myself a chef. There are only three English chefs who have received three Michelin stars so those stars are still the thing.

“I did receive an OBE from the Queen in 2006. That was quite magical,” he adds.

The irony of the academic recognition is that Blumenthal is a self-taught. “In a funny way I would not recommend it for somebody else,” he says. “I think you need to get a deep understanding of classical French cooking for your foundation before you think of anything else. For me though it was incredibly hard work. I nearly went bankrupt but then at the same time that naivety was a blessing in disguise. The more you know about a subject, the harder it is to be creative.”

Molecular gastronomy was a term coined by Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti in 1992. The label does not sit comfortably with Blumenthal.

“Kurti believed it was a travesty that we knew more about Mars than what was going on in front of us,” says Blumenthal. “Why do souffles rise? Why does egg go white when we cook it? My answer is it is just cooking. It has so many more pieces of equipment, technology, information and ingredients that were never available to us before. We’ve embraced technology in everything else we do, so why not embrace it in the kitchen?

“When I first started going to the multi-sensory side of things years ago, so many thought it might be another gimmick.”

Blumenthal prefers to call his style modernist cuisine, a term of, first coined by Harold McGee, respected the American food scientist and author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

“It doesn’t define a style, it defines an approach or ethos. It reminds me of the modernist art movement,” he says.

“I think one of the misconceptions of molecular gastronomy is that it’s somehow done on a computer clipboard with mathematical formulae. We (the molecular gastronomers) work tirelessly with producers, fisherman and farmers to get the best produce possible, just like the Slow Food people who have some unbelievable suppliers. I think that people who don’t understand the concept find it easier to criticise.”

And what of breakfast for the man who introduced snail porridge and parsnip cereal?

“I’m playing racquet ball at half six every morning,” he replies. Clearly he’s a fitness fanatic doing ten hours of exercise a week. “I’ve got to do it because of the food I taste.”

Besides being a fitness fanatic, who does 10 hours of exercise a week, he’s also a workaholic. “I’ve spent the last eight years working 120 hours a week,” he says.

“We have 500 dishes in development. It’s crazy. I’m doing the restaurants, television, books and the waitering staff. I’m involved with all of this so if first thing at 8.30 am in the morning there is a tasting in one of the restaurants, I won’t eat anything.

“This morning my wife prepared a healthy oat, flaxseed and blueberry smoothie so I had that. We keep chickens at home and if I get the time, I do just a boiled egg.”

Now I was curious. Does the modernist chef ever succumb and order a takeaway? “Forty weeks a year from a local Indian restaurant, Maliks,” he replies without hesitating. “Maybe not quite as much now but I’ve been going there for 16 years. It has been in England’s top 10 (restaurants) for the country in the last five years.”

Is there anything the food scientist has failed to do? “Lots of things,” he says candidly.

“I’ve tried to make jelly heat-resistant but that’s not possible. I’ve tried to make a hot ice cream but that did not work. Neither did a clear mayonnaise.

“I would like to create a mouthful of food with three separate flavours. I’m not giving up on that one. I’ve tried to make a soup that changed flavour halfway through eating it. That idea is on the back burner.” He paused. "There are quite a few things really."

While in SA Blumenthal is hoping for “a fix of fish in some shape or form.’ I love butterfish, that’s something we don’t get in the UK”.

He also loves a classic bobotie. “It reminds me of the Cape Town, probably like the guava. The first time I ate guava, was in Cape Town.” And what are the chances of the South African classic getting a Blumenthal makeover? “I hadn’t thought about it. No reason why it could not go on the radar as a future target, though.”