The Coolest Restaurants in the World
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The Coolest Restaurants
What makes a restaurant cool? 
Is it all about the quality of the food? Is it the particular cuisine offered or the location and ambience? We all have different ideas about what makes a great meal out and whether any one particular restaurant is the sort of place that we are going to recommend, remember or even return to. Combining travel and food is a great idea. Find a decent flight comparison site and grab a bargain, you could be soon on your way to foodie Heaven. Below are five restaurants in a combination of food, approach and dining experience that you may like to consider.
·The Fat Duck, Bray, Berkshire, UK
In an unremarkable English village, a surprisingly small restaurant continues to be the toast of the international gourmet.
And if its somewhat unsophisticated name does nothing to hint at what goes on behind its modest facade then, perhaps, that’s part of the fun; because The Fat Duck contains the kitchen - some would say laboratory - of Heston Blumenthal.
This is a man for whom the phrase the “appliance of science” has nothing to do with labour-saving kitchen gadgetry!
His signature dishes of snail porridge and parsnip cereal are now the stuff of legend; more to the point are Blumentha’s three Michelin Stars and a string of awards that have seen The Fat Duck consistently voted one of the top five restaurants in the world. Indeed, in 2005 it actually won that coveted award.
Blumenthal has been described as a molecular gastronomist and while he is reported to dislike that tag it does give some clue to his approach to cooking; a style that examines the very nature of our food’s construction and the calculated ways in which it can be cooked or prepared for consumption in ways that most preserve and enhance appearance, aroma, flavour and texture.
Not easy to get a table at The Fat Duck but worth the effort because diners just never know what the great man is going to come up with next.
·Dinner in the Sky, Brussels, Belgium
If you want somewhere really cool to eat, try sitting at a table 150 feet up in the air!
Dinner in the Sky began in Belgium but now operates in around 30 countries across the globe. The premise is very simple although, perhaps, not for those who suffer from vertigo. Diners - 22 people around a large table - plus chef, waiters and an entertainer in the centre of the table platform are hoisted 50 meters into the air by crane where they enjoy a top-class meal.
Another platform can be hoisted to the same level as the diners for entertainment, music or even business presentations.
There are a few things to remember, of course, when dining in the sky. Firstly, don’t forget to buckle the seat-belt provided; secondly, there’s not much opportunity for popping out for a cigarette between courses and, thirdly, if you drop your fork you’re in trouble!
·Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark
In the Christianshavn area of the old city is a converted warehouse which contains just about the hottest eating ticket of recent years.
Noma is a two-Michelin star restaurant run by chef Rene Redzepi which was voted “the world’s best” by Restaurant magazine in both 2010 and 2011.
Redzepi’s ethos is the reinvention or reinterpretation of traditional Nordic cuisine and one of the ways in which he has tried to achieve these goals is by sending out his staff - even the chefs - forage for natural ingredients along the coastline of Denmark.
It has been described as a cuisine that “picks the pocket of Mother Nature” but that’s, perhaps, a trifle unfair as Noma is all about sustainability and the truly subtle use of ingredients.
Indeed, there is almost a fanaticism about it with a belief that ingredients should either comprise or compliment a dish to a precise degree and in a precise amount - just a fraction of a gram either way and the goal is lost and the effect ruined.
And if you thought water was just water, think again; Redzepi doesn’t and made sure he trawled the world to come up with the purest water it was possible to obtain for his food preparation.
That’s the sort of exhaustive dedication that has gone into signature dishes such as “The Newly-Ploughed Potato Field” and the “The Snowman from Jukkasjarvi”.
The Noma restaurant has been branded “unique” - and that tells its own story.
·Gabba Restaurant, Kirkenes Snow Hotel, Finnmark, Norway
Snow hotels have become extremely popular in recent years in those countries which have sufficiently long winters and enough snow and ice for their construction.
One of the best is the Kirkenes Snow Hotel which features the Gabba Restaurant next door to the hotel itself. The restaurant specialises in the food and cuisine local to the area and is in the form of a circle with a large open fire in the middle of the room - and it is on this fire that the chefs cook all the food.
Up in the Arctic Circle there is an abundance of fish and this is what tends to dominate the menu with cod, salmon and Artic Charr the specialities. For the pure carnivore, though, the restaurant also specialises in reindeer meat.
For a dining experience that replicates the Sami tent environment of the people who live in one of the harshest environments on the planet, the Gabba Restaurant is hard to beat.
And, of course, if a cab home is a little to tall an order in the snowy wilderness - although the Gabba is only a little over a mile from the city centre – there’s always a comfortable room in one of the world’s best ice hotels right next door.
·Grotto Palazzese Restaurant, Polignano A Mare, Italy
For any modern man who fancies himself as something of a caveman - or for any woman who thinks her man tends to eat like one, what better place to enjoy dinner than under the vaulted roof of an ancient limestone cavern?
But that’s where the caveman comparison ends because there is no mammoth on the menu at the Grotta Palazzes. True, one dines in an ancient cave - the local nobility have been doing such things since the 17th Century - but the food is distinctly of the here and now.
And the setting is a romantic one - not to say spectacular. Lit by the aquamarine waters of the Adriatic, this lofty cavern provides seating on terraces above the sea and, of course, excellent cuisine in the Italian tradition.
Like most caves, the temperature remains surprisingly constant so it does not become uncomfortable or dank if you wish to remain at your table and linger over a coffee and those lapping waters below.
Image by Carlos Porto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Written by Elizabeth James, who writes for the cheap flights site Traveljungle
Filed Under: Travel advice • Travel Guides
