Mad as a brush pots and pans-man, Heston Blumenthal, has emerged from his research kitchen with a new Summer Essences range of ready meal dishes, created exclusively for the top people's supermarket, Waitrose.
However, one of the new offerings, Essences of Summers Past, with a portion size that makes the average nouvelle cuisine offering seem more like a full English, is certainly dividing opinion.
One furious shopper, Gyles Hogarth, said yesterday, 'My wife Tamara and I wanted something special to celebrate our anniversary so we bought two of these. But when we opened the packets there was just a balloon inside each with a tube sticking out. Apparently we were supposed to inhale from the balloon. Smelt of nothing, tasted of even less and cost us £25 a box. Bloody rip-off. We were starving after our 'dinner' and had to send out for a Deliveroo.'
Quick to defend his latest offering Heston said: 'Summers Past took me over three years to develop and is perfect if the diner approaches it correctly. You must release the essence a little puff at a time. Not suck it down in one big gulp like some lowlife druggie.
'One then gets a sensation of seaside candyfloss fused with sun cream, expertly paired with hints of tranquil sunlight in a woodland glade. Climaxing in subtle notes of clear mountain streams babbling over flinty waterfalls.'
So is it a rip-off or the very pinnacle of haute cuisine? Well if you want to make up your own mind you might have to wait quite some time as all branches have currently sold out.
A spokesman for the supermarket said, 'Working with Heston is such a pleasure. We stick his name on any old rubbish, charge over double what it's actually worth and it's win-win for everyone. Except perhaps our delusional shoppers.'
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